History, words and all things Tennessee

You are invited

2009-09-23T16:44:00.003-05:00

Visiting Sgt. York

2009-08-17T07:48:00.000-05:00

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/aug/17/a-home-fit-for-a-hero/

Tour the wineries of the U.C.

2009-03-17T10:08:00.006-05:00

Stonehaus, Chestnut Hill, Del Monaco, Highland Manor, Holly Ridge, Red Barn and Mill Road

Claudia Johnson Nichols
The Upper Cumberland is a convenient and impressive destination for winery and vineyard touring and wine tasting. Many wineries have installed glass windows so that visitors may observe the tanks and equipment. Some, such as Stonehaus Winery Inc. at Crossville, invite visitors to view a DVD covering all aspects of the operation, including grape growing and crushing and the wine making and bottling processes.

In addition to a tasting area, all Upper Cumberland wineries have shops offering accessories like openers, pourers, stoppers, glasses and racks. Several stock other Tennessee agricultural products such as jellies, jams and sauces along with gift items – custom glassware, t-shirts, baskets and decorative items featuring a wine motif. Red Barn Winery & Vineyards in Macon County, Del Monaco Winery near Baxter in Putnam County and Holly Ridge Winery and Vineyard in Overton County maintain rooms suitable for weddings, reunions, parties and meetings.

Casual fine dining at Chestnut Hill Winery in Crossville is available at the accompanying Brass Lantern Restaurant and Lounge. Adjacent to Stonehaus is Halcyon Days Restaurant and an antique shop. Highland Manor in Jamestown allows visitors to picnic on the grounds or enjoy a private dinner in the wine cellar. Mill Road Winery in Clay County is situated in an orchard and sells seasonal fresh fruits in addition to fruit and grape wines.
In recent years Upper Cumberland wineries have taken gold, silver and bronze regional and international awards for their wines. The wineries of the U.C. continue to invest in agricultural and cultural tourism development. Most have special events throughout the year.
Visit www.tennesseewines.com or www.picktnproducts.org/food/wine.html for more information.

Touring wineries is among our favorite pasttimes. This article is in support of the wineries of the Upper Cumberland and Tennessee as they face many uphill battles in the Tennessee General Assembly this year. The wineries of the U.C. were recognized recently with a Cumberland Business Journal Ovation 2009 Award for Excellence in Economic Development based on Tourism. We encourage you to be one of those tourists in 2009. Take a day and tour the wineries, visit the vineyards and sample this ancient drink, mostly made from grapes and fruits grown in our rich Tennessee soil.
Cheers

A message for pastpage visitors...

2009-03-09T19:40:00.004-05:00

I have had several people who've visited this site contact me and/or my husband for additional information about history or genealogical research. His research is related to the Willard family, the Nichols family and to Auburntown or Cannon County, Tennessee. Mine is related to Giles County, Tennessee, in general, and I am learning more about family history research.

If you do have questions, please feel free to send them to our research email address at dejavu159@gmail.com. We will gladly forward the question to the appropriate group or individual who may be able to help.

As we both now reside in Cookeville, Tennessee, we are not readily available to help with research ourselves at this time in the counties where we have the most historical or genealogical interest or knowledge. However, I have a lot of research on Giles County. If I can be of assistance, be assured that I will.

At the right of this page you will note several links that could be of interest.

Claudia Kay Johnson Nichols

Giles Countians Distinguished Themselves in War of 1812

2009-02-17T10:47:00.003-06:00

By Claudia Johnson

In the same year Giles County was created, 1809, newly elected President James Madison and his style setting wife, Dolly, moved into the White House. Tennessee was a mere child of thirteen, and the United States had been a nation for thirty-three years. In many respects, though, Great Britain had never recognized American independence and continued to treat the young nation as a British colony.

By 1811 when Pulaski was newly established, America's relationship with England had deteriorated to the point Congress declared war, listing Britain’s hostile actions as justification. Under the Orders of Council, American ships had been forced to pass through England despite their destination, curbing trade with other European countries. U.S. citizens sailing under the American flag had been forcibly seized and impressed into British navel service. U. S. commerce was being plundered under a pretended blockade.

Worst of all, at least to Southerners, the English were encouraging Indian warfare in recently settled areas, creating an atmosphere of fear and danger for pioneer families. Perhaps it was this situation, or expansionist urges, or a simple desire to protect the homes they had struggled to build out of wilderness, that evoked intense patriotic fervor among pioneers. Though poorly equipped and ill trained, the South readied its militia units to fight both the Indians and the British.

Paradoxically, the New England coastal states which had suffered economically from British hostilities, exhibited great sympathy for the enemy, sending supplies, money, even beef cows for food, to Britain’s offshore fleet and her armies in Canada. In 1813 the Embargo Act closed ports in New England, ending trade with the British.

Early Giles County historian, McCallum, related a story in which a local woman, like most settlers, patriotically refused to purchase imported goods. In the usual manner, she made coffee out of dried okra, and served it to a breakfast guest from the Northeast. The man commented that the coffee smelled very strong of the embargo. His hostess quickly replied that it smelled equally as strong of liberty.

With such sentiments, there is little wonder that Tennessee earned its nickname "The Volunteer State" during this period. A large number of Giles Countians served in the War of 1812, and many were alongside Andrew Jackson and Sam Houston in at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama during the Creek Indian Wars, which were a part of the War of 1812. Some later served with Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans.

Perhaps the most outstanding of the Giles County soldiers was Thomas Kennedy Gordon, who had been a captain in the militia at 18 and lieutenant colonel commandant of the Giles County Regiment of the Tennessee Militia at 22. He volunteered for the Creek Wars taking many locals with him. As rations and supplies dwindled, and most men were ill and wanted to head home, Gen. Jackson, who was also sick, declared, "As long as one man remains, I'll stay here and fight." Col. Gordon responded, "General, I'll stay, will die with you." Jackson and his men went on to defeat the Creeks, and the two men became lifelong friends. As President, Jackson mailed his wealthy planter friend and Buford Station resident, a letter addressed simply "the Colonel at Mont Gordon, Nashville." It arrived. Many Giles County Gordons are descended from the Colonel.

Another Giles Countian who distinguished himself, though rather dubiously, was Lt. William M. Kerley, who had come to the county with Tyree Rodes and lived on his land at Clifton Place. Among the first troops called for service, Kerley and other soldiers misunderstood the terms of their enlistment and planned to return home shortly after Horseshoe Bend, at which time Gen. Jackson demanded the return of Kerley's sword. When the lieutenant refused, Jackson threatened him with a pistol, which, according to Charles Clayton Abernathy, Jackson would certainly have used had yet another Giles Countian, Dr. Gilbert Taylor, not taken the weapon from Kerley an returned it to Jackson. Jackson later gave the sword back when Kerley explained he needed it as protection to lead his men home. Jackson said Kerley was too brave a man to punish and pardoned him.

Kerley's life was one of many saved by Dr. Gilbert Taylor, a distinguished surgeon trained in Philadelphia, who arrived in Pulaski in 1811. He volunteered for the Creek Wars and was surgeon of his regiment and on Jackson's own medical staff. At his own request, he acted with the artillery at Emuckfaw and Enotochopie. He bought an large gun, five feet long and of an unusual caliber, carrying nearly 40 buckshot at a load. At Emuckfaw he took a good position, watched for the flash of Indian guns, and fired at the flash. The easily recognizable blast of his gun prompted his comrades to cry out, "There's Taylor's artillery!" At Enotochopie he was one of twenty-five who volunteered for a dangerous defense mission and one of the six who survived it.

He became a Methodist minister in 1819 and served his community until his death in 1870.
James Patterson, a civilian who had been illegally held captive for three years during the Mexican War for Independence, was a member of Capt. John Gordon's company of spies during the Creek Wars, with a squad of twenty men under him in special service to Gen. Jackson. Although he carried a six-foot- long bear gun, he was nearly killed by a Creek Indian with a tomahawk, who chased him, striking him in the back several times. Patterson was saved by his thick buckskin shirt, the only uniform he and most of his fellow Giles County soldiers ever knew.

Outstanding Giles Countian Charles Clayton Abernathy in his "Recollections" recounted his return home from the Creek Wars. He and his friend, a Gen. McCafferty, started from Ft. Strother, during a rain storm with only one horse and without provisions. The storm became a flood, preventing building of a fire and forcing the men to walk in waist deep water for many miles and to finally abandon the horse. Constant walking in water and crudely made shoes rendered Abernathy's feet so sore he was unable to walk. Outside Huntsville, a compassionate traveler en route to Maury County offered Abernathy his horse, thus bringing him safely home.

Abernathy went on to read law, become judge advocate of the military courts, entry taker in the land office, county pension agent, first Clerk and Master of the county and first Circuit Court Clerk. A fierce Democrat and a devout Methodist, he married twice fathering 18 children, and many Abernathys in Middle Tennessee are his descendants.

A number of Giles Countians are descendants of soldiers of the War of 1812. Below is a list of last names of known soldiers. Research assistants in the Giles County Historical Society Genealogy Room can provide help in tracing family histories. The Society of the War of 1812, a national organization, extends membership to all descendants of that war's soldiers.

Rambo, Maxwell, Madry, Warren, Johnston, Hogan, Kiddy, Hiles, Kelly, Henry Dugger, Hamlet, Gordon, McCandliss, Hazelwood, Barker, Jackson, Clark, White, Creasy, Dodson, Smith, Kidwell, Davis, Chapman, Estis, Emerson, Hichmans, Richie, Button, Dodson, Evans, Abernathy, Bass, Buford, Caruthers, Clack, Cleveland, Everly, Flournoy, Hurlston, McDonald, Morris, Phillips, Kirley, Patterson, Rose, Taylor, Kimbrough, Wilcockson.

For more information visit www.nps.gov/hobe/. Be warned that the site does not list our Giles County soldiers.

Happy Birthday Giles County, 1809-2009

2009-02-10T20:54:00.006-06:00

History being made

2009-02-02T13:19:00.003-06:00

The author of this blog and another history blog, www.claudiajohnson.blogspot.com
about a Civil War soldier who was unearthed and examined by the Smithsonian, made history by marrying another lover of history on Jan. 5, 2009.
The wedding announcement and photo is posted at www.lifeintheuc.blogspot.com.

Thanks to all who have sent good wishes.

A chapter from my book

2009-01-16T10:59:00.005-06:00

These stories unless otherwise indicated were published in various issues of the Pulaski Citizen. This is a chapter (Relics) of my book, a page from the past...

Claudia Johnson-Nichols

An Old Relic

Thurston Griffin and some others were in Richland Creek swimming Sunday afternoon. Just below the site of the Old Second Street bridge, now removed, Mr. Griffin dived to the bottom, and his hand came in contact with something, which he brought up to the surface. It was an old Colt’s cap and ball revolver, all chambers loaded and the hammer on safety. The pistol may have been at the creek bottom since Civil War days, or possibly it may have been thrown into the creek at a later date. Its rusted condition indicated that it had been in the creek a long time. Mr. Griffin loans the pistol to the Museum. May never call for or may at some time want to make another disposition of it.

- CITIZEN, July 21, 1937

The Museum

The little Giles County Museum has been moved into one of the class rooms arranged for the school last spring in the Dormitory Building of the old Massey School Building. While not quite accessible for the general public, the new location is more accessible to High School boys and girls who are the greatest beneficiaries. The room is larger and the light much better in the new location and tourists who go up on the hill to see the museum will get a magnificent view of the hills surrounding Pulaski.

Many of the smaller articles were packed in boxes for removal and have not been unpacked and arranged for observation. Indeed, while work is in progress on the new High School Building the auditorium and gymnasium it will probably be best to let the museum remain closed. That will permit sufficient time without undue haste to arrange articles for observation.

- Aug. 25, 1937

Saber Found in Creek

Some boys diving for scrap iron in Richland Creek near the old bridge at the south end of second creek Thursday afternoon found an officer’s saber, probably a relic of the Civil War.

- CITIZEN, Aug. 25, 1937

A Relic of the Storm

Mrs. Jesse Fitzgerald who lives on Sam Davis Avenue found half of an old copy of the Citizen in the backyard at her home Saturday afternoon, probably carried from the wrecked home by the storm and dropped there. Mrs. Fitzgerald had not heard of the storm when she found the paper, but when she did hear of homes being wrecked, the thought occurred to her that it might have come from one of these. The sheet found is the inside pages of the Citizen of Aug. 11, 1898. As the first page was not with it, the subscriber’s name does not appear. So the paper gives no indication of where it came from.

There are many interesting items in the old paper.

Mrs. Yeaman, wife of the architect in charge of improvements at Martin College, was here for the corner stone ceremony. Among them are”

Rivers Carter, Civil Engineer, was here to make a survey of the town preparatory to putting in a sewer system.

Thomas H. Peebles, principal, has an advertisement of West Hill Training School.

- April 28,1937

A Land Mark

Before the picture show people start work on the new theater at the north-west corner of the Square, it might be interesting to notice the door to the basement room at the north-west corner of the original two-story part of the building.

The jail occupied that lot before, and at the time of the Civil War. It was in the jail that stood one that lot where Sam Davis and Capt. Shaw were imprisoned. It was from that jail that Sam Davis went to his execution on East Hill.

There is a story, probably true, to the effect that sometime after the execution of Sam Davis, a local citizen was held in the jail for some violation of military regulations, and that the jail was badly infested with bed bugs, fleas, lice and possibly other vermin. The citizen was released after a few days but was outraged that a man should be imprisoned in such a place. A few days after he was released, the jail count on fire one night and burned down – bedbugs, fleas and all. Whiles here were no clues as to the sourced of the fire, many people had their suspicions, but generally kept them to themselves.

The lot was bought and Bannister Hall, the present house, was erected there very soon after the war.

J.D. Lewis was a soldier under Gen. Harrison, who became interested in some timber land in the Aspen Hill community, and when mustered out of service, young Lewis was given employment in the office of the lumber yard by Gen. Harrison. He proved himself competent and when the new Postmaster was to be appointed for Pulaski on recommendation of Gen. Harrison, Lewis was appointed.

