On August 5, 1977, Robert Rennick interviewed historian Lon Carter Barton at his home in Mayfield for over four hours discussing the history of community names in Graves County and the Jackson Purchase. On this recording, Barton reflects upon his years teaching local history at Mayfield High School, the creative process behind the “Sesquicentennial History of the Jackson Purchase” published in the Mayfield Messenger in 1969, and his weekly radio program “Remember When.” Rennick was touring Kentucky researching the place names of villages, towns, and cities throughout the Commonwealth for a forthcoming publication. Below is the transcription of the fifth of six audio cassettes recorded that day.
Barton: … toward history, local history. I find that there’s a lot of interest in local history. I start every year off in my course by spending a week, or seven or eight days, on the Jackson Purchase, Mayfield, Graves County, and local history just to get a feeling for the subject that history is not something that happens not only 300 years ago but 3,000 miles away someplace. We have a particular history here as well as all these other places. I find it really rings a bell with them. They enjoy hearing about it, Feliciana, and the Civil War, and all these things much more than they do later on when reading about the economic crisis of the 1930s or whatever. But at the same time, I think that these kids have reached a point that the kids in middle school had not got to yet. Which is, they’re driving cars and they’re playing football, they’re involved in clubs, they’re dating and they’re just more or less … Well, they might have some interest, some of them may have a lot of interest, but they simply do not have the time and inclination to put that above all these other things. And on the other hand, I think most school kids, eight graders, are still in a position where they’re not driving, and they’re not dating, and not playing varsity ball and … They have a little bit more of an opportunity to take an interest in the town, and I expect they’re even more than anything, actually curious than some of the older kids. Some of the older kids when they lose some of their interest, they lose a good bit of their curiosity. I’ve noticed … I’ve gone to some of these eighth grade and seventh grade, and even more than that, and just as far as spending an hour talking with them about Graves County, and Mayfield, and all you know… And then I’ll spend ten or fifteen minutes of the class period just hitting a few highlights and asking if there are any questions. And I have never failed to notice that more questions, more hands were in the air to get recognition, than I could recognize in two full periods. And there would be five or six people clamoring to ask a question at the end of the period as well and they stay around there after class over and over. So, I feel like that some of these younger kids could be employed very easily in a project like this. Of course, they might not have the ability to travel and go and visit people quite as well and they wouldn’t be nearly so comfortable with interviewing, I’m sure, as a high school kid would, or a college kid and they may not know the questions to ask as well and all that. I do have an idea that their natural interest would be, maybe an eighth grader, and these would be a good source to hit or to tap.
Rennick: I’ve been trying to interest the Kentucky Young Historians, and they never seem to have any …
Barton: You ever talk to Cliff Wood?
Rennick: Ms. Penny, what’s her name …
Barton: Cliff Wood is the fellow that I know of up there in charge of the young historians …
Rennick: I tried to get them interested. He is …
Barton: Well, I think that would be a built in, tailor made, sort of an activity that they would want to get into.
Rennick: They’re doing it in other states, Indiana for instance but here in Kentucky, with one or two exceptions, the senior young historians they’ve just … I talked … I’ve tried to interest the advisors of these groups but they just …
Barton: Well, the advisors have their projects, but … I guess there’s not enough time to do everything. You ever talked to the 4H groups? There’s a fellow here in charge of our local 4H, now we don’t have a city 4H, I mean in high school, but they may have them at the other schools, but in this county the 4H club, I reckon, is very strong. And I heard this fellow on the radio the other morning tell about some of the products and activities that they had taken to … And one of them, I think, was going out in their communities and their localities and trying to clean out and clear up the old cemeteries that had, you know, abandoned graveyards and community cemeteries and all that had not been well preserved – maybe were they grown up in undergrowth and vines and all kinds of stuff going on, and maybe some of the monuments were turned over and dilapidated. I think he had some very good luck in doing some of this. I don’t know whether they got any awards for things like this, but I think they do. They’re kind of structured in that particular system. I think, where so much … they do so much, and they get so much recognition … they get a badge, or they get an award, or they get some kind of recognition … that’s what they do. So, 4H might be a possibility. And I understand in some places they have urban 4H groups, I know they don’t here – strictly rural here. It’s possible that they’d be helpful. You just couldn’t possibly get this done on your own with a few volunteers scattered around like Brown Tucker, Ray Mofield, and me. I don’t see how you could get it done.
Rennick: It’d take a lot of time.
