Jackson Purchase Historical Society

Obituary from the Mayfield Monitor’s Wednesday, 8-14-1895 edition:

“T. B. Waller died at his home…after complication of diseases after illness of only a few days.  About two years ago, he came to Mayfield…engaged in queenware business until his death.”

Queenware? The online World English Dictionary says queensware is “a type of light white earthenware with a brilliant glaze developed from creamware by Josiah Wedgwood and named in honor of his patroness, Queen Charlotte”.    Wedgwood gifted Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, with a tea set made of this tableware which resulted in Wedgwood being appointed Potter to Her Majesty in 1765.   Upon receiving the Queen’s permission this tableware was called Queen’s Ware.

Queen’s Ware was not an original invention of Wedgwood but a refinement and development of a cream coloured earthenware already produced in several potteries in Staffordshire, England.   Queen’s Ware rapidly became the generic name for creamware.  In 1767, Wedgwood wrote to a friend that “it was really amazing how rapidly the use of it (Queen’s Ware) has spread almost over the whole globe, and how universally it is liked.”  It was also apparently very affordable in cost for the non-royals.

Wedgwood’s Queen’s Ware is described as being able to stand sudden changes in heat and cold without “injury” and made in a “fine form, thin body, clear and brilliant glaze which formed a perfect background for the ingenious enamellers as well as other more mechanical forms of decoration”.   Queen’s Ware will have a mark and the words “Queen’s Ware” on the underside.  A partial dinner service of Queen’s Ware, circa 1790, with impressed marks and gilt was auctioned for $17,719 at Christie’s in November of 2008.

So, if Mr. Waller sold Queen’s Ware, and grandma was one of his customers, there may be cash in your cupboard!

(Information used in this posting found in the Graves Co. KY Newspaper Genealogical Abstracts, Volumn 4, Mayfield Monitor Jan. 1894 to April 1896, Copyright 1981 by Don Simmons; Internet sources at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse, www.wedgwoodmuseum.org.uk,  www.thepotteries.org/types, and www.christies.com)

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

Felix Holt, author

It was indeed Felix Holt who wrote and told our story.  He was born in Murray, Calloway County, Kentucky in 1898.  From his father he learned to appreciate great literature, but was destined to complete his formal education with high school.  It was perhaps experience rather than education which proved to be the most valuable asset to Felix Holt.

He was a cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper in Paris, during WW I.  This led him to serve as a cartoonist and later as a reporter for the newspapers in Chicago following the War.  He moved to Detroit and wrote for the Detroit News and Detroit Times in the 1920s.  He began his career in radio in the 1930s and became chief writer for the Lone Ranger serial which had originated from Detroit.

He drew on the family reminiscences and legends handed down from his pioneer ancestors in Kentucky to produce his first novel, The Gabriel Horn in 1951.  The Gabriel Horn is the story of “the last immense wilderness of western Kentucky – the Jackson Purchase country”.  The Gabriel Horn made it to the movies as “The Kentuckian” in 1955 starring Burt Lancaster.  Holt’s second book, Daniel Boone Kissed Me, came out in 1954, shortly before his death.   Holt died in Bucks County Pennsylvania June 2, 1954 at the age of 56.

(This posting adapted from the article by Danny R. Hatcher which appeared in the Jackson Purchase Sesquicentennial Publication, 1969, of the Jackson Purchase Historical Society.  The above picture accompanied the article and carried this caption:  Photograph taken during the 1920s.  Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Louise Holt Dick of Murray, KY.)

From the Mayfield Monitor, Saturday, April 23, 1881:  “Mrs. Ann Eliza Young, the 19th wife of Brigham Young, will lecture in Mayfield about the 12th of May.”

What would the wife of Brigham Young be doing on the lecture circuit and why come to Mayfield? Ann Eliza went on the lecture circuit speaking out against polygamy, Mormonism, and Brigham Young after her divorce from Young and excommunication from the Latter Day Saints Church.  The divorce and excommunication make her an instant celebrity.

