Jackson Purchase Historical Society

Every county in the South has a yearly Fair.  It is is time of carnival rides, and food, and horse races, and mule pulls, and “home ec” competitions, which together create such wonderful memories!  We take them for granted, never questioning their existence, but “someone” had to have the foresight to make them happen.  And the first requirement is space enough for all the activities.   In Graves County, it was Dr. Walter who provided that space.

The deed was recorded on June 4, 1948 and it says that “E.C. Walter and wife Geneva Walter have sold…to the Graves County War Memorial Association, Inc., for the purpose of being used only for a Fairground or Racetrack, or Childrens’ playground or Public Park…and should said land ever cease to be used for any of said purposes the title thereto shall at once revert to and be vested in” the Walters or their heirs.  There was one other stipulation, that “a marker to be erected at some agreeable spot on the land conveyed with the following inscription therein, to-wit:  ‘In honor of Effie Louisa Walter, mother of Dr. E. C. Walter.’”

The fairground was duly created sitting on the north side of Highway 121, north of Mayfield, and is the site of the yearly Graves County Fair.   The marker was erected at the entrance to the fairgrounds and is still there today.  In addition to the Fair, the Graves County Riding Club holds horse shows on the grounds every year from May to September.  Also, horse barns on the fairgrounds are full, almost year round, of harness racing horses whose owners use the racetrack there for training.

Earle Charles Walter was a physician and the president of the Mayfield Hospital.  He lived on North 18th Street and raised Saddlebred horses; the east side of the driveway leading to his barn lot was one of the boundaries of this conveyed property, as the current Highway 121 had not been built in 1948.  Dr. Walter died in 1958 and is buried in Highland Park Cemetery, Mayfield.

(Information used to create this posting was found in the Deed Records of the Graves County Clerk, The 1949 Mayfield City Directory, Volume 5 of the Graves County Cemetery books published through the Graves County Historical Society, and personal observation at the fairgrounds.)

Thanksgiving wouldn’t be the same if the sweet potatoes disappeared from our Southern tables.  Some of us like them candied, some with marshmallows melted on top, some mashed with brown sugar and butter, some with just butter, some in a pie.   However they come to the table, though, they bring the smell and flavor of fall.   On occasion, they also generate lively table discussions as to what, exactly, is the difference between a sweet potato and a yam? Most Southern cooks will say that the yam is a darker orange and a “tad” sweeter than the sweet potato but both just as good in their recipes – “just use what’s to hand”!

To help with this year’s possible discussions, here is a little of what the experts say.  Sweet potatoes and white potatoes are not related even though the light yellow skinned sweet potato has a dry, crumbly texture similar to the white potato.   Most commonly called yams are the “sweet potatoes” that are darker orange to reddish with thicker skins and a sweet, moist, orangy flesh.  Sweet potatoes and yams are long with ends tapering to a point as opposed to the white potato’s rounded ends.   The experts say that yams are the tubers of a tropical vine. The word, yam, is of African origin and was first recorded in American in 1676.

Within the Jackson Purchase, two communities celebrate the sweet potato’s popularity yearly. In Kentucky, Benton in Marshall County holds its annual Tater Day Festival the first Monday in April.  Begun in 1843, the town’s population would come together to celebrate spring and trade in sweet potato slips (used to grown the crop.)  Benton’s Tater Day is said to be the oldest continuous trade day in the U.S.   There is always a parade, games, carnival rides and a “flea” market.

In Gleason, (Weakley County) Tennessee, the sweet potato became the town’s number one agricultural export early in the 20th century and  gained for it the nickname of Tatertown.  On Labor Day weekend every year a “Tater Town Special” is held to celebrate the economic contribution of this crop.  The celebration is a community homecoming affair with a parade, good food, high school reunions, family reunions and on Sunday a community-wide church service.

Well, knowing all this won’t make the “taters” taste any sweeter, but maybe it will make the table talk interesting and different!  Happy Thanksgiving!