He secured the basement room at the west end of the building facing Jefferson Street for the post office, and a slot was cut in the door so letters could be slipped through when the office was locked up. The old door with the slot for letters is still there. Before it is torn away, if it is to be removed when time comes for overhauling the old building, you might find it interesting to look over it over and compare what e had sixty years ago with the handsome post office we now have.

-April 28, 1937

Bones of Prehistoric People Washed Up by Flood

After noticing the more material destruction wrought by the recent flood there is interest and fascination in studying some of its freaks which appeal more to sentiment and the student. Ancient graves were washed up in several places. The editor visited one of these Monday. On Dave Wade’s farm between his residence and Richland Mill, the flood washed up what is called an “old Indian graveyard.” The burying place was located on a knoll rising greatly from the creek and evidently supposed to be above high water by the prehistoric people who buried their dead there with such care. But all trace of a graveyard had long since disappeared and not even a tradition remained among the old Negroes in the neighborhood.

The field was worth $60 an acre before the flood and last year 16 acres including the old graveyard produced 14 bales of cotton. The land had been in cultivation long before it come into possession of Mr. Wade and as stated there was neither trace nor tradition of a graveyard.

But when the creek spread over the bottoms as never before this knoll extending down into the bend of the creek land suffered great destruction by the swift current flowing across it. The soil was swept away and when the flood receded the graves were exposed. We cannot tell how deep the bodies were originally buried nor how many were swept away leaving no trace.

About a dozen graves were left exposed. Some of these are graves of small children. The vaults were formed somewhat similar to vaults in graves today. Thin slabs of limestone evidently brought from some distance perhaps across the creek are placed edgeways along the sides and ends. The graves are about 2 feet to 6 feet in wide indicating that the bodies were buried on the side as they are too narrow to permit a body to lie on the back as we bury and persons who first looked into the graves say the skeletons were laying on the side. The body had been placed in the vault which was covered by other flat rocks and thus it was expected by the mourners and loved ones who placed it there that the body would rest undisturbed to the end of time. But when the flood exposed these carefully prepared vaults, they were soon opened and in the absence of other souvenirs the tones of these ancient people were carried away.

A seashell was found in one grave, but the others contained nothing but decayed bones.

The Indians who occupied this country up to about one hundred years ago did not usually bury their dead with such care. They simply opened a grave, wrapped a blanket around the dead body, laid it in the shallow grave and filled in the earth.

Students of ethnology claim this county was inhabited by a race of idol worshipping people, commonly called the “Mound Builders,” who were driven out by the Indians. These mound builders are believed to have been superior to the Indian in many respects, but they worshipped idols while the Indian worshipped the “Great Spirit,” and some students account for the complete annihilation of the Mound Builders by an inferior people on this hypothesis.

The graves recently washed up on the Wade farm may have some connection with a discovery made about 30 years ago in the bluff on the opposite side of the creek. Dave Inman, who lived at the Mrs. Hays place, went to some dogs that had chased a rabbit into the rocks on the bluff. Among the rubbish he found to small clay figures, one the form of a man, the other a woman. They were in sitting posture, perhaps 4 or 5 inches high, the familiar clay idols of the Aztecs. Dr. Grant at that time took a good deal of interest in such matters and Joe Lindsey secured the figures for him. Later Dr. Grant, Joe Lindsey, Ben Epperson and Tully Brown made some excavations and found a number of bones near where the idols were found.

- April 24, 1902

Buried Money (?)

Recently the local Junior Order Lodge leased the first floor of its lodge building to the Swift Co., and it is being used as an exchange depot for trucks hauling Swift products.

One day recently a hole approximately square and about big enough for a man to crawl through was discovered in the floor. An iron rod was sticking up out of the ground under the hole. And the men who tried it were unable to pull the rod out of the ground. And nobody was able to solve the mystery. The Swift people knew nothing about it. Neither did members of the Junior Order. The question was who had cut the hold in the floor and why? And what connection is any had the iron rod?

Somebody suggested a “mineral rod.” And that behaved in a way supposed to indicate the presence of money, near by. Then the party became excited. Imagination supplied all lacking details. It was evident that John Long had buried money under the store. And that somebody who knew something about it was planning to get it. But the Junior Order men, having discovered his plans, decided to beat him to it. So they set to work to dig a hole, following the iron rod to the pit of gold. As some would dig, others would plan what use they would make of the money. There was no question of ownership. Long is dead. And the lodge owned the place in fee simple. So they worked in relays making a hole just big enough for a man to work in.

After several hours they reached the end of the rod, but found no pot of gold there. And if you find out who they were, better not try to sell on of them a “mineral rod” at least for a few weeks. And the hole in the floor remains a mystery. Our guess would be that it was cut from below by somebody who thought he might find in the building something to steal.

- June 22, 1937

Drillers Now 854 Feet Below Surface; Splendid Progress

Company is Averaging About 150 Feet per Day on Beeler Farm

Drilling for oil on the E.W. Beeler farm in the Campbellsville community of Giles County had reached a depth of 854 feet as of Thursday morning, April 24, two weeks after the start of operations, according to W.L. Folsom, representative of the California Oil Company.

In comparison of distances the announced depth of 854 feet starting with the Sharp Garage and extending across the public square down South Second Street to the Post office approximately.

The progress of the drilling represents an average of 150 feet per day at the present time, a figure that is three times as great as the 50 feet overall average expected to be realized during the drilling of the well, according to a previous estimate by officials.

A more comprehensive idea of the extent of the drilling operations may be obtained by comparing the 854-foot depth with the average of the 50 to 100-foot depth of wells drilled for water in this county.

In the belief that Giles Countians are entitled to the information on the progress of this drilling, the company representative stated Thursday that a release setting forth the figure will be issued each week through the medium of this paper.

- April 23, 1947

Relics

John Abernathy brought in one day last week a brass key tag which was plowed up by a negro man the in the Brick Church community. This is a large brass plate about three inches across and scalloped around the edge with the inscription “Linden Hotel, Pulaski, Tennessee, J.A.P. Skillern, Prop.” This type of key tag is designed to be so large that the hotel guest cannot forget it, and carry it away in his pocket. But somebody evidently forgot this one and then threw it away instead of returning it.

Mr. Skillern conducted a hotel on South First Street, where Mr. and mrs. C.B. Patterson ow live and called it the Linden House. Later, he leased the hotel on the west side of the Square, now the Richland, and when he moved in, he brought his name “Linden House” with him. This key tag probably belonged to room 15 in one of these hotels. It has been about 40 years since Mr. Skillern gave up the management of the hotel on the west side of the Square, according to Ollie Doud. You may guess how long since the key tag was thrown out into the field where it was plowed up.

- May 26, 1937

Old Land Marks

By a treaty between commissioners representing the United States and Indian tribes entered into July 23, 1805, the Indians ceded to the United States the lands lying east of a line extending generally northward from the Tennessee River to the Duck River. This old Indian treaty line passed through (what is now) Giles County.

Later by an Act of Congress the Congressional Reservation Line was established and still later was surveyed and marked. It became the base for nearly all the early surveys in Giles County.

Congress granted the State of Tennessee the right to issue land grants and deal with titles to land eastward of this line, but reserved to the Federal Government the right to issue grants west of this line. Hence, the name Congressional Reservation Line.

Thus it was that the original grant of land for the Town of Pulaski, which lies west of the Congressional Reservation Line, came from the General Land Office under President Madison, Nov. 11, 1812, and not from the State of Tennessee.

The original town site was one mile square. Commissioner were appointed to have charge of the survey of the town, location of Public Square, sale of lots, etc. But if these commissioners ever filed a report of their work, the report has been lost. However, by the authority of someone, probably the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, and perhaps in the year 1841, the four corners of the original town site were marked.

Beginning on the Congressional Reservation Line (Sam Davis Avenue) at the point where the white and colored cemeteries join, thence due west one mile along Cemetery Street, crossing Richland Creek just above the bridge to a point in Mr. and Mrs. B.F. McGrew’s lawn near where the Bethel Road leaves the Vale Mill Pike (now vicinity of St. Andrew Church). Thence north one mile to a set stone about one hundred and fifty yards west of the McKissack home (the antebellum home of the late Judge Thomas on the south side of Rocky Road, which was destroyed by fire in recent years). Thence east with the line of R.H. Harris’ pasture passing south of Fort Hill near the colored school alone the south side of an alley and the south side of the Brick Church Pike to the north-east corner of J.N. Speer’s grass lot (corner of Hwy. 31 North and Hwy. 31A). Thence to the Congressional Reservation Line to the beginning.

These four corners are all marked with large cut stones of same pattern each bearing the date 1841.

- May 7, 1924

NOTE: The NE and SE stones are clearly visible and easily accessible in 2004. Former CITIZEN editor W.B. Romine wrote that he was “probably the only living man who has seen all four” and “a good deal of patient, persistent effort was necessary to locate them.” Claudia

Sphinx Uncovered

Cairo, June 25, 1926 For the first time in 2,200 years the Sphinx is now entirely visible. No less than 200 boys and girls and a large corps of skilled masons have been employed for months in the excavation and renovation of the Sphinx. The Sphinx faces due east and since he was first cut from virgin rock has greeted the rising sun 2,000,000 times. In Egyptian the name is Abu Hol, “the father of Fear.”

- excerpt from an Associated Press article in the CITIZEN, July 1926

Ancient Wood Water Line is Uncovered at Village Square

An underground water line possibly a part of Pulaski’s pre-Civil War water system was unearthed last week by contractor Bobby Lee (The Old Dirt Dobber) and some of his employees in the process of preparing the site along Pleasant Run Creek for the location of Village Square Shopping Center.

Discovery of the almost perfectly preserved line built of hollowed out cedar longs along with a number of buried yellow poplar troughs and foot-deep layers of sawdust several feel below ground level has proved interesting speculation as to the extent of the water line and what it served and whether or not there may have been in some distant past a sawmill or similar type industry on the site.

The cedar pipes running parallel to the creek north and south were apparently hollowed out by use of red-hot metal rods one end tapered to fit into the other and fastened with hammered iron bands. They varied in size from about six inches in diameter to 10 to 12 inches in the open centers measuring some three inches. Wood samples taken from the interior still retain the red color and distinctive aroma of cedar. Most of the pipes are 8 to 9 feet.

Another discovery made in the earth-moving process was a second water line constructed of cast iron and showing excessive deterioration running parallel to the wooden line and only about 14 inches away from it.

The troughs made of 2 by 12-inch poplar plans were found after Lee’s heavy equipment had uncovered a spring. They were laid so as to lead from the spring to the creek and when last Saturday’s heavy rains washed off the dirt with which they were covered a plank covering beneath them wa revealed – so the mystery grows.

The CITIZEN will be interested in pursuing the historical background of these findings and anyone having any knowledge of such is requested to contact this office.

- Sept. 13, 1967

NOTE: The 1878 DG Beers map of Pulaski shows that J.H. Jackson owned a huge operation covering the entire block between from North First Street to the west, Jefferson Street to the south, Washington Street to the north, and (what is now) Sam Davis Ave, to the east. Later, there was an ice house, owned by Basil Dobrey, and water-pumping station, manned by Robert Gordon, a Black resident of Pulaski, near East Washington Street, which reportedly pumped water from a large spring at that location to the city reservoir. Irwin McGrew’s flour mill stood where Davis and Eslick now operates, and Patterson Lumber’s buildings were across from the fire hall. Claudia

ANTIQUITIES

On the lands lately owned by the heirs of James Patterson one and one-half miles east of Pulaski and now owned by Governor John C. Brown, near his western boundary and near what was the boundary line or dividing line between the old Patterson tract and the Bernard M. Patterson tract, about 300 yards south of the Fayetteville road there were two Indian mounds; one 40 feet at the base and eight feet high, the other about 30 feet at the base and six feet high. Human bones were found in these mounds. No appearance where the earth thrown up was taken from. Large forest trees are growing on them and around the base.

On the lands owned by L. D. Suttle eight miles southeast of Pulaski on the place known as the Biles tract, on the East side of Richland Creek there was the remains of an ancient fortification. It was on high ground, might be called a hill, with a commanding view of all directions. On the side next to the creek it was steep; about 30 acres were enclosed, with an embankment five or six feet high, which, in 1826, before the land was cleared, was too high and steep to ride over it except in places. The forest growth was large poplar, beech, etc., and trees three and four feet through were growing on the embankment and at the base of it. It was laid off with angles at particular places, had the appearance of been planned by persons acquainted with military defenses and must have been laid off by a people further advanced in civilization than the Aborigines of this country. On the lands lately owned by Dr. Ben Carter adjoining the town of Pulaski, about 100 yards south of the well where the Negro quarters were, was a mound about thirty feet at the base and six or seven feet high. Between the well and the mound is a branch, the bottom of which is a hard limestone rock, on one side is a rock ten or fifteen feet long and several feet wide, in which was the well defined track of a large oxen and a man with a moccasin on. The track of the oxen is two or three inches deep, and that of the man one and a half or two inches. Both tracks plain and distinct, as if made in soft clay. The mound is southwest of the railroad and near to it. The tracks are 50 or 100 yards northeast of the mound.

CANNON BALL

In 1812 or 1813 a cannon ball was found by one of the Negroes that belonged to Wm. Marr, in a dense cane-brake, at what is known as the panther spring, three-quarters of a mile northwest of Mars Hill Church, and about four and a half miles northwest of Cornersville. At the same time they found in a hollow tree at the spring a large number of rock arrow points. The old McCutcheon trace passed near the spring. The cannon ball is in my possession and weighs 11 and a half pounds and is doubtless what was called a 12 pounder. When Mr. Marr moved from the county in 1818, he left the ball with Ephraim Patrick, who was a neighbor, and it has remained in his family ever since, and was sent to me by his daughter, Mrs. Moffitt.

The inquiry naturally arises, how did the cannon ball come there? It may have been taken there by the Indians traveling from the settlements on the Cumberland, or the Commissioners who went out to Latitude Hill in 1783 may have had artillery with them and left it there. They had a guard of soldiers and traveled the McCutcheon trace which was near where the ball was found. Or if DeSoto crossed the Tennessee River as is insisted by some and is more than probable, that he did, it may have been left there by him.