Barton: Well, I tell you what, a hundred and twenty counties … average of how many place names per county.
Rennick: Well, it’s kind of hard to narrow it down to two thousand, I have sort of a formula worked out to get the number for each county. The terms to the number of communities we have on our …
Barton: Yeah, I guess the larger the county … the larger the county in area as well as in population the longer your list would be.
Rennick: Jefferson and Pike counties have the longest list.
Barton: Pike is the largest in area and Jefferson the largest population.
Rennick: That’s right.
Barton: Graves is way, way, way, down the line in population. We’ve stayed right at 30,000, seems like to me, that was the figure that I learned in high school for Grave County’s population – 45 years ago … no, make that 35 years ago. Anyway, we’re third, I believe, largest county in the area … in the state. I think Pike and Hardin …
Rennick: And Christian …
Barton: Yeah, Christian barely edges us out, I think, by a few miles, as I remember. Pike is definitely the biggest and Hardin is definitely second, and then Christian and then Graves, but Christian and Graves are close to being tied for third. Of course, this does mean we have more miles of roads, and we have more towns, and more landmarks, and more place names, and all that stuff than most other counties around here have. And I suspect that there’s been as little done, or maybe less done to try to track this information down than has been done at probably any other time.
Rennick: Actually though, more has been done in the Purchase area than any similar group of counties …
Barton: Is that right?
Rennick: Ah huh, I guess since your elaborate Purchase history, you know, the Mayfield Messenger that came out in 1969. No other section in the county has anything like that … that elaborate and that accurate.
Barton: I’m glad to hear that …
Rennick: That broad of scope …
Barton: That makes us feel as though we did something worthwhile. I think it could be done in equivalent issues, sometime, and not repeat the same story twice. There as much … but it comes down to sort of a matter of time and opportunity.
Rennick: Now let’s see, some of those county columns, now were they taken from Collins? It sounded to me …
Barton: Some of the parts …
Rennick: The columns in each county because each county is represented in sort of a brief survey.
Barton: Oh yeah, a good bit of it was.
Rennick: Yeah, they’re not identified. You know, as to the source.
Barton: Let’s see, I don’t know if Collins … a good bit of the tabulated stuff in there, like the number of the State representatives and State senators – the sort of the little capsule digest of when the county was named and who it was named after. This is pretty much the same format as Collins, in volume two, I guess.
Rennick: That’s right.
Barton: But that thing, you know, you might not realize how much time that thing took to put together. We were working nearly the whole year on that thing; I think eight or nine months.
Rennick: Who did the general editing?
Barton: I did. I was the editor and the Messenger … Well, I was the editor, so I got the material out to the people that wrote the articles, and they returned it to me, and I was sort of a go-between from the historical society membership, who did the writing and the Messenger that did the publishing. Of course, in the sense of regular newspaper proofing and type settings, in other words, the publication responsibility was with the Messenger all together. We didn’t have anything to do with that. Layouts, makeup, format, page design, it was all together their job – the mechanical end of it. And you know, in a sense, editing would normally taken in some of that too. In which in this case it didn’t, I just did the go-between work between the people that wrote and the paper.
Rennick: That was a good job.
Barton: The paper did an excellent job. We were awfully pleased with their work. And the people that wrote did a real service too, especially when they had very little to work from. The [head] that was the man at the Messenger, they just sort of gave us one man up there to work with us to add to his standard assignment on top of whatever the paper had him do. The boy is now over at Murray running the Ledger & Times, Walter Apperson.
Rennick: Walter …
Barton: Apperson.
Rennick: Apperson?
Barton: Yeah, he’s an awfully alert young guy. I don’t know if he’s particularly historically minded but he’s very interested in such things as this, and he was a tremendous help in getting his thing out that you’re talking about. Because there could have been people in charge with the, you know … it could have been, but the person in charge of the paper sort of made it a low priority on the totem pole. If that had been the case, although I don’t think anybody at the Messenger would have taken that attitude, and I say on some papers they could have. And if that had been that unfortunate of a case, all of the writing and all the work that all of us did to assemble the material and put it in some kind of form, and there’s a certain amount of editing and all that would have been no real help, because if they would’ve put in on the back shelf – so well, we need to get the newspaper out. Because in a sense this did start, in a way, to distract them from their normal run of routine newspaper production. Of course, they sold a lot of ads, and they hired a guy from Murray who did nothing but sell ads for this issue. And he did a very good job at that.
