Jackson Purchase Historical Society

Mickey Stubblefield giving autographs October 19, 2009 after speaking to the October meeting of the Ellis Wilson Society.

A native of Mayfield, Mr. Stubblefield played baseball for the Omaha Rockets (1947), the Kansas City Monarchs (1948-49), the Nebraska State League (1950), and the Pittsburg Pirates farm team called the Mayfield Clothiers (1952).  A pitcher, he made history when he took the mound on June 26, 1952, in Mayfield’s War Memorial Stadium, to become the first African-American baseball player in the KY-IL-TN Class D Minor (Pro) League (commonly referred to as the Kitty League).

Mr. Stubblefield was born February 26, 1926 with the given name of Wilker Harrison Thelbert Stubblefield but somehow acquired the nickname of Mickey early in life.  He tells that at about age 5 he could throw a ball over his home and run around and catch it before it hit the ground.    His neighbors prophesied that he was going to be a ball player.  In later years, it was said he could throw a baseball a city block!

Mickey started playing baseball after serving in the Navy and the statistics show that he was 5′9″, weighed 150 pounds and batted and threw right-handed.  His career began with the Omaha Rockets in 1947, he went on to the Kansas City Monarchs where he earned $350 per month, plus $2 per day for food.  He and his teammates traveled to and from ballparks on old buses sometimes sleeping and eating in them too.  In these times before desegregation, many restaurants and hotels would not serve people of color.  Mickey says it was different, though, in Nebraska and Canada.  In Nebraska,  “I didn’t know I was black until I looked in the mirror” says Mickey.  Some fans, when they pulled into the ballpark would shout “We want Mickey”.  Other towns were less friendly shouting abusive language at him and others he couldn’t go to at all.

Mickey lives currently in Mayfield, Kentucky and although his memory needs a “jump start” every once in awhile, he can still entertain folks with the story of his life as a baseball player.

If interested in finding out more about the Negro Leagues and the Kitty League, may we suggest the following:  books:  The Negro Leagues revisited:  Conversations with 66 more heroes by Brent P. Kelley and The Negro Leagues, 1869-1960, by Leslie A. Heaphy; website www.kittyleague.com

Betty Dobson portraying Maggie Steed

Maggie Steed built the Metropolitan Hotel in 1909 when she was 24 years old. Maggie, a woman of “color”, was far ahead of her time, as she saw when she arrived in Paducah in 1893, the need for a hotel that would house “colored” people.

Maggie’s father was a slave and when President Lincoln offered slaves a chance to fight in the Civil War effort, he promised them and their families freedom after the war.  Many colored regiments were continued after the war and Maggie arrived in Paducah in 1893 mainly due to the colored regiment that was located there and for the opportunities for young colored women in the area.

Using her husband’s name, Maggie dealt with the lumber company that owned the land, purchasing the land and materials for her hotel. For $2 a day, guests could stay at her hotel and be treated to biscuits and coffee in the mornings at 6 a.m.  The Hotel Metropolitan, named by Maggie to give it a high-class sound, was very forward-thinking because it had lights and running water.

Many famous African-Americans traveled the “Chitlin Circuit” (the name of the route of hotels that accepted African-Americans as guests).  In 1915, it was so highly respected that it housed many members attending the Golden Jubilee convention of the General Association of Colored Baptists in Kentucky.   Famous guests who stayed there through the hotel’s operation were Louie Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall, B. B. King, Ike and Tina Turner, Marcus Haines, Jessie Owens, and the Harlem Globetrotters.  Langford Hughes and the Negro Baseball League were also guests traveling the Chitlin Circuit.

After Maggie’s death in 1924, her son ran the hotel for two to three years, then sold it to Mamie Burbridge. After her death, Lester and Olivia Gaines and their son, Clarence “Big House” Gaines (who was to become the 3rd winningest coach in the United States) owned it at one point.

The Hotel Metropolitan is located at 724 Oscar Cross Street in Paducah, KY.   It was Big House Gaines that made the property available for preservation as a museum.   Betty Dobson and others she gathered to her created the Upper Town Heritage Foundation which rehabilitated the Hotel so that it is now a viable museum.  Betty Dobson carries the message of the Hotel as she travels around as herself and occasionally in the persona of Miss Maggie talking to various community, service and historical organizations.  Visit the Hotel Metropolitan’s website at www.thehotelmetropolitan.org to find out more about this important historic landmark.