Born September 12, 1844 in Nauvoo, Illinois, Ann Eliza, at 4 years of age, went to Salt Lake City with her Mormon parents.  Married at 19 and having two children, she divorced her husband when he apparently wanted to take a second wife.   Married to then 67 year old Brigham Young when she was a 24 year old divorcee, Ann Eliza filed for divorce from Young in 1873, was excommunicated from the LDS Church in October 0f 1874, and divorced in January 1875.  She testified before Congress in 1875 for which she is credited with contributing to the passage of laws against polygamy.  Her lecture circuit appearances centered on three (3) themes, but her appeal increased dramatically when she published, in 1876, her exceedingly successful book, Wife No. 19; or the Story of a Life in Bondage.  Moving to Michigan, Ann Eliza married a third time, to Moses R. Denning, whom she divorced in 1893.  A revised version of her book was published in 1908 but it was not as successful as the original.  For all this notoriety, Ann Eliza died in obscurity.

Why did she come to Mayfield?  Again, from the Mayfield Monitor, Saturday, March 31, 1877, an obituary:  “Mr. John D. Lee, Mormon priest who was shot in Utah Territory last week was born and raised in southern part of Graves County.  He was son of John Lee, one of the first merchants of Feliciana and up to 1845 resided near here.  Went to Utah and afterwards returned.  Married a Florida lady and farmed near Water Valley.  He stayed there some time and moved to Utah.”   Is there some connection, church affiliation or otherwise, between Ann Eliza’s scheduled appearance and this Mormon priest’s relatives in Graves County?  Cursory research didn’t uncover any.  Do you know?

Incidentially, it is not known if Ann Eliza actually made the scheduled appearance in Mayfield as subsequent research didn’t uncover reports of such an event.

(This posting created from the following sources:  Graves Co. KY Newspaper Genealogical Abstracts, Volume 1, Mayfield Monitor, 2-19-1886 to 12-1-1885, copyrighted 1977 by Don Simmons; Internet sources at www.novelguide.com (Ann Eliza (Webb) Young), and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Eliza_Young)

Elementary school children know that Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492,  but not when the day to celebrate this event was set aside, thus giving them a holiday from school.  A day to commemorate this event wasn’t made a U.S. national holiday until 1937 after intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal benefits organization.  In 1971, the celebratory day was set as the second Monday in October.  This day is also celebrated in Spain, the Bahamas, Costa Rica and other areas of the Americas under similar names and in Canada the U.S. holiday falls on the same day as the Canadian Thanksgiving.

In many cities of the U.S. this day has become a day of celebrating  Italian-American and Catholic heritage because Christopher Columbus was an Italian-born, Catholic, explorer sponsored by the Spanish royalty, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

In the 19th century, anti-immigrant groups rejected the holiday because of its association with Catholicism and most recently Native Americans and other groups protest celebrating this holiday because Columbus’s discovery led, howbeit indirectly, to the colonization of the Americas which resulted in death by European diseases and warfare and the institution of slavery of native peoples.

Regardless of how history treats Columbus and his discovery, it cannot be argued that his voyages to the Americans did light a fire in Old World imaginations which began 150 years of European exploration and colonizations in the Americas.

(This posting created from the following resources: What Every American Should Know About American History, 200 Events that Shaped the Nation, by Dr. Alan Axelrod and Charles Phillips, 1992; Internet sources at http://en.wikipedia.org and www.history/com.)

Item in the Mayfield Monitor, Wednesday, February 15, 1893:

“Mittens Willett, well known young actress, died in New York of cancer.  Born in Columbus, Kentucky 30 years ago.  Appeared on the stage under name of Mary Anderson.  In 1884 she married Henry Aveling.  He was a suicide in 1891.  Left a five year old boy.  She was a niece of Col. Len G. Faxon of Paducah” (Graves Co. KY Newspaper Genealogical Abstracts, Volume 3, Mayfield Monitor).

Her obituary in The New York Times, on February 10, 1893, states she made her debut on the stage with Mary Anderson’s company and that she was the daughter of Edward Willett, former editor of the Sunday Dispatch and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (see The New York Times Internet online archives).