Rennick: About anything he could think of in Mayfield and … I wonder if he brought in any businesses …
Barton: He hustled up ads all around here. That guy was named [Louis Harris] Edmondson and taught journalism at Murray at one time. And I don’t know what happened to him, but he lost control and killed himself. Right there in, I don’t know, whether it was in any classroom or not, but it was in the building [Wilson Hall] where he taught – must have been in his office. Shot himself in the head [August 9, 1972], up on the top … I think on the third floor, or maybe higher than that. A tragic thing …
Rennick: Now does the Mayfield Messenger have a historical column periodically?
Barton: The closest thing it has to a historical column is what Virginia Bingham Garrott writes and she is the daughter of George Bingham who is a very well-known Southern columnist and humorist going on back to about the 1930s, late 20s and 30s and through there, and his daughter Virginia is the … she’s kind of a society editor of the women’s page editor and all, and every Friday she writes a column.
Rennick: So, it would be in today’s issue.
Barton: Today, she has a column. And more often and not, these still have historical subjects. You know, of course, she’s an old timer herself. She’s always lived here, born and bred here, her father was such a prominent newspaper man here, her family roots are all here. She writes things … it’s more of a nostalgic writing than it is historical in a sense. She writes about things that she remembers what her folks told her about like [middle of] day in the 1920s, about the way a certain street looked when she was just a girl in high school and about some of her high school experiences. You know, I say nostalgic because I mean it’s really not history in a sense of the purest definition of the word – way back to the settlement, Civil War, and all this, but it is history in a sense too. It’s more recent history, but she wrote a little notice in there one time, apparently some of the newcomers were telling her, that they couldn’t really relate too well to what she wrote so much of because it didn’t go back, you know. And she said maybe I’m doing too much of this sort of thing and I told her, the next time I had an opportunity to see her, don’t let that bother you and go right on and don’t worry about that, because there’s a lot of people here that do like to read this type of thing because they can relate. As far as I’m concerned, I’m sure a lot of newcomers enjoy reading about it and how things were here 50 years ago.
Rennick: Yeah, I would be interested …
Barton: I don’t think there’s anything contradictory, or anything mutually exclusive about doing a column in the daily paper today and choosing a subject like something in the 50s … In fact, Virginia … all of my papers that I’m into, all these old Mayfield Monitors on microfilm and the Messenger … and she will just go to the files and put a microfilm on …. 1870s, 1880s and write her column on the basis of something in the paper a hundred years ago in 1877. I don’t think today she’s got off on that and I think it comes about once every … she might come out with one out every three, I guess, more or likely. But she wrote a very interesting sketch the other day on Dublin … no, no, no excuse me that was Bill Powell that did that, I believe in the Courier-Journal.
Rennick: The other day?
Barton: Yeah, Monday.
Rennick: Oh yes, I saw that.
Barton: Yeah, Monday or Tuesday. No, it wasn’t Bill Powell either. I guess it was this guy going around sort of doing the Joe Creason act – Rob Hill or Jim Hill or Bill Hill or something like that. Anyway, he had written a little sketch on Dublin, but Virginia had done one just recently on Water Valley, I believe.
Rennick: Oh yeah, I saw that.
Barton: I think it was Water Valley. She does this every third or fourth column, like she’ll go back and pick up some of this early stuff. And I’m convinced an awful lot of people like and do relate to this type of journalism.
Rennick: Now, is that a morning or evening paper?
Barton: Evening.
Rennick: In other words, there would still be a copy tomorrow morning.