Ancient Fortification

On the east side of Richland Creek opposite the shoals, on a high bluff were the remains of an ancient fortification. About four acres were enclosed within the embankment, oblong in form and evidently designed for defense. The earth was thrown up and although beaten down considerably, was since the settlement about three feet high, and had the appearance of having had four entrances at unequal distances, one toward a spring in the bank of the creek. There were Indian graves within the enclosure. Kirk’s house, where the first courts were held, was in the enclosure. In a cave at the spring known as Anderson’s spring in the northern part of the town, the bones of a remarkably large human were found. The jawbone would go over an ordinary man’s jaw, and the thigh bone was a good deal larger than that of a very tall man. Some pieces of pottery were also found. The pottery was a composition of shells; some flint pikes were occasionally seen. High up in the cave a human body was discovered in a remarkable state of preservation, surrounded with a cloth in which feathers had been interwoven. Numerous mounds and burying places exist in various parts of the County, which from the trees growing on and about them must have been made hundreds of years before the white people settled the country. A remarkable feature in some of those mounds is that they are built up of shells and pebbles, which must have been transported from a considerable distance from river or creek. Another remarkable feature in those burying places is the wonderful state of preservation in which the bones were found when first exhumed.

- James McCallum, Early History of Giles County, published by PULASKI CITIZEN, 1928; first presented as a speech July 4, 1876, at the U.S. Centennial celebration at Wales.

Giles County Courthouse

2008-07-16T11:40:00.003-05:00

I am collecting information on the Giles County Courthouse for my files. If you have any historic information, memories of interest, photographs...anything you want to have preserved for posterity, please contact me via email at

editorjohnson@charter.net

or by phone at 931 260 7258 (leave a message if no answer).

Postcard: Sam Davis statue, Pulaski, TN

Christmas diaries, 1868

2008-06-11T13:50:00.006-05:00

Blogger’s note:
Julie Ann Joines Carvell was a real Giles Countian and the great-great-great grandmother of Pulaski Citizen staff writer Claudia Johnson. Although no journal exists attributed to Julie Ann, everything included in these three installments of her mythical memoir written by Johnson is factually based on information obtained through issues of the Pulaski Citizen, Giles County Tax or Census records and Civil War records. Julie Ann’s memoirs were published in the Pulaski Citizen during the 2003 holiday season.

4 December 1868
Giles County, Tennessee

The holiday season will begin in a few weeks, and this is the first time since The Pulaski Citizen resumed printing in January 1866, the paper has mentioned anything about Christmas before the holiday.

After Christmas of 1866 the Citizen reported that Pulaski had been vandalized by drunks. Fires were set, cotton bales were slashed open and storefronts were damaged. Other than that, those of us who faithfully read the Citizen would have had no idea that Christmas was coming.
Not this year. This week’s Citizen is filled with holiday advertisements, announcements of special events and news of the opening of Mr. Angenol Cox’s opera house on the east side of Pulaski’s square.

I’ve read the Citizen as long as I can remember. The paper started in 1854 when I nine years old. It was around Christmas we got the first one. Over the years Papa read it to me, my 10 brothers and sisters and, since she could not read wellm to Mama,. I didn’t understand a lot of what he was reading, but I listened anyway, and it was not long until I could make out the words myself.

We depended on the newspaper and really missed it after it stopped printing during the late war when Union troops were occupying Giles County and the presses were hidden from the Yankees.

Papa was gone with Co K of the 53rd Tennessee Infantry, and after he was captured at Fort Donelson, he spent most of the war in prison camps up north. Mama still has the letter he sent from Port Hudson, La., in February of 1863 during one of the brief periods he was free asking for her to send a pair of pants, a pair of socks and some underwear.
We had not heard from him in a long time, but he explained that he was in the hospital, which was under quarantine for fear of smallpox.

“I hope the time is not far off, when I will meet with you, if not, I hope to meet you in a better world,” he wrote, making us all cry as I read the letter out loud.
Papa was discharged in March and came back to our home near Campbellsville, but some traitor in the neighborhood told the Yankees, and Papa was sent back to a prison camp. We did not see him again until after he signed the oath of allegiance in May of 1865 at Rock Island, Ill. Four months later Bob and I got married.

Ever since the Citizen began printing again in January 1866, we’ve subscribed to it. It costs $4 a year and is only four pages, but it takes me all week to read it having to take care of our baby, Mollie, and the house, while Bob works with his Pa on their farm. My Papa is not an educated man, just a farmer and a stonemason, but he has carefully followed the Citizen’s stories about state and national politics, negro suffrage, reconstruction, President Johnson’s impeachment and most recently, the election of Gen. Grant as President.

Papa says he does not always agree with what the editor and publisher, Mr. Luther McCord, has to say or even what he chooses to reprint from other papers, but he does agree with Mr. McCord that the only way a local newspaper can survive is with local support. Mr. McCord often dwells on that subject and is hard on the businesses that do not advertise.
But there are plenty of advertisements in this week’s paper. It sure makes me wish I could go to Pulaski with plenty of money.

The west side of the square burned in May of 1867 and the east side burned in April of this year. The Citizen printed a list of all the businesses, how much they lost and whether they were insured. The square has been rebuilt and the paper has been full of news about the new grand buildings.
The paper announced last week “old Kriskringle has just arrived” at J.C Lambeth and Co. with his entire stock of goods for Christmas. There are fancy ornamented cakes, raisins, figs, oranges, lemons, nuts, coconuts. sardines, oysters, cheese, pickles, coffee, tobacco and cigars.
Sumpter and Percy’s drugstore an assortment of toys, which their advertisement claims is the most extensive ever brought to this market.

Osborne’s bookstore offers stationary, pens, ink stands, books of all kinds for all ages and picture albums as well as toys. “Go early if you want something nice,” the paper writes.
J. F. Moffett has returned from the eastern markets with readymade clothing, queensware, boots, hats, hardware and home furnishings.

William G. Lewis, a merchant tailor, will make clothes to order or sell them off the rack. Walter Moffet calls himself the “Broadway Tailor.”

McGuire, Ezell and Hill are cotton merchants and sell clothing, farm implements and groceries as does the house of John D. Flautt . H.K. Brannan advertises overcoats, beaver suits, cloaks, shoes, hats and boots. A. Craine advertises similar items as well as luggage, trunks and sewing supplies. Rosenau and Bro. Includes carpeting in its ad.

F.G. Tignor sells saddles and other items for horses, but I most want to see a buggy trimmed in “the most modern manner,” as his ad claims.

I’d also like to have a watch made for Bob by Leon Godfrey, and have a portrait taken of our family by the photographic artist, Charles Hall.
I will write more later as the plans for Christmas of 1868 in Giles County unfold.

Julie Ann Joines Carvell

19 December 1868
Minnow Branch, Tennessee

How I wish Bob and I could attend the opening of Mr. Cox’s new theater Christmas night. The Pulaski Citizen says that the vocal and instrumental concert by the amateurs of Pulaski assisted by the Pulaski Brass Band and the local orchestra will be the grandest concert ever given in Pulaski. It costs $.50 to get in, but the money benefits the orchestra and band.

The night after Christmas a theater season will open. The men in the Ben Jonson Club will perform a comedy, “Heir at Law,” in five acts and a nautical drama, “Black Eyed Susan,” in two acts. Their big advertisement in the newspaper says it costs .75 to be admitted to the parquette and, .50 for the gallery. At Sumpter and Pearcey’s Drug store private seats can be reserved for $1 and box seats for $5.

It seems that this fall and winter the paper has been full of reports about events in our county. There was a big circus in town in August. In September a concert was given by amateur musicians to benefit Giles College, the school Gen. Brown is helping to get started. During the week of the agricultural fair in October, there were several balls and concerts. It has been a year since the Tournament Club is held a joust with some of the county’s men taking the roles of knights and competing for prizes. I guess this year rebuilding the square after the fires and raising money for the new school has occupied their time.

The paper has been talking all year about the Ben Jonson Club. Ben Jonson wrote plays at the same time King James was translating the Bible. Before Mr. Cox’s theater, they performed in Mr. May’s new building, the first three-story building in the county. This club seems only to have men in it, because no women are ever mentioned in the paper as being in the shows.

Sometimes I don’t understand Mr. McCord. Like this week he reprinted a long article from another paper about how every woman is bound to make the best of herself. Yet he makes rude remarks about Mrs. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, those Yankee ladies trying to get the vote for women. The paper often includes news of fashion from New York and Paris, but he criticizes women for being fashionable.

“A fashionable woman is not half as anxious to win the admiration of men as to provoke the envious admiration of her own sex,” states one recent clipping.

Anyway, I’m sure there will be plenty of fashionable men and women at the opening of Mr. Cox’s theater. The paper reported that Mr. J. Love Pearcy’s new store hosted an opening that included what Mr. McCord called “a select assemblage of Pulaski’s famous beauties and a like number of its gallant beaux.” He described the “fresh supply of streaming oysters, sardines, cakes, candies, fruits, nuts, wines.”

A milliner and mantua maker, Mrs. Pantenella Higgins, has located in town, and a bootmaker, R. Ellis, has begun advertising. There are already several department stores that advertise fashions for men, women and children, all with big notices of special things for the holidays.
It is interesting to see news of Pulaski’s increasing prosperity. Earlier this year they expanded the city limits. The newspaper said last month that there is a demand for houses and store buildings and rents are pretty high. One thing that is a big problem is pavement. There’s not much in Pulaski, so when it rains, the streets are a mess.

Last year the city built hitching racks for horses along the Pleasant Run Creek behind the store buildings on the East Side of the square. That has helped keep the streets a little cleaner and less smelly. Mr. McCord has criticized the city in the paper saying that the $5 fine for not using the racks is not properly enforced. He called the city’s laws “a humbug.”

It’s about 12 miles from our house on Minnow Branch to Pulaski, and it is not often I make the trip. But something that may be starting in 1869 makes me want to make the tiresome trip every month. A lawyer, Mr. T. M. Jones, is the one promoting the idea. He suggests that at least 100 citizens pay $5 per year to maintain a room where periodicals from the United States and Europe can be collected. Every member and his family can use the room to read magazines and newspapers about medicine, law, politics, agriculture, art and other subjects. He says that in a few years Giles County could have the best library in the country.

I thought the Ku Klux had just about died out in Giles since there has been little mention of the secret society in recent newspapers. Then, last week among the 300 guests at Squire Ferguson’s house at Cornersville when his daughter, Mary, married Jesse Garrett, were 20 Ku Klux ghosts. Last year the Ku Klux showed up at a picnic near Pulaski. The paper said that at first the ladies were frightened, but the hooded men mingled with the revelers and left without anyone knowing who they were.

I hope they don’t appear Christmas night at the new theater. I am sure I would be very frightened to see them in the tall pointed hats and long flowing robes Mr. Luther McCord that runs the newspaper described in such detail.

Julia Joines Carvell

30 December 1870
Minnow Branch, Tennessee
As 1871 approaches the Pulaski Citizen has been talking of major changes to the paper for 1871.
Subscriptions are a special price of $2, which is half what we’ve been paying. Looking at the
advertisements in the newspaper gives me an idea of what things cost in Pulaski.

Sometimes I am surprised at the prices. For example at the livery stable it costs $10 per day to rent a horse and carriage. A short drive costs $2. For $25 per month the stable feed horses once a day. Out in the country we have plenty of grass and room for our horses, and we use a wagon when we need to go somewhere.

The paper says that a lot of building is going on in Pulaski. Lots are advertised for sale west of the square in every newspaper, and houses are already being built on the hill east of the square that used to be Indian Territory when my Grandpa Joines was a little boy. It is a long trip for us to Pulaski, especially because there are no good roads.

Mr. McCord, the newspaperman, is always writing about how nobody is trying to
make the county better by building turnpikes. He’s been on that subject for years calling it “a lack of public spirit and enterprise,” and I still think that none are being built.

He did say that North Main Street in Pulaski has been graveled. Not long ago he reported about a road within a mile of town that is completely impassible even in the dry months because there is no bottom in it. In one article he reminded the grand jury that there is a state law that requires people in the county to work on their roads, and there are fines if they do not.

Mr. McCord keeps saying that even though Giles County’s census taken earlier
this year shows more than 32,000 people living here and makes it one of the biggest in Middle Tennessee, if there are no good roads the county will not develop.
Bob and I live on a dirt road that runs along Minnow Branch. It’s bad to flood here when it rains, and sometimes you can’t tell where the road is at all between our farm and the nearest town, Campbellsville.

There are five businesses there, a church and a doctor. There’s a library that is growing all the time. In January of 1871 an academy is supposed to open. I was noticing in the Citizen that another little town called Bethel in a part of the county I’ve never been to has two grocery stores, two mercantiles, a Masonic Hall, a church, a school and two doctors. That town is only 4 miles from the Nashville and Decatur Railroad station at Prospect. Our closest stations are at Waco, Buford and Wales.

You can take a passenger train to Nashville or Decatur and all points in between everyday. There’s also a freight train that goes both directions daily. Over 6 million pounds of freight was shipped from Pulaski and about the same amount was received.
Most people ship their crops that way. The newspaper said that more than 50,000 bales of cotton, 100,000 bushels of wheat and 138,000 bushes of corn are shipped on the N&D in one year.

Our family does not grow cotton in the hilly, rocky area, but the cotton market is important to us all. This year’s cotton crop is bringing about 14 cents a pound. The price has gone down each year since the war.
In 1866 it was about 30 cents. The paper said there will be about three million bales for sale in the south this year. Dr. Westmoreland of Prospect, a captain in the 53rd during the war, won the best bale award at the state fair, and the paper says the cotton here is always the best. Even the Nashville Banner had an article in 1868 saying that W.I. Henderson of Giles County had produced the finest bale of cotton ever sold in the Nashville market. Messrs. McGuire and Hill have built a large cotton storage house near the square in Pulaski for storing cotton until it goes to market.

The Citizen is filled this time of year with advertisements for cotton merchants and factors, some from as far away as Memphis and New Orleans. Mr. Frierson of Columbia has several local agents for his business in New Orleans. Papa noticed that former Confederate soldiers Col. James T. Wheeler from Lynnville, P.W. Nave from Elkton and Gen. John C. Brown from Pulaski are local agents for the company. I guess the confederates will always stick together.

Julia

"Why did not these enjoyments last?”

