Ridgeside Farm

11/07/2025

11/01/2025

Linda Wynn — the Tennessee Historical Commission’s assistant director for state programs — is a historian’s historian. Not only is her own work impeccable, she’s also responsible for a lot

10/31/2025

Love that Muscle Shoals sound!

10/29/2025

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner from his book Absalom, Absolam!

“The news soon spread among the soldiers that there was a woman among the Confederate dead, and many of them went and gazed upon the upturned face, and tears glistened in many eyes…”

After the Battle of Antietam, while burying the Confederate dead, a Union burial party found an unidentified female Confederate soldier. In his memoir, Private Mark Nickerson of the 10th Massachusetts Infantry wrote:

“A Sergeant in charge of a burying party from our regiment reported to his Captain that there was a dead Confederate up in the cornfield whom he had reason to believe was a woman. He wanted to know if she should be kept separate, or brought along with the others. The Captain after satisfying himself that this Confederate was a woman ordered that she be buried by herself. The news soon spread among the soldiers that there was a woman among the Confederate dead, and many of them went and gazed upon the upturned face, and tears glistened in many eyes as they turned away. She was wrapped in a soldier's blanket and buried by herself and a head board made from a cracker box was set up at her grave marked ‘unknown Woman CSA.’

Nothing in my experience up to that time affected me as did that incident. I wanted to know her history and why she was there. She must have been killed just as the Southerners were being driven back from the cornfield.”

“Confederate Dead in Front of Dunker Church,” Alexander Gardner; 19 September 1862; Library of Congress

Quote from Antietam National Battlefield:
https://www.nps.gov/anti/learn/historyculture/women-at-antietam.htm

10/27/2025

https://www.pbs.org/video/special-presentations-history-makers-2011-chattanooga-venture-and-vision-2000/

This film acknowledges all those who organized and implemented Venture and Vision 2000.

10/26/2025

When the discoverer of Ruby Falls, Leo Lambert, emerged from his 17-hour journey inside the dark cave, only his boots and helmet could be saved. Ruby, his wife and the falls' namesake, burned the rest of the clothing he had worn because, legend has it, their stench was overwhelming and beyond redemption.

The boots and helmet are on display at the Mountain Memories Gift Shop on Lookout Mountain, owned by Jeanne Crawford, Leo and Ruby's granddaughter!

Learn more about Ruby Falls history ➡️ rubyfalls.com

10/19/2025

https://tnmuseum.org/junior-curators/posts/the-treaty-of-sycamore-shoals

On March 17, 1775, a few white men and several Cherokee leaders signed a document giving a huge stretch of land in Kentucky and Tennessee from the Cherokee to the Transylvania Land Company for several wagon loads of goods. This document became known as the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals. It is one of the...

10/09/2025

10/09/2025