The Frank H. McClung Museum was founded with money donated by John Webb Green and his wife, Ellen Marshall (McClung) Green, as a memorial to Ellen Green's father, Franklin Henry McClung. At present, the museum houses permanent exhibits on the native peoples and archaeology of Tennessee, ancient Egypt, and the Civil War in Tennessee.

Ellen Lawson McClung was born to Hugh Lawson and Ella (Gibbons) McClung Jr. on November 14, 1893 in Knoxville, Tennessee and married coal magnate Thomas H. Berry (1894-1978) on October 18, 1928. The couple had one son, Hugh Lawson McClung Berry, who died in 1963. Ellen Berry was instrumental in preserving a number of historic Tennessee buildings, including Ramsey House and Glenmore. In her later years, a man named Dan Tondevold charmed his way into surrogate-son status, and in 1985 disappeared with nearly her entire estate. A body inconclusively identified as his was found, but suspicions of a faked death persisted, and the case was featured on the television show Unsolved Mysteries. Ellen McClung Berry died on April 19, 1992 at the age of 98.