2007-05-07T10:12:00.001-05:00

By CLAUDIA JOHNSON

Though it will be scorching before days end, when I fed my hungry cats just after sunrise this morning, a cool suggestion of fall exhilarated me as it teased the September air.
I was reminded of Thoreau’s observation at Walden Pond, "Morning is when I awake and there is dawn in me."
I was reminded also of how I love Giles County's hills and creeks and breathtaking landscapes, the kinds of places I longed for in the 10 years I lived away.
Nothing is more luscious than certain big fields I've passed all my life…those fields whose seasons I know intimately. There's one that is equally seductive when it is freshly turned, all brown and smelling fertile in spring and when it is green with tall corn stalks in midsummer or yellow after harvest or even when the bare stalks are snow-sprinkled. This field was one of the first to be planted when Campbellsville was settled around 1810 and has been planted most likely every season, except perhaps during the War Between the States, but maybe even then. It is where the local militia mustered in the early days of the county, and mini balls are still unearthed nearly 14 decades after the skirmish there just days before the Battle of Franklin.
Emerson in Nature asked, "What is a farm but a mute gospel?" and noted that the "moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him."
And to think he never saw this field.
Another lovely place is the pleached drive from Highway 31 to the Milky Way house where the trees form a green canopy over the road. My Granddaddy Carvell helped plant those trees during the depression when he was a young man, married with three little girls, one of which was my precious mother.
In almost any season, but particularly in summer, early morning before the wet heat of the day, driving toward Frankewing from the west just as the last hill is crested, the full impact of our magnificent hills fringed with hovering steam can bring tears to my eyes, and does.
I always think, when I see this sight, of the psalmist David who said, "I lift my eyes unto the hills, from where I receive my strength."
It is no surprise that acclaimed novelist Donald Davidson of Campbellsville and poet John Crowe Ransom of Pulaski were instrumental in a major movement in American literature at the turn of the 20th Century. These “Agrarian” writers believed that man was inextricably bound to the land with a connection far beyond the physical, extending into the moral and the spiritual. Later, William Faulkner developed the belief to a Nobel-prize winning extreme, illustrating in his tales of the Compsons and the Snopses how severance from the land brings about moral decadence.
My sense of the land is more basic. Our family planted potatoes and raised cows and hoed gardens and pulled weeds. Mostly, I just wanted to hurry up and finish so I could read. But on a cool country morning of every summer of my childhood long before I knew Emerson or Faulkner, I knew the feel of freshly turned dirt on bare feet as I followed Daddy on a plow delivering potatoes from within the long straight rows. My mother, unaware that her family came to this county when that very potato field was still in Chickasaw territory, sat the wooden baskets along the rows so that Barry and I could deposit our buckets of translucent-skinned potatoes.
I do love the land now and the memory of it.
"Why did not these enjoyments last?” Shakespeare asked, perhaps inquiring just for me, then rejoined, “How sweetly wasted I the day, while innocence allow'd to waste."

Harvest Resident Hattie Freeman Recalls A Century

2007-05-07T10:06:00.000-05:00

by Claudia Johnson

This story was printed in honor of the 100th birthday of Hattie Freeman, a resident of Harvest, Ala., who contributed a column called Harvest News to Your Community Shopper, a weekly newspaper for which I covered news and community events in 1997-1998.

In 1898 the American flag had 44 stars. McKinley was the newly elected president. The Spanish-American War was fought and won, making Teddy Roosevelt a hero. A gold rush in the Klondike attracted hoards to Alaska, including the author of Call of the Wild Jack London. Miami Beach was first settled, and New York City finally incorporated.

Scientists discovered neon and radium. A precursor of the tape recorder was invented. The professional basketball league was formed, and the first chiropractic school opened.

H. G. Wells frightened readers with publication of science fiction classic War of the Worlds.

Writer Lewis Carrol and artist Aubrey Beardsley died, and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, author C. S. Lewis and composer George Gershwin were born. And on May 31, 1898, within the Jackson County, Ala., mountains near the Garth community, Hattie McFarlan Freeman, the baby of 10 children, was born in a house bullet scarred some three decades earlier during the Civil War.

Two of her sisters were married when she was born, and Hattie’s oldest niece was six months older than she.

“My mother was embarrassed that she’d had a baby after her own daughter,” said Hattie, whose parents married 1876.

Surrounded by somber faced siblings, parents, an uncle and infant nieces, Hattie can be seen in a traditional Victorian family portrait at around age two with the same smiling countenance that is still visible on her pleasant face.

Despite a house full of siblings, Hattie says, “It was lonely growing up. I played with dolls, played house. They always let me have all the cats I wanted.”

“I played with live lizards,” she laughed. “There was a creek that ran by the house. I’d catch two of those lizards and get me some thread and tie them together. I had me a team and here we’d go. Now I can’t stand to touch them.

She said she was free to roam the hills surrounding their farm where she mostly played alone.

“I had a deaf friend my mother kept for a few months when her mother died,” she said. “We had our own sign language, not like they have now – one we made up so we could communicate.”

Hattie attended school in a one-room log school house, learning the basics that would later help her receive formal training as a nurse, work in a school cafeteria, raise two successful children and explore the world through her love of books. It was there that she first read about Paul Revere’s ride and the Old North Church in Boston. Decades later, Hattie traveled to Boston for a dream-come-true tour of sites that had seemed worlds away from Garth.

“In my life I’ve walked, rode on horseback, traveled by wagon, buggy, surrey, car, bus train, plane,” she listed, illustrating the changes she’s known for just getting around.

“We lived in an isolated place. It was half a mile to closest house, ten miles to the little town where we went to buy groceries,” she remembered. “We could hear the train. They kept saying they were going to ‘take Hattie to town to see the train’. One day when we were headed to town, we were in sight of the railroad when they stopped to give their team a drink. We heard the train coming. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was so disappointed in my first train.”

“I remember when the first car came. Everybody went out in their yard to see it,” she said. “I thought an airplane would be a great thrill, but it was just one of those things.”

In her travels Hattie has seen the Pacific and Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and has flown to several states to vacation or visit friends and relatives. She recounted the story of a particularly turbulent flight to Texas.

“I was nervous. I thought ‘what am I doing up here anyway? If I ever get home…” she trailed off, then added practically, “the thing I like about a plane is that it just gets you there faster.”

To Hattie the realm of communications as been the most fascinating.

“All of this gradually came in and we just accepted it,” she said. “There’s been the television and all these communications systems we have now. The most unusual thing to me is a computer. What you had then was just telephone line. We didn’t even have one at our house.”

“We didn’t have any communications with other countries until the war come up and the boys went over there,” she said, referring to World War I. “It doesn’t seem the thrill now to talk to somebody in another country that it would have way back yonder. Now that would have been something. But it seemed like when it happened, and I got to do it, it was just an every day thing. It wasn’t the thrill it would have been when I grew up."

She said most of their news was from the newspaper when she was a child. She remembers reading, at nearly 14, published accounts of the Titanic disaster, an event in which renewed interest has spawned an artifact exhibit, numerous television specials and epic movie.

Interestingly, her most vivid recollection is about millionaire John Jacob Astor, who secured his much younger, pregnant, second wife in a lifeboat, then sank with the ocean liner, bringing a dramatic close to a scandalous story of the era.

“It was so tragic,” Hattie remembered, “but his child unborn was saved.”

Hattie was soon to live her own story, which, though not scandalous, is filled with dramatic elements: war, unrequited love, broken hearts and happy endings.

“During the first World War, one of the neighbor young men was in the military,” she said. “I was so naive. We corresponded. I thought of him as a friend. I didn’t really see what was coming up. I answered his letters. Finally, when he let me know his intentions, I had already fallen in love with someone else.”

Years after his death, the man’s daughter from North Carolina found Hattie. Ironically, Hattie had saved all her friend’s postcards, which she gave to his daughter.

“I had been thinking I’d get married when my boyfriend got back from the War. Well, he let me down. When he got back, he decided he did not want to get married. That soured me for a while. I had to get over all that,” she said, explaining why she waited until she was 30 to marry Earl Freeman. “I robbed the cradle. I was older than the groom.”

She and her groom, a retired farmer and county employee, are still happily married and share the home at Harvest where they moved more than half a century ago. Their daughter, Nancy, lives with them to help out.

“I’m sure we give her a pain,” Hattie started, but Nancy, retired from a doctor’s office, interjected. “On their worst day they haven’t even chipped the iceberg of fighting with Medicare and Blue Cross.”

“My mother made dressing for me for Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Nancy stated, further proof that living with the couple is not a burden, though Earl has some health problems that keep him close to home.

“Now in my mind I don’t feel any different that I’ve always felt,” Hattie said. “I feel like I can get up and I can do. I love to work in the garden. I still enjoy reading. I can read and understand. It is just my physical body that has weakened a bit.”

Hattie, who has never had a broken bone or surgery, says she takes some medication for arthritis and wears dentures and bifocals.

What is the one thing Hattie wishes she had done that she didn’t?

Without hesitation, her answer is, “To go to college. That would have been a dream, and I could have gone when I got that diploma if I could just have driven, but I wouldn’t ask Earl to carry me.”

She admitted that she let Earl carry her every time to Ardmore for her GED classes so that she could obtain her high school diploma in 1976 at age 78.

“I was always a ’friady cat. I was always afraid to push to go ahead. It kept me from going forward,” she said with just a tinge of regret. “A lot of people call it guts. If I’d just had the guts, I would have made a good nurse or a good teacher.”

In fact, with her perfect grammar and pronunciation and nimble mind, conversing with Hattie feels like talking to a retired teacher.

Her explanation: “After a hundred years, you’re bound to learn some things just from observation.”

The reluctant cat mother

2006-12-11T11:23:00.001-06:00

By Claudia Johnson
Pulaski Citizen column

I used to say that everything I knew about cats I learned by reading T.S. Eliot poems and Lillian Jackson Braun mysteries. Not anymore.
Not since two kittens arrived on my deck late in the summer of 1999. I first shooed them away, reasoning that I could not afford to own a pet. Not to worry. Pretty soon I found out what they mean by “you own a dog, you feed a cat.”
Being a country girl from Campbellsville, I grew up believing in two basic truths about pets: they belong outside and they eat leftovers. Of course, we had dogs, usually coon/bird/rabbit dogs, and they did regularly eat dog food. But they consumed overcooked green beans and leftover Jello salad with equal gusto, like any good southern creature should.
So, I started putting out the table scraps and bought some generic cat food, rationalizing that any natural predator of rodents was worth the investment. Plus, they were cute.
Thus, I coexist in this yard with the black cat and the calico cat, who have remained nameless since I fully accepted Eliot’s explanation that no matter what a person calls a cat, only the cat knows its true name and keeps it a secret.
These cats and I have come to an understanding. I don’t try to touch them and they stand on the deck rail peeping through the window and meowing loudly until I feed them. Hey, it works for me.
Yet, I must admit that when a neighbor once referred to them as her cats, it stung. Seems she had been feeding them too. Some of the times when I assumed they were out hunting for mice all night, they were sleeping on her porch. It’s a good thing I never began to think of these felines as belonging to me, right? A person could get her feelings seriously hurt.
Anyway, it was this meowing on the deck rail habit that caused my daughter to notice something odd about the cats’ feet.
“They’ve got six toes,” Sasha observed. “Didn’t you notice?”
Apparently some kind of cat expert, she knew that the average domestic cat has five toes on the front and four in back.
Well, now that she mentioned it, I guess they did look like they were wearing mittens on their front feet with that giant thumb extending off to the side.
“This isn’t normal?” I wondered, but I didn’t say anything...just headed for the Internet, where I found out that this condition is called polydacty, Latin for "many toes."
Polydacty is controlled by a dominant gene, meaning that all a cat has to do is have one polydact parent to be polydact itself. Like mine, most polydact cats only have an extra toe or two on the front feet, but my black cat’s back feet are also somewhat uniquely formed.
“These are special cats,” my friend, George, declared when he met them. “They are Hemingway cats.”
Some people think it's the name of a breed, but it isn't. "Hemingway cat" is just one of the many nicknames for polydact cats. Ernest Hemingway, writer and famous cat lover, made his home on the small island of Key West, sharing the island with nearly 50 cats, including a polydact cat given to him by a ship captain. Almost half of the 60 or so cats who still live in and around his home, now a museum, are polydacts, some being descendants of the original, who have their own web page www.hemingwayhome.com.
“Why have I never heard of this?” I mused. Thus far, my feline information had come from literature, but I associated Hemingway with raging bulls and big fish, not cats.
However, it was Hemingway who coined the phrase, "One cat just leads to another."
Which explains why I now have, as my son has calculated, 80 tiny toes just waiting to grasp the deck rail and negotiate for food. True polydacts, some of these babies have mitts like their calico mama, while some have six perfectly formed toes.
Could this have been the image Carl Sandburg had in mind when he wrote that “the fog comes in on little cat feet”? Maybe.
But no literary allusion could have prepared me, the accidental kitten proprietress, for the muddy, sticky balls of fur and toenails these babies were after last Friday’s afternoon squall, which sent a deluge of mud and grease out into the kitty haven under the deck steps and grill.
The calico mama was eyeing her offspring with a look that said, “Get a grip; I’m not licking that stuff off you.”
They got a grip, all right, as only digitally enhanced cats who are about to be immersed in sudsy water can latch on. Of course, they were wet and chilly after I won that little battle, so they had to be brought inside to warm up. And once they warmed up, they begin exploration of the house, including this annoying space between the cabinet and dishwasher where Midnight (ok, so they have temporary names) hid and fell asleep.
I thought she was dead, so I heralded a neighbor who works part time at the funeral home to retrieve the body. He scraped his arm trying to reach her and began bleeding. Then Sasha had to play on the sympathies of a rescue squad neighbor, who brought a drill and dismantled the dishwasher.
I would thank him publicly for saving Midnight’s life and returning her to her brother and three sisters, but for some reason, probably extreme humility, he declined recognition, practically begging me to omit his name from any news of the rescue.
When I put the kittens back in the yard, the mama cat completely ignored them, refusing to feed or even look their direction. When it got dark, I could hear their mewing all the way into the house.
I’m a mother. I had to feed these babies. I’m glad they like evaporated milk. I’m also glad my daughter knows how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on three ounces of cat fur.
Sorry. I didn’t know they couldn’t eat real food yet. They seemed like they were enjoying it until they started doing the Mama Cass thing.
Now they face a danger even worse than my ignorance - the coyotes who have been lurking around the yard in recent evenings. Lest my little polydactyls become appetizers for wild canine, they are sleeping in a big box in the dining room, but it won’t be long until they can get out.
And you know I’m a country girl, so I can’t let these kittens live in this house. We don’t produce that many table scraps, either. I don’t have mice, so I can’t even justify their care and feeding as rodent protection.
What I’m trying to say is, these kitties need a home. Call me.
(Post Script: I gave them all away within 48 hours).