(Information for this posting found on the Internet at www.gleasononline.com/tater_town_online.htm; en.wikipedia; www.utm.edu; www.homecooking.about.com)

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” – Winston Churchill, WWII

Answering their country’s call to duty, our warriors have been sent all over the world to defeat those who wanted to take from us our freedoms and our tangible riches.  Our warriors all came back – some only in spirit, their bodies left on foreign soil, some physically but wounded either in body, mind, or spirit.   We honor and remember their service by setting aside special days: Memorial Day, 4th of July, Veterans Day and erecting monuments.  But so many of us, when the parades and speeches are over, go home and forget our warriors until the next “round” of parades and speeches, or heaven forbid, war.

But it is our veterans, 24.9 million of them, who live every day with the aftermath inflected by horrors of  their war.  A grateful government cannot possibly administer adequately to all of the every day and special needs of these warriors.  And so, many private organizations have been formed to help supply these needs, some by the veterans themselves.  A movement has been started to create an American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial in Washington, D.C. If you value the service rendered for you by these veterans, you might want to visit some of these websites:

• American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial: www.avdlm.org
• Veterans of Foreign Wars: www.vfw.org.  The VFW’s Buddy Poppy program provides employment for disabled vets.
• Disabled American Vets: www.dav.org
• www.freedomisnotfree.com
• www.help4vets.org
• Strummings for Vets provides music therapy: www.strummingforvets.org
• www.woundedwarriorproject.org

A simple browser search will also identify other sites dedicated to the veterans, including ones containing poetry.

The final service we can do for our fallen soldiers is bury them, giving them forever to a merciful Higher Power.  In addition to the military cemeteries on American soil, the United States through the American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 24 cemeteries in 10 foreign countries.  These cemeteries are places of interment for our warriors who fell on those foreign grounds.  Most are found near former battlefield sites and our military bases throughout the world on land given in perpetuity by host nations.  Visit the Commission’s website at www.abmc.gov to find information about these cemeteries, obtain assistance with planning a trip to one of these cemeteries and/or memorials, find information about any service personnel buried or honored at a specific cemetery, obtain assistance in finding lodging/travel information and for obtaining a fee-free passport for family members so they can visit a grave.

(Information for this posting was found: (1) via an Internet search which rendered the websites set out in it, (2) the Sunday edition, November 7, 2010, of the Dallas Morning News, Dallas, Texas.)

Marvin Downing

Our Fall Meeting was a joint one with the West Tennessee Historical Society.   A short business meeting involved a reminder that the artwork for the New Madrid postal cancellation project is due to Cecelia Edwards by December 31, 2010 and a request for ideas for the JPHS Civil War celebration activities.

At the conclusion of the business meeting, Marvin Downing, PhD, spoke on the subject of Christmasville, Tennessee.  He began by showing a 6 minute DVD segment of Tennessee Crossroads about Christmasville; Downing served as a consultant on this program.  After the segment, he distributed a handout containing a current map of west Tennessee counties and a detailed map of the same area in 1864 showing the location of Christmasville on the south fork of the Obion River in Caroll (now Carroll) County, pictures of John C. McLemore and his wife, Elizabeth Donelson McLemore, and a sketch by Thomas F. Moore, a native of Christmasville, showing the area circa 1865.   It was on land owned by McLemore that Christmasville was built and incorporated in 1823.  Downing spoke eloquently about the area which is no longer a viable community, but still remembered as attested to by  a recent newspaper article concerning a hunting accident in which it was mentioned that one of the young men involved was from the “Christmasville area”.  After the program, Dr. Downing was applauded for all the research and work he had done on this topic.

The next JPHS meeting will be January 22, 2011 in the auditorium of the Wrather Museum on the campus of Murray State University.  The meeting will begin at 10:30 a.m.  Our speaker will be Dr. Bill Mulligan, Professor of History at Murray State.

Marvin Downing

Downing and meeting attendees

Dr. Marvin Downing will be addressing the society at the quarterly meeting. In anticipation of the upcoming talk, we talked with him about his 34-year career as a professor of history at UT Martin, his civic activities he performs and his research and knowledge of Christmasville. It was the town that time forgot, nestled away in the Tennessee woods. It would fail to take advantage of technology in railroads and slowly die down to nothing but a post office until 1903 and then nothing after that.

Join us as we take a look at a now forgotten part of the Jackson Purchase.