One of our members, Cecelia Edwards, made the following comment in response to our posting about Gritted Cornbread:  “While reading some old newspaper articles at the library I came across an article about a “madstone” that was apparently an old American Indian cure for being bitten by a rapid dog.  I researched it and found that it is a part of the stomach of a deer that is removed and given special treatment. From what I have learned it was not a common item to have around the house as the person in need had to find out who had one and then go for the treatment, which included several applications of the stone after it had been soaked in milk and other ingredients. It was then applied to the wound and left until the stone turned green. There may have been several applications. The articles that I read reported success with the stone.  One article told of the family traveling from Mayfield to Paducah for the treatment, which in those days was quite a journey.”

“R.T. Rowland, 78 years of age, was almost chewed to death by a mad dog at Eddyville.  He went to Paducah and had a madstone applied.”  (article dated 7-20-1898 under First District News reported in Volume 8, Graves Co., KY Newspaper Genealogical Abstracts Mayfield Monitor, 2-2-1898 to 12-28-1898, (Copyright 1983 by Simmons Historical Publications)  No further articles as to whether or not he survived.

Hmmm, is it progress to give shots in the stomach to combat rabies if there is a “madstone” that will do the same thing?

Teresa Ray

The speaker for our Winter Meeting was Teresa Ray who spoke about her upbringing in the South Graves County orphanage, Paradise Friendly Home, and her project “Paradise Friendly Home Revisited”.   Teresa became a resident of Paradise Friendly Home in December 1961 and lived there until her high school graduation in 1967.   She spoke of the founders, Leslie and Thelma Murdock, about how she came to be a resident, about life with 50-70 “siblings”, and the demise of the orphanage.   Although in the beginning (1935) the Murdocks did not receive any financial or other assistance, eventually almost all of Western Kentucky, through churches, service organizations, educational organizations and individuals,  pitched in and helped in some way.   The first building was the Murdocks’ two bedroom home but the physical plant grew to five buildings in order to house the estimated 500 children they parented from 1935 until 1978.

Ms. Ray has undertaken the task of preserving the story of the Murdocks and the orphanage.   The task has been named Paradise Friendly Home Revisited and its stated purpose is to “identify, gather and archive the oral histories of the children, staff, and families who lived at Paradise Friendly Home between the years of 1935 and 1978″.  The oral histories are also being collected for the Kentucky Historical Society’s Oral History Commission.  More information on this project, along with pictures of the Murdocks, can be found on the website: www.paradisefriendlyhome.com.  Ms. Ray also hopes to write a book about Paradise Friendly Home and its children.

If you haven’t already, please listen to our interview with Teresa; you will find it under the podcast category on the right side of this webpage.

Mausoleum of Thelma and Leslie Murdock, founders of Paradise Friendly Home, Highway 97, Bell City, KY (south Graves County)

We had the extreme pleasure of talking with Teresa Ray of the Paradise Friendly Home an orphans’ home located in Farmington, KY. She recounted her time there as an orphan as well as Paradise Friendly Home’s place in the history of Western Kentucky. She will be the guest speaker at the quarterly meeting of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society on January 16. Now available through iTunes or you can listen to it here.

“‘I recollect when Daddy made a gritter from a board and piece of metal.  After he gritted the corn, Mom made such good gritted corn bread, crackling’ bread also.’  Editor’s Note…I had never heard of “gritted corn bread” so I asked my parents about it.  They knew what I was talking about immediately.  They said that in the fall, when the corn was beyond ripe, but not yet dried completely, the ears of corn would be pulled and grated and made into something between a bread and a pudding in texture.  They said people used to make their own “gritters” (graters) by taking a lard bucket lid or such and punching holes in it with a nail.  Then all people had to do was use the side of the metal flared out from to grate their food.  I thought that was pretty smart.

Home “gritters” were probably only one of many pieces of life of yesterday that are no longer around.   They were taken for granted in that era.  Now there is a whole generation who never heard of such things.  How many other things are being forgotten.”

