Every Day in Tennessee History
Excerpts for October:
OCTOBER 1
1808, Liberty Hill, Williamson County. The Tenth Annual Conference of the Methodist-Episcopal Church in Tennessee was held twelve miles from Nashville in Williamson County. A protest was issued against slavery. It was decided that no member of the church or preacher could "sell or buy a slave unjustly, inhumanly, or covetously." If found guilty the offender would be expelled from the church. One of the participants, circuit rider Reverend Francis Asbury described the conference as "a camp meeting, where the preachers ate and slept in tents. We sat six hours a day, stationed eighty three preachers and all was peace."
OCTOBER 2
1916, Memphis. Ms. Katherine Stinson, the "Southern Aviatrice," flew her airplane, astonishing and amazing crowds at the Tri-State Fair. According to one newspaper story: "Flying at 2,000 feet in the air, a shower of sparks on her biplane marking her course across the starry sky, Miss Katherine Stinson...thrilled thousands of Memphians with a flight over the Tri-State Fair grounds.. Miss Stinson did not loop-the-loop. Twice she essayed to swing her heavy craft upward and over, but, she explained later, her engine was going badly." Apparently her engine quit twice and as she said "That frightens me at night....In daytime, when I can see everything below, I have no fear, even if my engine is going badly...."
OCTOBER 3
1865, Nashville. As part of his message to the Tennessee Legislature, Governor William G. Brownlow commented on the evils of alcohol saying in part: "Throughout the length and breadth of Tennessee, distilleries, wholesale and retail liquor dealers are multiplying with frightful rapidity and increasing evils therefrom, call upon the friends of humanity and of religion to educated the public mind in opposition to this vice and if possible, to stay the tide that now bids fair to overwhelm and degrade society." Knowing he hadn't the resources to ban whisky, he therefore proposed a prohibitively high whisky tax. The General Assembly, perhaps not sharing the Parson's views on the subject did not enact the tax.
OCTOBER 4
1900, Jasper. The Reverend B.J. Pirtle, a minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, committed suicide by hanging himself in the church building with the bell cord. "Despondency," it was reported, "owing to the lack of work is supposed to be the cause." Pirtle left a wife and three children and was 45 years old.
OCTOBER 5
1880, Scott County. The utopian community of Rugby was founded by Thomas Hughes, Englishman and author of Tom Brown's School Days, in an idealistic endeavor to provide homes and livelihood in Tennessee for the younger sons of English gentry. Within three years the settlement proved financially insolvent but its English origins are still visible. The settlements were listed in the National Register of Historic Places and welcomes visitors.
OCTOBER 6
1885, Chattanooga. Union Depot baggage master Jim Howell became involved in a domestic spat between a young couple on their way to Brunswick, Georgia. She demanded that she be given her baggage to return to New Hampshire, while her husband ignored her. Inasmuch as the husband, T. W. Brown had the luggage claim check her request was impossible to grant. Howell then took it upon himself to negotiate a settlement between the two quarreling spouses and after a dozen attempts got them to kiss and make up, to the delight of the curious crowd that had assembled in the depot to watch the matter unfold. Love is a many splendored thing.
OCTOBER 7
1870, Smart Station, Warren County. "Uncle" Dave Macon, the "Dixie Dew Drop" and Grand Ole Opry star was born. He operated a farm near Readyville for twenty years and played the five string banjo to amuse himself and neighbors. Finally in 1918 he was asked by a pompous farmer neighbor to play at a party. Macon asked for what was then an exorbitant fee of fifteen dollars and so entered the ranks of the professionals. A talent scout soon booked him for an engagement in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1923, while playing in a Nashville barber shop he met fiddler-guitarist Sid Harkeadan and the two formed a partnership and landed a recording contract, the sessions for which were held in New York City, 1925-1926. He began his career on the Grand Ole Opry in 1926 and played with the Fruit Jar Drinker's Band. He was also in the movie "The Grand Ole Opry" in 1940. He died in Readyville, at the age of 82 on the 22d of March 1952.
