Our Fall Meeting was a joint one with the West Tennessee Historical Society. A short business meeting involved a reminder that the artwork for the New Madrid postal cancellation project is due to Cecelia Edwards by December 31, 2010 and a request for ideas for the JPHS Civil War celebration activities.
At the conclusion of the business meeting, Marvin Downing, PhD, spoke on the subject of Christmasville, Tennessee. He began by showing a 6 minute DVD segment of Tennessee Crossroads about Christmasville; Downing served as a consultant on this program. After the segment, he distributed a handout containing a current map of west Tennessee counties and a detailed map of the same area in 1864 showing the location of Christmasville on the south fork of the Obion River in Caroll (now Carroll) County, pictures of John C. McLemore and his wife, Elizabeth Donelson McLemore, and a sketch by Thomas F. Moore, a native of Christmasville, showing the area circa 1865. It was on land owned by McLemore that Christmasville was built and incorporated in 1823. Downing spoke eloquently about the area which is no longer a viable community, but still remembered as attested to by a recent newspaper article concerning a hunting accident in which it was mentioned that one of the young men involved was from the “Christmasville area”. After the program, Dr. Downing was applauded for all the research and work he had done on this topic.
The next JPHS meeting will be January 22, 2011 in the auditorium of the Wrather Museum on the campus of Murray State University. The meeting will begin at 10:30 a.m. Our speaker will be Dr. Bill Mulligan, Professor of History at Murray State.
