The Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA) will use a $40,750 grant from the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program to develop an online database of the state’s Civil War battlefields that will be available for federal, state and local planning agencies as well as the general public.

This project will use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to create the database. The database will link information from the Civil War Sourcebook for Tennessee to Civil War maps and documents archived at TSLA. This enhanced resource will be available on TSLA’s section of the Tennessee Department of State web site.

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An upcoming workshop sponsored by the Tennessee State Library and Archives will help aspiring genealogists find out not just who their ancestors were, but how they actually lived.

In the workshop, Nashville attorney and genealogical expert Paul R. White will provide tips on how people can transform their ancestors from mere names on old documents into real people who experienced life’s ups and downs with their families, jobs and hobbies.

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Representatives from the Tennessee State Library and Archives and the Tennessee State Museum will be in Murfreesboro on August 6 to record and digitize Civil War memorabilia owned by local residents for a new exhibit.

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A scan of the directory for 1868 has been added to our collection of Scanned Copies of Nashville City Directories.

Dutchman's Bend Train Crash

Many communities in Tennessee were hit hard by the recent flooding, but the state’s residents have endured many disasters before.

A Yellow Fever epidemic in the 1870s caused more than 7,000 deaths in Memphis alone. The sinking of the steamboat Sultana on the Mississippi River in 1865 claimed more lives than the sinking of Titanic 47 years later. And a head-on collision between two trains in Nashville in 1918 still ranks as one of the worst train wrecks of all time.

All of those calamities - and others - are documented in a new exhibit on display at the Tennessee State Library and Archives building in downtown Nashville. The exhibit, titled “Tennessee Disasters,” chronicles some of the worst moments in the Volunteer State’s history, as well as the determination and resilience of the people who lived through them.

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The web page Rescuing Flood Damaged Family Collections provides instructions for salvaging family papers, books and photographs. The page also includes links to handouts and to other web sites with preservation guidelines.

Representatives from the Tennessee State Library and Archives will be visiting Maryville Friday to record and digitize Civil War memorabilia owned by local residents for a new exhibit.

Archivists will be at the Blount County Library, 508 N. Cusick Street in Maryville, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. During that time, they invite residents of the area to bring in photographs, documents and other artifacts related to the Civil War.

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The Tennessee State Library and Archives benefitted from its location near the top of Capitol Hill during recent flooding in Nashville. Although some water came into the building during heavy rains, no records were damaged. TSLA remains open to the public on its regular schedule.