OCTOBER 8
1902, Newbern, Dyer County. Garfield Burly and Clarence Brown, African-Americans, were lynched by a mob of some 500 persons. Burly, apprehended for murdering D. Flatt over a dispute concerning a horse trade, allegedly confessed his crime to a Dyer County posse that apprehended him in Arkansas. Burly implicated Brown as an accomplice and both were placed in the Dyer County jail to await trial. Even though the judge had voiced the opinion that the two were certainly guilty, he also pleaded for due process. The mob, however, broke into the jail took the two prisoners. They were taken out of town to a telephone pole, securely tied face-to-face and hanged. According to a grizzly comment in the Nashville American: "The lynching programme was carried out in an orderly manner, not a shot being fired." Another kinder and gentler lynching, no doubt.
OCTOBER 9
1885, Memphis. A. Meyers, secretary of Nopf (Memphis) Lodge No. 137, Kesher Shel Barsel, a Jewish fraternal organization, skipped town with all of that affiliation's funds. Joe Thiers, a newspaper reporter, was acquitted of charges of shooting at a hack driver, Al Caruthers. Jefferson Street was the scene of the first run of street railway cars in the city's history.
OCTOBER 10
1915, Westmoreland. Owen Bradley, Music City producer, musician and executive, was born. He was vitally important in the creation of the "Nashville Sound," which gave country and western music new life. He also helped give Nashville a reputation for superb recording studios and produced stars such as Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee and Bill Anderson. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1974.
OCTOBER 11
1809, Grinder's Stand, on the Natchez Trace, Lewis County. Meriwether Lewis, an army officer and secretary to Thomas Jefferson from 1801-1803, co-leader of the famed Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific Northwest in 1804-1806 and Governor of the Louisiana Territory 1806-1809, died mysteriously near Grinder's Stand on October 11, 1809. While no definite conclusions have been reached it is thought he either committed suicide, accidentally killed himself while cleaning a pistol, or that he was robbed and killed by bandits that frequented the Trace.
OCTOBER 12
1912, Nashville. In one exemplary letter to the Nashville Banner, a Mrs. L. H. Hicks wrote that man had a divine right to rule the entire world. She used a Biblical basis for her conjecture, saying that God had always had governing power from the onset and that Christ had sanctioned the existing social and political orders. Her feelings on the matter were best justified in her estimation because "men have made the earth a beautiful protected home for the human race, especially the women." Women could never be the equal of men because it was "ordained from the first that man should be in control...and hysterical argument can not put them aside." Therefore, women should not have the right to vote, she continued, because among other reasons: "[Women] are not logical. Women have not the power of great concentration. They easily tire....They are not mathematicians....They are impatient of just criticisms and their methods are devious, complicated and hard to follow....We have yet to produce a woman of the first calibre, great as men are great."
OCTOBER 13
1802, West Point. Methodist Circuit Rider Francis Asbury recorded in his diary that he had an "accident, extraordinary in the manner, and desperate in the effect, happened to me. At a rocky run, in attempting to dismount, my horse gave a sudden turn, and swung me against the rocks in the stream -- the rude shock to my tender feed made me roar bitterly. My horse was low before, tender-footed, and tired -- the hills were steep and rugged, and I was sore by riding -- these circumstances combined caused me much pain, that...I cast anchor, with a determination to [not travel to Georgia]. I have rode about five thousand five hundred miles; and in the midst of all I am comforted with the prospects of the western conference; we have added three thousand members this year; have formed Cumberland into a district, and have sent a missionary to...Natchez."
OCTOBER 14
1886, Dyersburg, Dyer County. African American Mat Washington was taken out of jail at about 10:00 A.M. by some 250 unmasked men. He was taken immediately to the Court House Square and was about to be lynched when some of Dyersburg's leading citizens persuaded the mob leaders that such an action would reflect badly on the good name of the town and persuaded the mob to take him out of town. A mile or so out of town, Washington allegedly confessed his crime of rape and his guilt in four more. He was hanged from a tree. No doubt the good name of Dyersburg was saved from reproach.
