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…

Dr. Marvin Downing will be addressing the society at the quarterly meeting. In anticipation of the upcoming talk, we talked with him about his 34-year career as a professor of history at UT Martin, his civic activities he performs and his research and knowledge of Christmasville. It was the town that time forgot, nestled away in the Tennessee woods. It would fail to take advantage of technology in railroads and slowly die down to nothing but a post office until 1903 and then nothing after that. Join us as we take a look at a now forgotten part of the…