Why I Write

2006-12-11T10:09:00.000-06:00

By Claudia Johnson
(this editorial that appeared in the Pulaski Citizen the week before Christmas 2000)
Even as a child my reply to “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was “a writer.” Old notebooks are filled with sappy poems and mediocre short stories, an early testament to my lack of talent for fiction. And I never really pictured myself as a novelist either. I wanted to write for newspapers.
I had an image of my camera-laden self, trotting the globe, pecking out Pulitzer-prize winning stories on a well-worn portable typewriter as bullets whizzed past my head or world-changing decisions were made in foreign capitals. I wanted to interview powerful leaders and awe-inspiring heroes.
Obviously, I had watched more than my share of movies and tuned in to way too many Barbara Walters specials, but so what? When I packed up for college in 1976 to study English and Journalism, two journalists, Woodard and Bernstein, were household names, meaning anything was possible for a girl from Rose Hill who loved words.
Twenty years and other careers later, I shoot digital photographs, compose on computer and travel the world via Internet. No Pulitzer Prize is in sight, but the heartfelt commentary (even negative) from people in my home community who read my stories is satisfying. As a person who loves words, people reading what I write is prize enough.
But there are days when I can’t believe I really wanted to do this for a living, and this year there have been nearly 365 of them.
When people who don’t read our newspaper ask what I cover, I reply, “ The human misery beat.” Sometimes it seems that’s all I see. So many of the stories in 2000 involved death, disaster and drugs.
Obituary stories noted the passing of longtime community leaders, like Marlin Goodman, Mack Pinkleton and James Brown, while numerous news reports recapped gruesome traffic-related deaths.
Several articles recounted the blazing conclusion to someone’s home or an irreplaceable historic structure.
Dozens of reports included drug arrests, drug trials or drug investigations.
A few stories explored the facets of murders: the victims, the perpetrators, the arrests and the legal proceedings.
Lawsuits, and there have been a number this year of public interest, encompass their own kind of tragedy. People are hurt emotionally, physically, financially or in a myriad of other ways before, during and after an irreconcilable dispute is litigated.
Despite the safety of my black leather chair and the convenience of my electronic equipment, as in my youthful image, frequently I feel the bullets whizzing past me. These are often the wrongs I see that I can’t right (and sometimes can’t write either).
They are the tears of a mother whose child has been arrested or of a family that’s lost a home or a loved one.
Too often they are ill-advised, uninformed or self-serving votes cast by politicians.
Again and again the bullets are the drugs so pervasive in Giles County and the price this community is paying in human resources and in tax dollars for the judicial system to combat the resulting violence and crime.
In a way I never imagined, being a reporter for the people of Giles County and representing them when they can’t be there themselves has placed me where world-changing decisions are made. I’ve learned that any decision, good or bad, made by our community leaders impacts us all, especially our young people, and ripples outward far beyond our county’s boundaries like a pebble tossed into a pond.
Best of all, I’ve met heroes here, meet them everyday, as awe-inspiring as any who’ve gained international notoriety.
Just this year I’ve interviewed a man who left the coal mines to become a lawyer and is now a judge, another man who lived a secret life for nearly two years to investigate the local drug trade and a man whose great grandfather, a former Giles County slave, was among the first of the African-American doctors to graduate from Meharry Medical College.
I’ve discovered that not often enough do I acknowledge the heroism of each policeman, deputy, trooper, fireman and rescue squad member who regularly risks his or her life for the safety of our citizens.
I’ve watched the family of a murdered young man set across the courtroom from the family of the accused, each family mourning, albeit very different losses, but behaving with dignity nonetheless. Behaving heroically.
I’ve seen hundreds of heroes stand up for what they believe and rally to fight expansion of the adult entertainment industry in Giles County.
At times I’ve been privileged to witness an elected official cease to be a politician and become a representative of the people.
Despite the difficulty of doing my job when there’s no news (translate: no bad news), I pray that next year is a little less newsworthy than the first year of the new millennium.
Being a reporter on and off for 20 has made me truly understand what the minister/writer John Donne meant nearly four centuries ago when he said, “No man is an island entire of itself…Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

Giles Christmas 1898

2005-12-14T17:40:00.000-06:00

By Claudia Johnson

If the Pulaski Citizen from a century ago were the only evidence, the existence of Christmas would be hard to prove. Thick winter issues from 1896-98, comprised of narrow columns of tight, tiny text and wordy, elaborate advertisements on multiple pages, offer few references to the holiday.
Granted, Christmas had been controversial even half a century earlier, but many of today’s traditions were being enjoyed by the late 1890s. There were so few yuletide acknowledgments one wonders if Victorian Giles Countians deemed them unworthy of advertising or news space. If not for community correspondents and a few discreet ads, no mention of Christmas would have been made at all.
One short item buried in the January 2, 1896, Citizen’s community news section told of festivities at Campbellsville.
“Our community had its usual share of Christmas festivities and other enjoyments,” the correspondent wrote. “The fun loving boys began the amusements on Christmas night by a grand serenade with a well organized band which discoursed sweet music on various instruments such as tin pans, tin horns, French-harps, etc. Thursday night a delightful pound supper was given at the residence of Mr. McKensey.”
The writer goes on to list several other folks who got married or gave “a dining” or “an entertainment” during the week after Christmas.
Several correspondents mentioned holiday visitors, especially those from out-of-town. Bethel’s correspondent said, “There is so much visiting, space will not allow us to mention all.”
At Lynnville a ‘Tacky Party” was given on December 28, 1895, and according to the reporter “was well attended and much enjoyed by all.” He also said, “A crowd of masqueraders created a good deal of fun for our town Friday night (December 27).” The report connects neither of these events to the holiday season.
Although none of the late 19th Century Citizen reports listed foods eaten at these gatherings, grocery advertisements reveal what may have been on the tables. One merchant simply listed turkey, oysters, mincemeat, celery, nuts, meats, oranges, bananas, raisins, sweet potatoes, cranberries, figs, raisins, grapes with the word “fresh” before each item.
Apparently some celebrations in 1897 had gone beyond merry. An editorial chastising the participants said, “There is always a certain class who think that if they do not drink a lot of mean whiskey to give them the boldness to execute the desires of deprived minds, that they have not celebrated Christmas at all. A man who so forget himself, even if he is drunk, as to frighten women upon the highway by boisterous and profane language, deserves very little consideration at the hands of decent people. A prescription cure fully compounded in the grand jury room administered in fair doses very frequently works a radical cure in such cases.”
Prior to 1850 there are only a few known references to Christmas trees in America. By the late Victorian Era elaborate Christmas trees were the centerpiece of many celebrations. They were often decorated with dried flowers and fruits, lace, bows, real candles, miniatures and even presents and confections. With such spectacular trees, no wonder referring to the actual celebration surrounding the giving of gifts as “the Christmas tree” was common in the vintage reports. A century later, the phrase is still widely used in Giles County, where one might hear ”We’re having our tree tonight” or some similar declaration.
“The Christmas tree was a decided success and many little hearts were made glad,” Bethel’s correspondent reported about the community’s 1895 Christmas celebration.
A report from the 1896 New Years Eve Citizen, told about Master John Averitt Rivers “giving a tree with a real live Santa to which several boys and girls of his own age was invited.”
It was also noted that “Pulaski had entertainments of a semi-public character.” One was held at the Methodist Church, which had two trees, both “filled with knick-knacks and toys for the little people and beautifully decorated.” The other event was at the Presbyterian church where a large chimney had been constructed of red boxes filled with nuts and candies “for the little folks.” Two long ladders were decorated and loaded with presents.
A December 1897 report was more detailed. It said, “All the churches here with one exception entertained their little folks Friday afternoon and evening. At 3:30 the Methodist Sunday School met at Mrs. C. T. Reid’s and after several recitations appropriate to the occasion, presents were distributed from a pretty little tree in Mrs. Reid’s parlor.
“At 5:30 the Church of Christ entertained a large audience with songs and recitation by the smaller Sunday school children, after which a genuine Santa came down the chimney of a miniature house erected on the pulpit and delighted many little hearts by distributing candies, oranges, books, calenders, games, etc. “At the close of this the people congregated at the Presbyterian church and witnessed the exercises there. The church was decorated for the occasion, the choir sang several beautiful songs after the opening prayer, then was a pretty drill by the little girls, several recitations were heard and the Santa Claus distributed presents, dolls, books, toys, etc., closing a beautiful tableau. So often I have seen a few go away from these entertainments laden with gifts while others received nothing, but it was notable that at these, all seemed to receive the same consideration.”
Fireworks were as customary at Victorian Christmas events are they are now on July 4. One correspondent lamented the week after Christmas that “the turkey is gone and the fireworks are over,” and many tiny advertisements offered fireworks for sale.
In the Victorian era a new pasttime, Christmas shopping, became fashionable with stores staying open until midnight in metropolitan areas. In Giles County, however, the sole advertiser to even mention the holiday in the November 18, 1896, Citizen was J. F. Turner. Hovering over an offer of box stoves for $6 was one line proclaiming “See our Christmas Goods.”
A few weeks later, The Racket’s no non-sense ad listed a number of possible gift items, still making no reference to Christmas. Six different kinds of dolls, doll chamber sets and tea sets, musical instruments, banks, trains, building blocks, wagons, mechanical monkeys and dogs, games, stick and rocking horses and boats were suggested.
It wasn’t until the December 5, 1898, Citizen that Santa’s visage even appeared, and that was only in the Reeves Drug Store ad. Among the wares recommended as Christmas gifts were magic lanterns, manicure sets, toilet cases and musical instruments.
One advertisement which recurred throughout the winter Citizens was for a product to cure “The Hacking Cough.” Readers a century later would gladly hand over the 5 cents for this remedy.
More than a 100 years ago the community correspondent from Tarpley summed up the sentiments so often expressed today when he wrote, “The celebration of the anniversary of our Lord’s nativity partakes so much of the character of the old Roman saturnalia that is doubtful whether we should be called a Christian or a heathen people. This season is more often profaned than improved. Instead of being a season of real devotion, it is made an occasion of great diversion. The luxury, extravagance, intemperance, obscene pleasure and drunkenness are only so many proofs of the low estimation we place upon the character of the God we serve. A nation’s religion is commensurate with its ideal deity; and for a people that bear the name of Christians to act as if, because the Son of God at this time became a man, it were fit for a man to make himself a brute, is a monstrosity. But enough of this moralizing.”

Antebellum Christmas in Giles County

2005-12-14T17:06:00.000-06:00

By Claudia Johnson

Christmas in antebellum Giles County would hardly be recognizable to those accustomed to the present-day commercial Christmas which begins with the after Thanksgiving Day sales and ends with a New Year’s Day headache. Christmas was not a commercial holiday until well into this century, and most of those activities now considered traditional–caroling, trees, cards, Santa Claus– weren’t even known until the Victorian era when centuries old Christmas traditions based mainly in pagan ritual mixed with the mysticism of Catholicism were introduced by immigrants from such places as Germany and Italy.
Southern Middle Tennessee was settled, with very few exceptions, by people of Scotch-Irish and African descent. As to the white population, economic and social conditions had forced their Protestant Scotch ancestors to spend a couple of generations in Ireland before similar circumstances brought their own parents and grandparents to the shores of Virginia and the Carolinas. After the Revolution, these American Scots-Irish accepted land grants as payment for war services or purchased huge parcels of rich Middle Tennessee land and finally, after generations of displacement, found a home in the cane break and the rolling hills of Giles County.
Christmas, then, reflected their heritage. The season did not begin until December 25 itself and ended with Twelfth Night. This custom was practiced in Giles County by descendants of some of the earliest settlers until the 1950s. Festivities consisted of visits, dinners, hunts, and parties in which family and friends thought nothing of traveling long distances by wagon, carriage, or on horseback and spending one or more nights with their hosts. The emphasis was on the visit, not necessarily the holiday. This was a common time for weddings and family reunions since crops were harvested and already at the market and it would be months before spring planting.
Since the Christmas tree wasn’t introduced in America until 1842 by a German tutor, it is unlikely events centered around decorating the tree until those years just prior to the Civil War. Elaborately decorated trees were not known until the later Victorian era, so early decorations were most likely things readily available: strung popcorn and cranberries, baked shaped sugar cookies, pine cones, paper and fabric scrap chains, paper cutouts.
The lack of a tree certainly did not mean homes were undecorated, especially entrance halls, dining rooms and parlors where quests would be received and entertained. Use of various fruits and evergreen garlands was common in the colonies, and Giles County plantation homes would have found hand made cedar and pine garlands entwining the balusters of the staircase, looping over windows and doors, and draped over mirrors and picture frames.
Waxy green magnolia leaves, bright red nandina berries, and aromatic boxwood were used in sprays around candles and lanterns or surrounded serving platters heaped high with boiled country ham and large Chinese bowls filled with hot mulled cider or cranberry juice. Fresh cedar wreathes decorated with okra pods, cotton bolls, holly, or pine cones reflected the Southern influence on Christmas decorating. Shiny red and golden apples where cored and hand dipped candles inserted to light window ledges. Hard to acquire succulent oranges, tangy lemons, and exotic pineapples, adopted in the colonies as a symbol of hospitality, were mingled with apples and nuts gathered on the farm in autumn and freshly cut greenery to create breathtaking, and mostly edible, centerpieces and door decorations. For fragrance, baskets of clove studded oranges were placed near a wood fire under mantelpieces covered with magnolia branches and ivy entwined candles.
Christmas Day was a holy day with families attending church services or holding their own. Home worship would consist of the eldest male reading Luke’s account of the Nativity, prayers of thanksgiving, and perhaps singing of sacred songs. The only Christmas hymns widely known in America before 1860 were “O Come All Ye Faithful”, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, the German song “Silent Night” written in 1818, and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”. “I Saw Three Ships A-Sailing” and “Twelve Days of Christmas” were folk songs settlers must have known as well. “Joy to the World” was written in 1848 and soon became popular. Servants were, according to most accounts, given at least part of the day off for their own worship services.
Since the St. Nicholas story was not particularly familiar to Protestant early settlers, Christmas Eve did not find eager and restless children waiting for Santa Claus. The publication of ‘Taws the Night Before Christmas during this pre-Civil War period did not likely impact Southern children until after the war. Only small tokens were given, and those were exchanged on January 6 as their ancestors had done the in the British Isles.
The Christmas season ended on Twelfth Night after a splendid feast of Southern specialties: tomato aspic, meat pies, sweet potatoes, corn pudding, fresh sausage, fruit ambrosia, roasted beef, baked poultry, and wild game. Desserts were served on footed and tiered dishes or epergnes and often acted as part of the decoration. There was marzipan, crystallized ginger, molasses and sugar cookies, plum pudding, teacakes, fruit and jam cakes. All this was topped off with boiled custard, some of which was seasoned for the gentlemen.
The next morning, visitors left, decorations were removed, and the family readied themselves for the cold nights until spring planting.