OCTOBER 15
1935, Memphis. At the offices of Plough, Inc., a cosmetic manufacturer, Female workers were on strike and picketing the factory at Plough, Inc., a cosmetic manufacturer. A number of women tried to cross the picket line but they were persuaded not to apply for work. From 75 to 99 women were on strike, all members of the Cosmetic Manufactory Employees Union (AFL). Just the day before three women who tried to cross the picket line were stopped and had their clothes torn off their backs by the female strikers. The women wanted a 40-hour workweek and a minimum wage of $13.00. They were at that time earning $7.00 for a forty-three hour week.
OCTOBER 16
1853, Lower, or Baja, California, Mexico. Nashville native William "the Grey-Eyed Man of Destiny" Walker having led an assault on the Mexican authorities at Sonora, declared himself President of Lower California. The newly installed President, however, would shortly be pursued out of the country by Mexican authorities. Undaunted, Walker would in a few years attack and control all of Nicaragua.
OCTOBER 17
1788, Gillespy's Station on the waters of Pistol Creek in present day Blount County. A force of from one to three hundred Cherokee Indians, led by John Watts (Kunoskeskie) attacked Gillespy's Station. Most of the men of the fort were gone and while the few remaining made a valorous attempt to thwart the Indians' attack the Indians soon swarmed over the walls and rooks of the station, killing twenty eight, most of whom were women and children and took thirty one prisoners. The station was burned. The Indians left a letter behind addressed to Sevier, which explained the reasons for the attack. John Sevier, the leader of the Lost State of Franklin, would use this bloody incident to reclaim his authority under the Lost State of Franklin and attack the Indians with a vengeance in January 1789.
OCTOBER 18
1910, Johnson City. U.S. Senator Robert L. Taylor, as a last minute Democratic Party nominee for governor tried to avoid the divisive issue of prohibition. He told a crowd in Johnson City, "I come to you today with a harmonicon in my mouth, with an olive branch in one hand and a bowie knife in the other, and with a heart full of good will to my fellow-man, provided that my fellow-man votes for me for governor."
OCTOBER 19
1818, Old Town Chickesaw [sic], near present day Tuscumbia, Alabama. By means of bribery Andrew Jackson and Isaac Shelby induce the Chickasaw Chief Levi Colbert to sign a treaty giving up all Chickasaw land in Tennessee and Kentucky, in a transaction called the Jackson Purchase. In order to protect the Indian signers from their own people who did not like the terms, Jackson stipulated that the treaty minutes should be kept secret. They were until 1930, when Samuel Cole Williams wrote Beginnings of the West Tennessee and Kentucky, the Land of the Chickasaws, 1541-1841.
OCTOBER 20
1797, Knoxville. Reacting to the complaints of the people in Tennessee's frontier counties concerning Indian raids, as well as the continual depredations of squirrels, crows and wolves, the second General Assembly passed the following law: "Each county in this State is authorized to lay a tax, to be paid in squirrels' or crows' scalps, on every person subject to a poll tax in their respective counties, not exceeding twenty-five squirrels to each poll." One crow's scalp (or skin) equaled two squirrels' scalps and each man who failed to supply his allotment of scalps was liable to pay once penny for each undelivered scalp. The animal skins were to be delivered to the respective county justices who held the lists of taxable property and then were to be burned after a proper accounting of them had been made. Each county court was also authorized to pay as much as two dollars for a wolf hide, which would also be burned.
OCTOBER 21
1869, Obion Co., Union City. The first monument in Tennessee dedicated to the memory of Confederate war dead was erected. Twenty nine Confederates who died at a nearby basic training camp and some who rode with Forrest's 7th Cavalry in an engagement with the 7th Tennessee Cavalry (U.S. ARMY) in March, 1864, are among those memorialized.