Barton: Yeah, right. She really had an interesting sketch tonight about something … about a wedding, I believe. As I say, she just very frequently turns back to nostalgia to put together a column. But as far as having a column just on a regular basis, like some of these papers do have, like a … Well, they did have one in favor of ten year ago, or twenty year ago, or fifty year ago, just one story under each date line, but now some newspapers run strictly speaking, sort of sterilize local history thing at the … it’s more or less … I think that’s true in weekly papers than it is in some of the dailies, but we don’t do that. I wish we did. I used to give a radio program once a week called “Remember When,” which wasn’t a very good name, but I know why they call it that because they were … the thrust of it was local history. But I’m quite sure no one remembers when we had the Jackson Purchase [show], how much we paid for it, what it consisted of, all this, which is one of the things I talked about. And I did that for about six months and then I … here in the winter, this past winter, it got so terribly bad that the roads got impassable for about three weeks up to the radio station, and this was the news station up the hill, and there was problem getting up to it. At least, I was afraid to try it and so I tapered off and then I just stopped all together. And my father got sick at the time the roads got passable, and I conferred with him, and he died. And I was forced into doing a great many things that I was not altogether prepared to do as a result of daddy’s demise. Trying to continue on with school and do it all, so I just told them I couldn’t go on during the rest of the school year. So, it did require some research and they just thought I came on down there and turned on the tape and start going for ten minutes. I could on one or two things, but I didn’t want to do that. I felt more comfortable when I have something in front of me there. As I said, after my father died, I was still involved in some of our mother’s estate, she died in September, and then I was executor for my father’s estate. He died in April, early April, and I simple had to give it up. And so, I told them that I can come back in the summer when school’s out and get back with you all and had plans of going back in. They called me one day and said when you are planning on picking up your program again. And I said, well, right away … I don’t know exactly … but I just had an awful lot of work around here to do this summer. As I told you on the telephone, half the summer had gone by without me hardly realizing it. I haven’t taken any trips, I haven’t been on any vacations, I haven’t much gone out of town except on business about four or five times. But still I have been really worn down right here. I’ve done a little work on the house and now I own a store uptown and I’m doing work and spending time there. And when it all … I just sort of left the historical business go by the board by a little bit.
Rennick: Now are getting back to it …
Barton: … What did you start saying?
Rennick: You going to get back to it in the fall?
Barton: Yeah, I think I will. Strangely enough, I believe can do a little better for that radio business. Because it’s just a ten-minute program and it’s just on tape and they play it three or four times a week. So, it’s no big deal. But I really think I could do a little better job of that, when I discipline myself, because I know that at a certain time, and I’m supposed to put together a program. And during the school year, oddly enough, I have enough of this regimented, as you well understand, a scheduled out program for a life. I don’t find myself in disorder or unorganized, I guess you say, in the summer. I’m busy but I’m doing things on my own schedule, and I don’t feel in any great compelling demand to do it today, or do it this hour, or this sort of [particular order]. And I can spend my time either thinking about doing it or actually doing it, but I can do it on my own time. But I need to discipline myself then just sit down and work up a program when I have this much free time all around it. I think I’ll just have to wait till I have Saturdays only and I’ll know I’ll have to use Saturdays to do this in order to sit down and force myself to get with it. Because it does take a little research, I did one program that ran two weeks, I guess, or maybe three weeks on Graves County’s politics in Presidential elections from the third one down to the last. I went back and discussed the very stronghold of the Andrew Jackson Democrats and the fact that the democrats never lost control and the fact that the Whigs were just negligible here. And the other people through the years after the Civil War, that came along as a third-party groups, didn’t [mix] with either against the Democrats. Not until McGovern did the Democrats lose the county and the Presidential election. And I have a list of figures, tabulated, from 1824 to 1976 that shows the percentage of people who were eligible to vote, the percentage of the vote, thereby showing what sort of turnout they had. The figure, accurate figures, that resulted from that election for the Democrat and Republican, or “X” number of parties, this took about three weeks to get over. But it did not take terribly long time to research it, because I got all of it out of one book – Shannon “Presidential Politics in Kentucky.” Then I used another couple of books that were on the later [elections] and that ended in 1948, and then I used the search records for the last couple of years up here at the courthouse. So, it took the [clerk] before his break … before lunch time to put that stuff together.
Rennick: He could do it all here, he didn’t have to go to the capital.
Barton: Yeah, right. Then one time here … well, last fall I did a little past history on the Mayfield-Tilghman football rivalry which originally started in 1902, I think, or 01. Oldest in the State except one – Louisville and I went down the line and discussed the … this was right before the battle of last fall and football fever was pretty high. And the boards downtown were all painted up, you know, we were having pep rallies at the school every day and everybody, you know, getting all psyched up. So, I decided to do a program that week on the Mayfield-Tilghman history. And I got the records out for all these years, I reminded everybody that Mayfield had beat Tilghman in 1919, I think, 85 to 6, which was the worst defeat that either team had ever got. And the next year Tilghman refused to play us because they were afraid it would happen again and went on … I gave a little bit of information about a few of the games that were really interesting like in 1925, one Mayfield player scored all the points in the ball game. He got tackled behind his own goal back when they counted that as a safety and that put two points on the board for Tilghman. He was the guy that got tackled in the …