NOTE: Several years ago when the McKissack Marker was dedicated, Patricia and Frederick McKissack, internationally known award winning writers with Giles County connections, came down for a visit. We met in Nashville at the literary festival years before and became friendly. We have kept in touch over the years, and they asked me how much I knew about Christmas customs in the antebellum South. I did some more research, and later I sent the above story to Pat and Fred. We’ve kept in touch over the years, exchanging Christmas cards and phone calls. I’ve taken Sasha to see them at the Literary Festival in Nashville, and the book they were writing was never mentioned. So I was very surprised to find a package in the mail Christmas of 1994- a wonderful new book by the McKissacks: Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters.. Inside was an acknowledgement page thanking me for my assistance. The book, with it’s vivid illustrations and beautifully told story, is available for check-out at the Giles County public library and for purchase in all bookstores.

2005-11-22T22:02:00.002-06:00

Thanksgiving tastes like dressing

By CLAUDIA JOHNSON
Pulaski Citizen, Thanksgiving issue, 1999 ---

Holidays are inextricably intertwined with food for me. Easter tastes
like a plump baked ham. July 4th is hand-churned ice cream. Halloween,
popcorn balls made with Amish molasses. Christmas is jam cake, rich with
home-canned blackberries and drenched in stiff caramel.
And Thanksgiving tastes like my Mama’s cornbread dressing.
Unlike grilled hamburgers or corn on the cob, which tastes pretty much
the same no matter who prepares it, dressing is one of those subjective
foods, like barbecue. A food to be argued over. A food to be smug about.
And that’s what my Daddy, my brother and I were about Mama’s cornbread
dressing. Smug.
No matter where we ate dressing or whose we were eating, we were secure
in the knowledge that Mama’s was better. Just because someone offered us
a combination of meal, sage and onion drowned in giblet gravy, it wasn’t
necessarily dressing. For the real thing, it had to be made by Mama.
Mama’s dressing wasn’t something that could be whipped up in minutes
because a turkey needed company. To us the turkey was really just an
excuse to have dressing. I didn’t realize until I was grown that the
actual preparation of the dressing was the secret to its incomparable,
well… incomparable everything, taste, consistency, smell.
In the days before Thanksgiving, Mama would begin making biscuits and
cornbread to freeze. Of course, her breads were also better than
anybody’s, giving her dressing an initial advantage over weaker
contenders. To use in dressing, she’d bake the biscuits slightly more
done and little less fluffy than usual. The cornbread would be about
three-quarters inches thick and deep brown.
Then on Thanksgiving morning, she’d bake another pan of biscuits and
another skillet of cornbread. The trick, she said, was in the way the
breads were crumbled, or rather not crumbled, into the pan. They were to
be broken into chunks, somewhat of a feat using frozen bread, with only
part of the fresh cornbread actually pulverized.
Note: If a know-it-all child did not do this part correctly, that child
could not help, which made it more difficult to sneak unauthorized
pre-lunch bites of the dressing.
Mama took control of the onions, nimbly chopping them into pieces big
enough to see and crunch but not so large as to overwhelm any single
bite of the dressing. The onions were tossed in with the bread, and some
known-only-to-Mama amounts of sage, pepper and salt were sprinkled on
like magic powder. The finale was the pouring of the hot turkey broth,
fat removed, onto the mixture. I could actually hear the cold, dry bread
moaning as it soaked up the rich liquid.
More tossing. This kept the dressing from being like other cooks' mushy,
runny, stuff we found so inferior.
However, the step that set our Mama’s dressing apart was when she put it
in the oven and baked it until the top was slightly crusty, but the
center was still steamy and soft.
Now, this dressing was suitable at every meal for several days following
Thanksgiving. It was good at room temperature as an afternoon snack,
warm with leftovers at supper and served cold with cranberries for
breakfast.
No wonder we were smug.
My most memorable Thanksgiving, though, was in 1995. By this time we all
knew mama was dying of cancer. Hospice was attending her, and we
suspected and were proved correct, that she would never leave the house
again. No one was really in the mood for Thanksgiving.
Ever practical, though, Mama decided somebody had to learn to make the
dressing. So, from the chair to which she was sentenced by a paralyzing
spinal metastasis, she instructed, corrected, critiqued, reminded and
ordered Daddy and me into making dressing. We listened and did what she
said, knowing that this would be the last chance to commit the secret of
the dressing into our hearts and our memories.
When at last our maiden effort was delivered warm from the oven, Mama
tasted it and pronounced it "a little greasy" (we’d skimped on the fat
straining part) but not too bad.
Since she’s been gone, however, daddy has perfected the dressing. In
other words, it tastes just like Mama’s. Of course, she taught him how
to make biscuits (see photo of his biscuits above) and cornbread that taste just like hers, so maybe it’s
not as amazing as it seems. And since Daddy makes dressing on demand (of grandkids, mostly) and whether it’s a holiday or not, I must admit
some of the mystique has gone from the dressing.
But that first bite, every time, tastes like my Mama is here, but my
Daddy is, so it still tastes like Thanksgiving.

Marker Dedication for Confederate Soldiers, Giles County

2005-10-25T08:43:00.000-05:00

When the lay down in the cold, cold ground, have someone play Dixie for me!

By Claudia Johnson

Pulaski Citizen
Staff Writer

In memorial services organized by the Giles County Chapter #257 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, grave markers were placed and dedicated in honor of Civil War soldiers. Each of the seven soldiers were honored with a reading about his life and Civil War service, prayers, a 21-gun salute, the playing of Taps, the placing of flowers on the grave and the playing of Dixie.
The first service was Sept. 18 at the UDC Lot in Pulaski’s Maplewood Cemetery in honor of Sgt. Daniel Seal of the 24th Texas Cavalry. On Sept. 25 at the Dunavant Cemetery near Elkton a marker was dedicated for Pvt. Henry Lewis Birdsong of the 32nd Tn Infantry. Lynnwood Cemetery was the setting of the marker dedication for Pvt. Robert Moore of the 1st TN Cavalry on Oct. 9. Finally, on Oct. 16 at Bethesda markers were dedicated for Larkin Merritt Birdsong of the 6th TN Cavalry, Robert P. Abernathy of the 32nd TN Infantry, John Henderson of the 19th TN Infantry, and Winfield G. McGrew of the 1st TN Infantry. In upcoming weeks the CITIZEN/FREE PRESS will publish brief histories of each solider and photographs of their descendants who attended the ceremonies.
Markers for the graves of veterans are provided at no charge by the United States Veterans Administration, an honor that extends to War Between the states participants, both Confederate and Union. For more information on the marker dedications or assistance in obtaining a marker for a Civil War soldier, call U.D.C. President Cathy Wood at 363-2906.
A full page of color photographs of these ceremonies was printed in the Giles Free Press on Oct. 20, 2005. The newspaper's number is 931 363 3455.

Sam Davis’ servant interviewed at age 83

2005-08-19T10:13:00.000-05:00

by Claudia Johnson, reprinted from my book, a page from the past...

In 1926 an 83-year-old negro man, Coleman Davis Smith, visited a business in Senatobia, Miss., and spoke to H.C. Featherstun about “the (Civil) war and pensions.”
“He said he could not get a pension as he was with a spy and stated that he was with Sam Davis, was arrested with him, saw him hung,” Featherstun wrote to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. “He seemed to tell a straight story. Seemed afraid that the Yankees would be after him this late. If we have made a mistake, just pass it off.”
Featherstun reported the visit to the Tennessee Historical Commission, and on March 7, 1927, in a letter to A.P. Foster in Nashville, stated that he found out all he could from Smith.
“He is very quiet and humble,” Featherstun observed. “He did not ask for help.”
Featherstun sent Smith to the proper authorities to apply for the pension for which he had been eligible for several decades but had been afraid to seek because of his relationship with Sam Davis.
Smith agreed to answer a Civil War veteran’s questionnaire, in which he stated that he was born in Virginia in 1844, the son of slaves, Robert Smith and Maria. He was brought from Virginia as a small boy and sold to Lewis Davis, the father of Sam Davis, and given to Sam as a playmate. His father worked on the farm, and his mother cooked.
“Sam Davis and I worked together plowing and hoeing, doing such work as comes up on the farm, until the war,” Smith reported. “I was in no battles. I went with Mr. Sam Davis, my young master, as a servant. He was a spy.”
“My young master was always good and kind to me,” Smith recalled. “When he ate, I ate. When He slept, I slept. I did whatever he told me to do.”
Smith was imprisoned at Pulaski when Davis was captured.
“My master had some important papers when they caught him,” Smith remembered. “I was in jail with him and kept pleading with him. We cut off some of the soles of my shoes and put some paper in them. Soon after this, he was hung. I was in [earshot] of him when they still [were telling] him they would let him go. He gave no sign. Then the trap was sprung, and it broke my heart. I can’t stand to think of it now.”
After Davis’ death, Smith returned to the Davis plantation in Rutherford County.
“Don’t remember much about it, only I finally got home to my old master,” Smith stated.
Smith farmed for the rest of his life, raising a family of 12 children. At the time of his interview only four of his children were still alive, and he was living with a daughter on Florida Street in Memphis. Although he was in his 80s, he had worked the previous year for farm wages but was afraid he would not be able to work the next year.
“The old man is very feeble,” Featherstun wrote. “He won’t be here long.”

County showcase of historic architecture

2005-08-19T00:55:00.000-05:00

By CLAUDIA JOHNSON
Examples of a variety of architectural styles are found throughout Giles County.
Antebellum or pre-Civil War styles may generally be divided into log, Federal, Greek Revival and Gothic Revival. Post-war architecture is usually referred to as Victorian and includes Queen Anne, Second Empire, Eastlake, Italianate and vernacular interpretations employing architectural elements common to the period.
Many local vintage homes were built after the turn of the century and are of the bungalow, foursquare, art nouveau and Colonial revival styles.
Not all historic or vintage homes are listed on the U. S. Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places. However, Giles County has many homes and buildings that are listed, either as an individual structure or as contributing architecturally to a National Register Historic District.
To be designated as a district, at least 80 percent of the building must embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period or method of construction and must be more than 50 years old.
The South Pulaski National Register Historic District showcases structures from Pulaski’s prosperous days before the Civil War through the depression era. The Victorian Homes of the Sam Davis Avenue N.R. Historic District illustrate Pulaski’s revitalization and prosperity after a long Union occupation during the Civil War. Much Lynnville, an excellently preserved example of a thriving Victorian railroad town, comprises a National Register Historic District. The Pulaski Courthouse Square has also been placed on the National Register.
National Register designation doesn’t restrict or limit the individual building owners’ rights. It does, however, protect listed buildings from destruction by the Federal government for any reason.
Owners of N.R. listed buildings receive no financial compensation. In order to qualify as an individually listed building, the structure must be proven historically significant through association with a famous person or must embody architectural characteristics typical of a style or period.
With the exemption of the Milky Way Farm, all local privately owned individual listings were constructed before the Civil War. These are the Federal-style Clifton Place at Wales and Elisha White House at Waco, the Greek Revival George Tillery House and Copeland Whitfield House near Pulaski, the White-Witt-Christopher House at Pigeon Roost, Wilkerson Place near Campbellsville and the Bass-Morrell House and Wilson-Young House, both near Elkton.
Architectural distinction enabled several churches to be placed on the register including the Eastlake-influenced Olivet Methodist Church, parsonage and school, the Greek Revival-style Pisgah United Methodist Church and cemetery as well as the Gothic Revival First Presbyterian Church of Pulaski. An association with Gov. John C. Brown and its Victorian architectural elements netted Church of the Messiah, Episcopal, a N.R. listing.
Another listing, the Bethany Presbyterian Chruch Complex which included the church, its manse and the adjacent Bethany Academy were also listed, but the complex has since suffered a fatal fire.
Buildings showcased here are identified as National Register if they have achieved an individual listing or are a contributing structure in an historic district.