How did Mittens get from Columbus, Kentucky to the Big Apple and was her name really Mittens?  Why is the fact that she is a niece of Col. Len Faxon so important that he is mentioned in her obituary?

Leonard “Len” G. Faxon began the Cairo City Times with William Alexander Hacker in Cairo, Alexander County, Illinois in May 1854.  Faxon left this newspaper in 1855 to begin his own, The Cairo Weekly Delta. When Faxon left the Times he was replaced by Edward Willett.  The two papers merged into the Cairo Weekly Times & Delta and Faxon and Willett published this newspaper and the Tri-Weekly Times Delta.  Faxon moved to Paducah and edited the Paducah Herald sometime after April 1859 (see “A History of Newspapers in Cairo, Alexander County, Illinois, 1841-1881 by Darrel Dexter at http://rootsweb.ancestry.com).

Cursory research does not tell us exactly what happen between Faxon and Willett but it is surmised that Faxon took Willett home to visit his folks where Willett met one of his sisters whom he subsequently married and fathered a daughter sometime around 1860.  In 1880 Edward Willett was in New York with a Kentucky born wife named Dora and a daughter named Mittens, 20 years old (see U.S. Census records online at www.ancestry.com).  But why she was named Mittens or if this is just a nickname has yet to be uncovered.  Mittens was a direct descendant of the famous New York Willett family and both she and her father were buried in the family vault in Marble Cemetery, New York City. (see The New York Times obit).

So we can surmise that Mittens went to New York with her family and made a name for herself on the stage.  She was important to the editor of the Mayfield Monitor because of her link to the Paducah journalist Faxon and her birth in Columbus.

Mittens captures the imagination not only because of her name, ancestry and her acting career but because her New York Times obituary describes a complex talent:  “She was better known as an actress on the road than in this city, though her comely face and bright manners made her a favorite everywhere.  From her father she inherited marked literary tastes.  She was a frequent and a welcome contributor to the various comic papers, such as Puck and Judge, and has written some very acceptable verse for the magazines.”

Unanswered still is the question: where is her son and mother?  Does the Jackson Purchase harbor within its history the continued legacy of this artistic talent or has the thread been knitted up elsewhere?

“John Thomas Scopes, according to Berry Craig, landed a teaching job in Dayton, TN.  He told his sister, “I’m going there because it’s a small town with a small school where I won’t get in any deep water.”  The skinny, freckle-faced Paducahan made headlines worldwide in 1925 when he was convicted of teaching evolution.  “Brother didn’t think there was all that much to what he had done,” said sister Lela Scopes.   (Paducahans, Famous and Not So Famous, by Allan Rhodes, Sr. & John E. L. Robertson, Sr., pages 40-42)

The famous Scopes Monkey Trial was held in Dayton, TN and ended with the conviction of Scopes and the  imposition of a fine of $100.  The decision was appealed and overturned by the higher court because of a technicality (fine imposed by judge instead of jury).  Scopes wrote Center of the Storm, a book about the trial, but said little else publicly about it.

After the trial, Scopes did graduate study in geology at the University of Chicago and did geological field work in Venezuela for Gulf Oil of South America.  In 1930 he did further graduate study and later took a position as a geologist with the United Gas Company studying oil reserves.  He worked in Houston, Texas and Shreveport, Louisiana until retirement in 1963.

Scopes was born in Paducah on August 3, 1900 and died there in 1970.  He and his wife, Mildred, are buried in Oak Grove Cemetery, Paducah, KY, where his tombstone carries the epitaph, A MAN OF COURAGE.

John’s older sister, Lela V. Scopes, was a teacher, in 1925, in Paducah.  When she returned after the trial, Miss Lela learned that she was no longer employed as a teacher.  She didn’t like to talk about it, but felt the trial also cost  her her teaching job in Paducah. Miss Lela was born in 1987 and died in 1989.

(This posting created from the following resources:  Paducahans, Famous and Not so Famous by Allan Rhodes, Sr. & John E. L. Robertson, Sr.; Internet at www.findagrave.com and Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Scopes)