-Excerpt from column,  Mountain Memories, written by Louzilla Patrick appearing in the January 1985 issue, page 21, of The Mountain Laurel, a monthly Journal of Mountain Life by Laurel Publications, Inc., Meadows of Dan,  Va. 24120

Dear History Buff visitors:  What “other things” do you know of.  If you will share them, we’ll post them!!

SONG OF THE NEW YEAR

I heard the bells at midnight

Ring in the dawning year;

And above the clanging chorus

Of the song, I seemed to hear

A choir of mystic voices

Flinging echoes, ringing clear,

From a band of angels winging

Through the haunted atmosphere;

“Ring out the shame and sorrow,

And the misery and sin,

That the dawning of the morrow

May in peace be ushered in.”

- James  Whitcomb Riley

(The Complete Poetical Works of James Whitcomb Riley, Indiana University Press,  1993)

AMEN

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

“Three or four years ago tryouts were being conducted for parts in the Nativity Play to be staged by the children of the Second Presbyterian Church.  There was brisk competition for all the roles except that of the innkeeper who told Mary and Joseph that he didn’t have room for them.

For some reason the kids seemed to think the innkeeper was a sort of bad guy and no one wanted to be saddled with the part.

‘But he wasn’t really mean,’ one of the teachers explained to the four-year-old boy chosen for the role.  ‘All the rooms in the inn were taken and he just didn’t have a place for Mary and Joseph to stay.”

That appeased the boy somewhat, but when the play was staged he felt constrained to underscore the innkeeper’s innocence by ad-libbing his lines just a trifle.

‘I’m sorry I don’t have room for you, I’m really sorry,’ he said when Mary and Jospeh stopped by, ‘ but won’t you come in and have a drink?’”

(Excerpt from the book Crossroads and Coffee Trees, a Legacy of Joe Creason, 1975, The Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times,  page 21.  Joe Creason was born in Benton, Kentucky in 1918, and wrote “Joe Creason’s Kentucky”, a popular local column in the Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, from 1963 until his death in 1974.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

John Christmas McLemore, Christmasville, TN

Well, his name anyway.  Our Marvin Downing is the historical consultant for a PBS segment on Christmasville, TN and John Christmas McLemore.  Marvin says that means “a person might catch my name when the credits are run”!

The segment will air on Christmas Eve and again on the following Sunday morning after Christmas.  If you don’t have access to Nashville Public Television, after the segment airs, it will be on the website a few weeks via You Tube and you can check it out at  www.tennesseecrossroads.org.

John Christmas McLemore was one of the founding fathers of Memphis, TN.  He also lent his name to a town, created by an act of the Tennessee legislature, to be founded on the north side of the South Fork of the Obion River in the vicinity of “McLemore’s Bluff.”

Marvin wrote an article for the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture on McLemore and also an article, Old Christmasville (Tennessee): Its Lure and Lore” published in the JPHS Journal, Vol. VII, June 1979.

April 6th of every year is National Tartan Day which honors those Americans of Scottish descent.  Kentucky’s tartan is shown here, woven into a sash, and worn by Jackson Purchase Historical Society President Sarah Strange at the Society’s Fall Meeting, November 14, 2009.

In 2001, Glasgow, Kentucky was the host of the International Highland Games and the Kentucky Tartan was, it is believed, worn first there.

The tartan is green, bluegreen, blue, grey,  yellow, red, white and black in color; each color represents a different attribute of the state and its citizens.  For a more detailed discussion, see the History of the Commonwealth of Kentucky Tartan at www.kentuckyunited.org/tartan1.html.

There are different ways to wear the sash, each according to the different circumstances of the wearer.   Sarah is wearing the style worn by a Clan Woman.  Other styles are for women who are wifes of Clan Chiefs or Colonels of Scottish Regiments,  women who have married out of their clans but who still wish to use their original clan tartan, and a style for women who for one reason or another (dancing!) want to keep the front of their dress clear of the sash.  For a discussion and pictures of these styles, see the website of the Clan Gregor at www.clangregor.org/history-tartan-women.html.