Respected Victorian era Black doctor born in Giles as slave

2005-08-19T00:04:00.000-05:00

By CLAUDIA JOHNSON

One of the country’s most prestigious African-American physicians, the late Dr. Robert Fulton Boyd, was born a slave on the Solon E. Rose place in Giles County on July 8, 1857.
After working on the farm most of his youth, he moved to Nashville and worked under one of the most famous doctors and surgeons of his day. Since he could barely read and write, he worked for half the day and went to school the other half, advancing so rapidly that in 1880 he was able to enter the medical department of Central Tennessee College where he received his medical degree in 1882. After graduating, he began teaching. He obtained a degree in dentistry in 1887 and later earned a degree in pharmacy.
He founded of the People’s Savings Bank and Trust Company (its descendent became Citizens Bank in Nashville) and was the owner of what was probably the largest black business in Nashville at a time when that city was the third largest in the south. He lead a successful drive to build Hubbard Hospital and founded and was first president of the of the American Association of Colored Physicians and Surgeons (now the National Medical Association) during the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Ga., in 1895.
He was one of the first African-American doctors in Nashville to set up an office for the private practice of medicine, becoming Meharry’s and black medicine’s first successful private practice prototype.
He voluntarily scoured Nashville’s jails, flophouses, alleys, old cellars, dilapidated stables and unhygienic sections of the city and to attend derelicts in need of medical attention.
Historians have concluded that such acts, leading to his being named the city’s Jail Physician, along with his opening free clinics for the medically indigent, met a burgeoning city’s critical social and public health needs, filling gaps the white profession chose to ignore.
When Nashville’s City Hospital kicked Meharry’s medical students out in the 1890s because of their race, Boyd expanded his private hospital operations and then threw them open for student training. Meharry’s students returned to Metro Nashville General hospital in the same building in 1977.
Boyd is credited with leading public opinion instead of yielding to it by constantly upgrading his clinical and surgical skills at medical centers all over the country proving black doctors were not only competent but could be excellent. He established professional ties, and consulted freely, with the finest physicians in Nashville regardless of race. He is also credited with changing the image of black physicians. Thus, for the first time in the nation’s history, black doctor’s had a niche in America’s health delivery system so they could make a living, even prosper occasionally by practicing medicine.
Therefore, at least for Meharry graduates, “sundown doctors” (a disparaging term describing physicians unable to make a living practicing medicine who taught, preached or portered to make ends meet) were soon a memory. Moreover, the force of Boyd’s personality, reputation and popularity catapulted him into politics, business and leadership positions making him a national celebrity.
Strangely, his educational hardships like working for years as a janitor and bricklayer for tuition, being forced to attend night school at Fisk and having to be employed as a part-time teacher during his professional school years burned an intense, almost religious, loyalty and devotion to his schools into his psyche. Supporting the black institutions that trained him would come to dominate, and some historians would say, shortend his life.
He is buried in Mt. Ararat Cemetery in Nashville.

Maybe it WAS Memphis

2005-08-18T23:47:00.000-05:00

The blues.......
remind me of Memphis and make me homesick for the river and all the other things I so enjoyed at a really happy time of my life. I was so poor then, just out of college, with the whole world waiting for me. (Now I know what the world was waiting to do, but then I thought it was gonna be great!)
Well, anyway, I remember Sunday mornings. There was a little shop at Overton Square that had fresh baked croissants. I would get a couple of those in the days before that kind of food could be eaten without such guilt. I would take my subscription-delivered Commercial Appeal, the one thing that really made me feel like a grown up, and my fattening goodies and some coffee, no fancy stuff like nowadays, and head to the river. I loved to sit at Tom Lee Park and read the paper and watch the barges. People thought I was looking to become a crime statistic, but I believed that I was safe, or wanted to believe it. Hey, I made it!!
That was before the downtown was revitalized. Few things were open downtown... the peanut place, Kress, King Furs. There was that big fountain then too, the one in front of a government building that had been covered in marble and one summer the marble fell off.
When Mud Island opened, I bought a season pass. I could sit on the bank there and hear the concerts I was too poor to pay for. I remember taking chicken or a fish box or barbecue and fighting with mosquitoes, but I loved every note of the music. I heard Air Supply, Kenny Loggins and Al Hirt and others, all free on my pass. The one concert I did pay for was the Chicago Tour in around 1983.
I loved Chicago, and I was so excited to see the lights of this city I loved behind the amphitheater. I knew every word to every song and sang along too, much to the chagrin of the other concert-goers. My best girlfriend from college was with me. That night was so wonderful, as I type this, my eyes become moist just remembering the sheer joy of singing along with Janet that steamy Memphis night.
I ate at the Kinckerbocker on Poplar before it was torn down and at Gridley's on Summer before it was closed. Is that bakery, Le baguette, still open at Chickasaw Oaks? I had just moved there when the Peabody reopened, and the elegance of sitting in that lobby and drinking a daiquiri... I've been from Miami, to Denver, to New Orleans to Chicago to Detroit to Baltimore to Washington to Pittsburgh and many places in between, but nothing compares with the first sip of a cool drink at the Peabody. I sat there soaking it up, all the southern-ness and history, and every time I go, I can feel it again.
Beale Street was closed when I moved to Memphis except for A. Schwab. After Beale opened and before all the bars, there were just a few places to go. Late on summer weekend afternoons the musicians would be jammin' by that big clock. I always noticed that was one of the few places that black and white faces could be seen together looking happy. One night as part of the MusicFest, I heard Percy Sledge and Sam and Dave in the Old Daisy Theater. It was steamy hot and jam packed, but everyone was having a wonderful time with none of the usual racial tension.
I spent an inspiring evening at Blues Alley listening to the old singers and musicians before the place closed. I saw Hamlet at Theater Memphis and The Lion in Winter at Playhouse on the Square At the Brooks and the Dixon I have feasted on exhibits by Chagal, the Impressionists and many others I loved. I spent happy hours with friends and alone in the Gardens at Dixon or at Overton Park. At the Cook Convention Center, I saw the Harlem Ballet and opera star Leontyne Price. I did the Wonder Series exhibits from Egypt, China, Russia, France. There's a little place to look at the river in seclusion behind what was the Holiday Inn Rivermont. I was always scared to do it, but I loved to ride past the corner of Third and Vance and see the pimps and their fancy cars and the prostitutes. Remember how the bubble gum factory smelled when you passed by on the street?
I loved Adams Street at Christmas when the Victorian mansions were decorated.
I bet on dogs at the Grayhound track. I lost. When people would come to visit, I'd drive across the old bridge to West Memphis just so I could blow them away by bringing them back across the MLK bridge and letting them feast on the skyline, my skyline.
I know I may have a romanticized view. I was young and I had not encountered so much. I remember the crime and racial tension and traffic on the expressway that could have turned me into a murderer trying to get to work each morning. But I did love it so.
Any remedy for missing Memphis? Or am I just missing a state of mind? I've got the blues bad and hearing some would soothe my soul, I think.

by Claudia Johnson, with the first photo I ever took of the Mississippi, Dec. 1976

Giles County’s Victorians: A Glimpse at an Era

2005-08-18T21:39:00.000-05:00

by Claudia Johnson

For several years now America has been experiencing a renewed interest in things Victorian, and Giles County has followed that trend. Downtown building owners are consistently restoring facades to their former Victorian charm; young couples are buying and restoring the still affordable Victorian houses; store window displays periodically show lacy white dresses for women, white collared, striped shirts for gentlemen and nautical children’s frocks. Reproduction jewelry, decorations and household appointments as well as authentic Victorian furniture can be found in local gift, floral and antique shops. Every magazine rack has a least one of the many Victorian magazines available
Victorian buildings, including residences, house a variety of businesses. The post-office and courthouse are as beautiful and functional as at their completion near the end of the American Victorian period. All of Pulaski’s National Register Historic Districts are comprised mainly of Victorian buildings, and the whole Victorian town of Lynnville is on the Register, too.
Finally, Pulaski’s time has come-architecturally, for sure, but perhaps aesthetically and culturally as well. Victoria was the Queen of England from 1837-1901, but that has nothing to do with America and certainly not Pulaski. In fact, even British sources admit that Victoria, the person, and Victoria, the period, are only loosely related. The American Victorian period started after the Civil War and did not really end until the end of World War I. What, then, is Victorian? A way of dressing, building, thinking. It was a mindset, really, and around a hundred years ago Pulaski had it.
The Civil War was over. The railroad was catalyst for development of new towns-New Lynnville, Ardmore, Buford Station, Wales, Frankewing and others. The county’s third governor, John C. Brown, was elected during this period. Horse and buggy or horseback was the primary means of transportation in Victorian Giles County, with only the wealthiest having cars and only near the end of the era. Privately owned toll roads lead out of the county in every direction, offering easier access to other places. Those roads led into the county as well, bringing traveling performers, circuses, lectures, political candidates and soldier’s reunions.
Pulaski was growing with the development of such areas the East Highland-McCallum Addition east of town and the Martin College area Hart Addition. Excellent builders and land developers such as J. M. Patterson and Sons, John Gladish, George Tillery, Rev. T. E. Hudson, Gabriel McKissack and Joe Patterson were making it happen. New houses were lighted with gas after 1892, and simple fixtures could be ordered from Sears, Roebuck, and Co. for $1.50, while the most elaborate brass and stained glass ones were $4.70.
Dozens of churches of all denominations were scattered throughout the county, with many of these offering intellectual and social stimulation as well as religious. Free public education became available in 1885 to all local children through high school age, and private schools were still in operation several places in the county. Martin College had been in operation since the 1870’s.
After the War, most work opportunities were in agriculture, and several mills in rural areas were still in operation producing flour, meal, wood products, even gunpowder. After a typhoid epidemic at Bodenham, a casket company started manufacturing newfangled wooden coffins with a window for viewing the dead. By 1898 Bennet-May Co., one of the town’s earliest remaining businesses, could have organized the funeral. Several buggy businesses operated here including the one for which Tarpley Shop is named.
The country had the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, and Pulaski had Thomas Martin, Gov. Brown, Angenol Cox, James Sumpter, Nobel Smithson, W. F. Ballentine, Ben Carter and J. D. Flautt.
For entertainment, the Victorians attended plays, the opera or musical reviews at Antoinette Hall, the old Opera House, which opened in 1868. Performing was so popular there were at least four local groups: Little Theater Group, Pulaski Amateur Club, the Ben Johnson Club, and Clifford Patterson’s Minstrel Show.
Beginning in 1912 the Red Path Chatauqua, a summer lyceum program from New York, brought humorists, magicians, popular music, speakers and other entertainment to Pulaski, all under a huge tent.
The biggest crowds turned out for circuses and the accompanying parades. Even Barnum and Bailey played here.
Three Confederate reunions were held in Pulaski: In 1885 Gov. Brown lead them to the fairgrounds for speeches and dinner; in 1898 they were entertained at the Opera House; and on Oct. 11, 1906, the local United Daughters of the Confederacy unveiled their statue of Sam Davis to the State Conference of Confederate Veterans.
Since Victorian novels were often published in monthly magazine installments, book and magazine clubs were organized for ladies to discuss them. The Magazine Club, organized in 1891 is still meeting today. Men and women alike enjoyed sporting events at the park, walking in the cemeteries on Sunday afternoons, taking picnics into the country, debating about current events or the latest inventions, bicycling, and vacationing at mineral springs.
Pulaski had telephone service in the latter part of the era, but engraved invitations were usually mailed or hand delivered for parties at one’s home. Home sewing machines enabled ladies to create their own dresses, or they could shop for dry goods on the public square at a variety of shops. A graphaphone was available from Sears for $7.50 for the serious party-giver.
Like most people, Giles Countians were interested in learning, worshipping, working and having fun, and the Victorian era provided opportunity for all pursuits.

Pulaski Pure Milk Company

2005-08-18T21:30:00.000-05:00

By Claudia Johnson

In the mid-1950s the recognizable red and white Pulaski Pure Milk carton replaced thick glass bottles. The carton boasted of a variety of product offerings and the company’s membership in the Dairy Guild.

The McPeters family business started as a small operation in 1940 producing only a few gallons of pasteurized milk each day. By the plant’s sell to Purity Dairies in 1982 nearly a million and a half gallons of raw milk was processed into a variety of products distributed throughout the region. The TastSweet cottage cheese sold by Pulaski Pure Milk was one of the few products the company offered but did not produce locally. Inspecting the new containers are Nell McPeters, center front, surrounded by her children, clockwise from left, James, Gene, Jack, George and Alice.

A quart of sweet milk sold for seven cents in 1940 when Pulaski Pure Milk began processing milk from local dairies.
David Eugene McPeters Sr. and his wife, the former Nell LaRue, started their business in a rented building just north of the alley on South First Street on Feb. 1, 1940, with an $8,000 investment that included a pasteurizer but no homogenizer.
Initially the plant produced only a few gallons each day, put production continued to increase reaching up to 4,000 daily by the early 1980s. Collected in a 100-gallon container, milk was brought for the first 11 years to the plant in cans by dairy farmers who had already began using milking machines. When Pulaski Pure Milk sold to Purity Dairy in 1982, milk was collected at each farm by a 200,000 gallon tank truck.
By Christmas of the company’s second year the United States was involved in World War II. James and Gene were called into the armed forces, so Nell and Jack operated the plant, while George kept the family’s Dry Creek Road home place and farm running.
“We sent our paychecks back home to help keep the plant going,” remembered Gene, the only one of the McPeters children remaining.
As the war was winding down, Pulaski Pure Milk was taking off. In 1945 the company was growing so rapidly that the McPeters family constructed a modern milk plant on East Woodring Street. With one truck they started delivering milk around the square and to homes in Pulaski, expanding to 15 or 20 routes that included schools and businesses in multiple counties and two states as the years passed.
David McPeters’ original idea for a milk processing business was to provide opportunities for his children, all of whom worked there during various periods in the four decades to come. Gene became the company president responsible for the business and management aspects of Pulaski Pure Milk. Jack handled maintenance on the increasingly complicated machinery, expanding facilities and growing fleet of trucks. James managed the plant operations and employees. George was over the pick-up and delivery routes and the 20 or so men who ran them. Their sister Alice, who was married to Garland Chapman, helped in the office.
Nell McPeters remained actively involved throughout the plant’s operation, and her husband planned to one day join his family in the plant’s operation. Unfortunately, he died in 1946 in a fatal car crash.
The following year a homogenizer, a machine that mixes the creme with the milk, was installed. With continued growth, the plant was getting crowded. An office building was constructed next door, and in 1951 the management staff moved.
Until the mid-1950s milk was bottled in quart, pint and half-pint containers. The company was delivering milk to schools throughout the area in small glass bottles.
The company transitioned to cartons in 1955, and Gene McPeters remembers problems with flakes of wax getting into the milk. Soon cartons were perfected, and the recognizable red and white Pulaski Pure Milk carton became a staple in every home and on every school child’s lunch tray.
Lemonade, orangeade, buttermilk, which had sold for a nickel a quart back in 1940, half and half, skim milk, whipping cream and chocolate milk were manufactured in the plant. Ice cream was produced for a while in the early years, but the product was dropped when the McPeters decided competitive ice cream production was beyond the scope of what they envisioned for the business. Cottage cheese and butter were sold by the company name but actually produced by a supplier.
In 1960 Pulaski Pure Milk underwent a major expansion, and continued operating full-force until 1982, often using young people home from college as summer and holiday help.
“We had to expand or sell the business,” Gene McPeters said, explaining how he considered offers by bigger companies to buy the operation but settled on Nashville-based Purity because the owners of that company had a similar ethical standard to his family’s own.
McPeters was most concerned about the future of his employees, which by 1982 included around 20 route men, two garage mechanics, clerical help and six or eight in the plant. McPeters helped find employment for anyone who was not offered a job with Purity.
“We processed a lot of milk,” McPeters said, remembering a time when Giles County was known for its dairy farms and local folks had a milk of their own.