OCTOBER 22
1910, Memphis. Federal Judge John E. McCall issued an injunction which closed 114 saloons in the Bluff City. He dissolved the ruling a few days later saying that a federal court could not enforce the state prohibition law and that it was really a matter for a state court.
OCTOBER 23
1937. A Saturday Evening Post story revealed that Luke Lea, Tennessee politician and newspaperman, had as a Colonel in the U.S. Army in France, visited the Kaiser in 1919 in an unauthorized attempt to have the former German leader submit to trial for war crimes. The story was written by T.H. Alexander, a columnist for the Tennessean, a paper once owned by Lea. Alexander's son had taken a turn for the worse and Lea gave him the first accurate account of his escapade so Alexander could sell the story in order to pay for an operation for Alexander's son stricken by polio.
OCTOBER 24
1890, Nashville. Mayor McCarver resigned suddenly and unexpectedly. He believed the salary was too meager and so he vowed to return to the private sector. William Littered, president of the City Council, became the Mayor pro tem.
OCTOBER 25
1862, Camp Cold Water, near Holly Springs, Mississippi. John Kennerly Farris, assistant surgeon with the 41st Tennessee Infantry wrote in a letter to his wife Mary about life in the army. Lice were a problem for the soldiers in the 41st. "We have to change clothes often on account of the body lice which torment our boys awfully. I do not suppose there is two men in the Regt. who have not had them on their clothes, & some of men have not been shut of them in 7 or 8 months.... They lay eggs on the little fibers of the cloth in great numbers, & it is said that boiling will not distroy [sic] them." The weather was cold and rainy this day, and Farris described his shelter this way: "So far this has been a cold windy day. I am now shut up in our tent by myself with a few coles [sic] of fire in a hole in the ground floor & am quite comfortable, not withstanding the snow & sleet [that] is falling tolerably fast out of doors, & the wind is blowing hard & cold. Oh, how I wish that every poor soldier was as comfortable at present as I am. But they are not, for many men in our Regt. have not a tent to sleep under tonight although they as much deserve one as General Brag [sic] himself. But they haven't got one nor cannot get one, & no doubt but the poor fellows will have to lie under a sky this whole winter, & if they should, not many will live to see spring again."
OCTOBER 26
1957, Nashville. Governor Frank Clement officiated at a one-day ceremony, serving tribute to the crew and officers of the U.S.S. TENNESSEE. The silver punch service handed down from the ship's precursor and namesake in 1906. The silver service was taken to the Governor's Mansion on Custiswood Lane where it remained for a time until it was transferred to the Tennessee State Museum for the enjoyment of all.
OCTOBER 27
1877, Memphis. Nathan Bedford Forrest died in the home owned by his brother, Jesse. He was known, deservedly, as the greatest commander of light cavalry among English speaking peoples. He also has another reputation, as one of the greatest terrorists in Tennessee history, inasmuch as he was a founder of and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in 1866. Forrest, however, never publicly admitted to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
OCTOBER 28
1859. Willis P. Davis, Knoxville industrialist, founder of a successful movement to create the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, was born in Louisville, Kentucky. His work with G.S.M.N.P. was recognized by the naming of a 5,020 foot high elevation on the main crest between Silver��s Bend and Thunderhead, Mount Davis. He died in 1931.
OCTOBER 29
1878, Knoxville. Workmen were erecting poles on Clinch Street for the anticipated telephone system being established for the firm of William R. Caswell & Co., from its storerooms to their steamworks at the Maryville railroad crossing.
OCTOBER 30
1898, on board the ZEALANDIA, en route to the Philippines. The 1st Tennessee Volunteers departed for the Philippines to aid in the suppression of what most Americans called insurgents and what many in the Philippines called Filipino patriots and freedom fighters, under the direction of Aguinaldo, the George Washington of the Philippines.
OCTOBER 31
1983, Memphis. The Memphis Press-Scimitar closed and ceased publication. It had opened as the Scimitar in 1880 and merged with the Press in 1926. This left Commercial Appeal as the only Memphis newspaper.
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