“Benefit of Clergy” had different meaning in early Giles history

2005-08-18T20:56:00.000-05:00

Looking back through the Giles County court records, one comes across many cases where a person was convicted of a felony but pled “benefit of clergy” and basically go free.
In the early days of the county, this happened often enough to warrant an explanation. The phrase “benefit of clergy” can still be heard today but usually in association with the birth of a child to parents are not married to each other.
In the 1800’s the law was different in many ways from the present. Many laws were simply carried over from ancient English law or Common Law. This meant that hundreds of what are now misdemeanors were then felonies. The punishment for a felony was death by hanging and forfeiture of all the criminal’s worldly goods to the King. This strict and unforgiving method led to the development of a peculiar quirk in the law called “benefit of clergy.”
This developed because a clergyman was not punishable in a conventional manner, but he was turned over to the Bishop’s court, who tended to punish a wrongdoer “spiritually” by working on his conscience in order to show him his wickedness.
In the old days of England no one could read or write except for priests. So the law presumed that if a person could read, he was a clergyman. When a priest was arraigned in the common court, he “pleaded his clergy”, and either before or after conviction was turned over to the bishop’s court. In later years the priests were simply released, and the Bishop’s officers could arrest him if they so chose.
As civilization progressed, people other than priests learned to read, and this method became a way to soften the cruelty of the criminal law.
Accordingly, if a man were convicted of a felony for the first time, he could claim benefit of clergy, and if he could read he was not hanged as the law required. He was branded, given a light sentence and released. The branding was not part of the punishment but was for identification since the defendant could claim benefit of clergy only once.
The criminal was branded according to the crime, “M” for murder, “HT” for horse thief and so on. The brand was usually placed between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand. This practice was accepted even after many crimes were punishable by imprisonment instead of hanging. Later the reading test was dropped, and it was commonly accepted that a prisoner had a right to claim benefit of clergy on his first felony offense.
This law was abolished in England in 1827 but existed in Tennessee in its later version. In the 1828 August term of the Giles County Circuit Court case State verses John Erwin, the defendant was brought to Bar for sentencing after being convicted of murder. Erwin pled “benefit of clergy” and was ordered to be branded in the left hand with the letter “M”, sentenced to eight months imprisonment and assessed court costs.
If a man was convicted of several felonies, he claimed benefit of clergy on the first one, and the others were dismissed because under the old law, death by hanging, of course, punished all crimes committed by the criminal.
An this odd interpretation of the law was applied in the 1827 case of State verses Crenshaw, in which the defendant was convicted of horse stealing in Williamson County. He was also indicted for horse stealing in another case and for forgery. Each of these crimes were independent felonies and punishable by penitentiary sentences. At common law Crenshaw would have been hung for all or either. So when convicted on the first crime, the perpetrator pled benefit of clergy. He was ordered to be branded with a “HT” in the brawn of the left thumb, given twenty lashes, jailed six months and was made to stand three times in the pillory on three separate days, two hours each day.
This law grew out of a sort of skewed logic and was looked upon as being logical, so much so that a female couldn’t claim benefit of clergy simply because she couldn’t be a priest. A woman, then, was punished by hanging, or later, imprisonment for the same crime on which a man could claim benefit of clergy.
Also a man could claim benefit of clergy only once because it replaced hanging, and that, obviously, can only happen once.
Very logical, right?

By Wendell Garrett, Jamestown, Tenn.

Summer of ’65

2005-08-18T19:58:00.000-05:00

It was the summer of ’65. The Beach Boys, the Beatles and the Supremes played on the radio, but our little 6-year-old sun-kissed selves played red rover and drop the handkerchief on the Campbellsville school grounds.
Aware of being the first class ever for summer Headstart, we knew we were special. Not because Ladybird Johnson had signed the colorful certificates presented each of us, but because they were adorned with characters from the Mickey Mouse Club we watched each afternoon at home on black and white TVs.
As a testimony to the character of our parents, teachers and community leaders, none of us were aware that when we entered first grade, our county would have the first voluntarily integrated public schools in Tennessee. Our oblivion meant every child was a potential friend and every teacher, a potential hero.
Our first grade class was among the last to set at the low oak tables on oiled wooden floors and to get a week off school for cotton picking in autumn.
In spring tiny chairs with seats worn smooth by generations of feisty little backsides were hoisted and hauled to the edge of the softball field to watch the big boys play teams from far off places like Beech Hill or Elkton. A coke in a paper cup and a melty chocolate bar could be had for a dime.
We saw Spot run each day during reading and put our heads on our desk at rest period. We tried not to scare ourselves on the outdoor path to the lunchroom by looking at a biology class skeleton strategically placed in an upstairs window, but we could never resist a peek.
Our holiday bulletin boards had crosses and mangers alongside bunnies and Santas. We heard a Bible story every morning just after the pledge of allegiance and just before the prayer.
Chapel was held every Friday with each class taking turns providing the program of music, skits or guest speakers. One April chapel in 2nd grade, we observed a moment of silence for the slain Dr. Martin Luther King.
In 3rd grade we tackled “new math.”
The summer after forth grade, we watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon and a bunch of hippies do crazy things at some big concert in New York.
By sixth grade, we girls wore bellbottoms and mini-skirts and had crushes on David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman. The boys still wore what their mamas told them and some had crushes on us!
The single constant intrusion of the world was Viet Nam. None of us understood or even discussed the war, but the nightly TV tallies of war dead and the neighbors and relatives who went there, sometimes returning, sometimes not, made the place seem very close to Campbellsville.
As the new millennium began the first graders of 1965 turned 40 years old. Forty is the birthday marked by black balloons and sympathetic looks. Forty is the age when women know they should have used more moisturizer and men are beginning to consider hair replacement.
At forty we’ve had just enough life experience to believe we can handle anything the future offers and know that “anything” very likely includes the joy of rocking grandbabies and the sorrow of burying mamas and daddies.
But in the summer of ’65 our little Headstart class at Campbellsville school drew life-size outlines of ourselves on butcher paper, played “house” or “outlaws” in the privet hedge and learned to tie our shoes.

Written by Claudia Johnson for my friends from Campbellsville School, 1999

Profile of James Gable, Born in Giles County, 1906

2005-08-18T17:05:00.000-05:00

Story by Claudia Johnson, Photo by Tim Nave

James Gable’s response to “what’s the best thing you’ve ever done?” is “plowing.”
Why?
“No trouble, no headaches,” he said. “Just plowing.”
And Mr. Gable has certainly done his share of that on some of the finest land in Tennessee. He spent a lifetime in the rich fields of Wales along Big Creek, sometimes leaving on Monday and not returning from the far edges of the fields until the week’s end.
Remembered by older residents for being the first man to drive a tractor across the bridge at Wales, having driven it from Pulaski, he admits farming with a tractor was easier but less satisfying as walking behind his mule team, Ned and Jim, which he recalls with fondness even now.
He remembers an era when field workers passed the time singing and sometimes preaching. He still enjoys gospel music, confessing, “Sometimes it makes me cry.”
With approximately 10 decades of memories, Mr. Gable has forgotten a few minor details, but not many. Records in the courthouse offer the vital statistics about Gable’s earliest years. Marriage records show his father, Polk Gable, and his mother, Lena Reynolds, wed Dec. 27, 1904.
According to answers provided to educator J.J. Zuccarello, who was responsible for 1910 Census data collection in the Campbellsville area, both Gable’s parents were born in Tennessee. They resided in the Morristown community on Dry Creek Road where they rented the farm on which they had lived for five years. In 1910 his father was 24 and his mother 21, and their only child, James, would celebrate his fourth birthday on June 6. The Gables added two more sons and five daughters in the years ahead.
James Gable moved to Wales as a young man, working for Newton Morris, Joe Scales, state senator Newton White, who died in 1931, and on Clifton Place for owners spanning three decades, beginning with the Wades during the depression.
When asked, James is quick to clarify that the one task he never did was pick cotton.
“That’s for children, not for me,” he said.
he had no time for hobbies, has never been much of a hunter or fisherman, wasn’t interested in sports and, except for occasional trips to see relatives, has not traveled much.
“I worked all the time,” Gable said, a memory confirmed by his son. William, a retired City of Pulaski employee, who started working with his father on the farm when he was 12, some 46 years ago.
“Work won’t kill anybody,” William Gable said, sounding much like his father.
William was the youngest of three sons of James and Eula Mae Marks Reynolds, whom James married in 1935 when she was 15. Confined to a nursing home, she, too, has outlived their sons James Junior and Moses Glen. She and James have lived in separate homes for 30 years, a situation their son credits with the good relationship between them. William said when his mother was still in her residence but could not be alone, his father spent the days cooking for her and attending to other needs.
James lives in Pulaski, but he’s only been a permanent resident for 14 years. He tried living in town in 1960, but five years later he headed back to Clifton Place. Two knee surgeries have slowed him down a little, and since he does not drive anymore, he is dependant on others for transportation.
“Who cooks for you?” he was asked, to which he quickly replied, “I do.”
“He’s always been a good cook,” William said, explaining that his father makes wonderful cakes in addition to full meals of meat, vegetables and bread.
(When I told Mr. Gable that I can’t make biscuits, he insisted on explaining in detail how to do it. “Try it when no one is around,” he said. “Then if they are no good, you can throw them out and nobody will know.”
William said he’s always been amazed at his father’s simple wisdom. For instance, James’ theory on taking medicine, especially multiple pills, is that “one pill knows where to go, but five pills don’t know where to go.”
His analysis of politics in America: “They’re just for the rich people. They stole the election last time, and they’ll do it again if we don’t watch out.”
When asked for advice after approximately 100 years of living, Mr. Gable said, “want do you think?” as though his counsel should be obvious.
“What do you think he meant?” his son was asked.
“I think he was saying ‘be honest, work for what you get and treat everybody right’,” William said. “That’s the kind of example he always was to me, and still is.”

150 Years of Local News Recapped in New Book

2005-08-14T22:16:00.000-05:00

a page from the past..., a 150-year look at Giles County's history as presented on the pages of the PULASKI CITIZEN since 1854, became available to the public June 15, 2005.
Reader requests solidified the decision to compile the year-long 2004 series, a page from the past..., into a book, according to Claudia Johnson, the PULASKI CITIZEN staff writer and Campbellsville native who spent 18 months on a special project to celebrate the newspaper’s 150th birthday.
Johnson has read hundreds of issues of the CITIZEN dating from the paper’s founding on Dec. 16, 1854, through modern times, all for the purpose of bringing CITIZEN readers a sense of how the paper covered the current events that have since become history.
“I didn’t want this to be just another history project,” Johnson said, recalling how publisher Steve Lake and editor Scott Stewart were in complete agreement with her angle. “When you write for a newspaper, it’s humbling to realize that you could be producing the only lasting account of day to day happenings.”
On her regular beat, to which she returned Jan. 3, Johnson covers county government, law enforcement, the judicial system, emergency services and other hard news.
“Certainly there are official records of these, but there’s more to a story than a document,” Johnson commented, admitting that reading the old papers have reinforced her commitment to accurate reporting. “What’s in the paper is what the public in general will know, now and especially in the future.”
The staff writer said it seems the public is interested in the news no matter when it happened judging from response to a page from the past...
Johnson, Lake, Stewart and other staff members reported positive feedback from the weekly page, which featured clippings of CITIZEN stories on everything from horses, to education, to baseball, to industrial development, to an unsolved police slaying and visitors from outer space. Stories of national interest like wars, reconstruction, prohibition and suffrage were explored from the local perspective using the CITIZEN archives. Dozens of illustrations, including maps, photographs and postcards, have accentuated the reprinted articles and advertisements.
“It was very challenging deciding what to use for each week’s page,” Johnson confessed. “I think I could have done this for the rest of my life and never exhausted the supply of interesting material. There are so many topics that were not touched just because there was not enough time.”
She borrowed and scanned dozens of photographs, postcards, maps and documents for possible inclusion in the book, burning them to disk to donate to local historic organizations for safekeeping. Johnson’s reading of the hundreds of microfilmed CITIZEN issues, scanned as .pdf files at the expense of the CITIZEN, produced thousands of clippings organized into research categories and saved to disk. Additionally, she has printed and organized hundreds of copies from microfilm as well as the research materials she used to educate herself on many of the subjects of weekly installments.
Consistently, the most frequent question asked by readers was, “Are you going to put this in a book?” When Pulaski Publishing owner Hershel Lake continued to hear it, the commitment was made.
“People kept telling us that they were saving the weekly pages or sending them to friends or relatives out of town, but they’d like it in a more convenient format,” Stewart said, adding that the 250-page volume was printed by Holley’s Printing and bound by Sain Publications, both local companies..
All material that was printed in page from the past... for 52 weeks was reformatted into a 9 X 12 perfect-bound book printed on archival quality paper with a heavyweight, glossy cover. Johnson was intimately involved with every detail of the book’s layout just as she was with selection of every piece of material it contains. Each week since January 1, 2005, she has spent dozens of hours in addition to her full-time reporting job with the layout designer, Teresa Sibley of Holley’s Printing, determining placement of each story, advertisement or picture on every page, choosing fonts indicative of the era represented and proofreading and re-proofreading.
The final chapter is the 48-page souvenir edition with all material and photographs selected by Johnson from archived newspapers and other sources highlighting the history of the PULASKI CITIZEN, which everyone who bought the newspaper on Dec. 16, 2004, received as a gift.
The book is $27.95 plus applicable tax. Lake emphasized that due to the expense of the project, only a very limited number has been printed. Call 931 363 3544 for more information or to order by phone.