Photographs
"REMANTS OF THE PAST" - by: staff photo Charles Nicholas
- a large photo shown in two parts
"REMANTS OF THE PAST" - Photo Two by: staff photo Charles Nicholas
"HE REMEMBERS" - Purdy's Oldest Resident, Tom F. Garner, age
81. - staff photo
"LONE SURVIVOR" - Hurst Home - "Lone Survivor", of the only home in "Old Purdy", which
had withstood the times, .....it has two women chopping cotton in the the
side yard - staff photo
"RELICS OF ANOTHER ERA " -Thomas Henson
inspecting parts of a rock wall, part of the towns old tavern - staff photo
By WILLIAM BOOZER
HONEYSUCKLE and wild violets grow thick and aromatic, burying the buried. Weathered granite slabs rise like silent sentinels from the thick underbrush, sometimes straight, sometimes toppled by the years. Down the narrow road, two women thrust hoe blades into the brown earth, chopping cotton on what was the courthouse lawn. A horsedrawn wagon moves lazily out of sight over the gravel road that was dirt Main Street. A horn blows. A dog barks. A child cries. Nearby, on a hillside, etched in more tombstones are more names of men and women prominent in early West Tennessee history. Iron fences circling the burial plots are rusted now, but sturdy still. "Good by, we'll meet in Heaven," one monument proclaims. Another: "In memory of the Rev'd Williamson Roark, a Preacher of the Gospel in the Cumberland Church, he died December the 1st, 1838, in the 35th year of his age, leaving a wife and numerous friends to lament the loss. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord."
The Vine Struggles On
This is Purdy, McNairy County's famed old "ghost" town that still fights off the ghosts. Once a promising cultural and educational center, the blossom that was Purdy died on the vine. But the vine struggles on. Gone now is the courthouse, the Masonic Hall, the ambitious Purdy University and the crusading Purdy News. No longer do hotels and inns invite the hungry and the tired. The last tavern long ago served its last five-cent glass of whisky. Still there 65 years after Purdy died are 76 residents. A scant number hold fond memories of an impressive past, and the young still enjoy listening to tales of the old Purdy. The little community got a healthy start from hardy settlers who saw their efforts bear social, religious and economic fruits in quick fashion. The people of Purdy made just one mistake: They didn't want the railroad.
Cheese Paid Filing Fee
The beginning for Purdy came in 1823, five years after the treaty with the Chickasaw Indians. Since the Chickasaw Purchase, pioneers had been arriving in increasing numbers to stake their claims in the virgin Tennessee wilderness sandwiched between the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers. Hardworking John Chambers and his wife saved pennies for the small filing charge on their homestead. Finally, carrying cheese made by his wife, Mr. Chambers went to Nashville, sold the cheese and deposited the filing fee. The Chambers' land in time was sold to John Yount. In 1823, the new county of McNairy had been formed, and in 1824 the first county court was held at the home of Abel Maury. Plans for formation of a town were launched by 1825, and John Yount deeded 50 acres of land bordered by rolling hills. Local history records that William S. Wisdom auctioned lots, raising $3,000 to build a courthouse and jail. John Chambers and Nathaniel Griffith opened a store, and a second one was soon in business. Customers included Indians, who traded furs and hides for tin cups, cotton handkerchiefs, sugar, salt and other staples. Maj. Benjamin Wright, whose two sons were to become brigadier generals in the Civil War, fashioned logs, a clapboard roof and doors, puncheon floors and a dirt and stick chimney into the first dwelling. Other homes shot up, and a school house which doubled as a meeting place for the Methodist congregation was completed. Baptist and Cumberland Presbyterian Churches were formed. By 1830, the year a brick courthouse replaced the log building, McNairy County had 5,697 residents. The population of Purdy was 250. A brick hotel was completed, and Thomas Lane had opend a tavern. In the three decades from 1830 until 1860, population climbed to 700. And in those years Purdy added a Male and Female Academy, two newspapers, the Purdy University, a Masonic Lodge and an annual fair. Two more newspapers, the Purdy News and the McNairy County Independent, came later. Although the enterprising little town was unaware, its death-knell began sounding with the driving of spikes in the Mobile and Ohio Railroad tracks in 1858. The railroad had proposed to locate through Purdy, but leading taxpayers led the opposition and the plan was turned down in an election. The railroad, then, was laid four miles west of Purdy, and a community known as Bethel Springs Station sprung up by the tracks. Merchants and others began moving to the railroad, and by 1870 Bethel Springs had outgrown Purdy. In a recent history of Purdy, J. Louis Adams of Selmer, attorney and United States commissioner, tells how agitation for removal of the county seat to the railroad began after 1870. "The struggle between 'Purdy', and 'railroad' advocates during the ensuing 20 years is largely the story of the declining years of Old Purdy, " he writes. "During those final two decades of the old town's history, life in Purdy went on at the same high level as the town had enjoyed since its founding, but astute observers recognized and prepared to accept the inevitable trend toward the superior location ... on the railroad. Throughout a series of bitter legal maneuvers, Bethel Springs and Falcon sought the county seat. A "Selmer Compromise" ended the fight, and in 1891, the county seat was moved to Selmer, seven miles southwest. A boy of 16 was Tom F. Garner when the county's records were transferred. Mr. Garner, at 81, is Purdy's oldest living resident. Retired from farming only five years, the white-haired gentleman still boasts that he can shoot a rifle straight. "I can kill hogs as fast as anybody can stick them," he assured. Mr. Garner recalls his grandfather, Henry Garner, telling how he once drove an ox-drawn wagon from under a Negro, hanging him to a red oak tree at Purdy. The slave had broken into a white home and slain his master's wife. Purdy's oldest resident, until she died in May, was 86-year-old Mrs. Mollie Hill, who passed on stories of Col. Fielding Hurst, a Union sympathizer during the Civil War. The Hurst home, built before the war, is the only structure still standing that was there when Purdy flourished. Colonel Hurst, who organized a cavalry regiment that fought with the Yankees at nearby Shiloh and lost a skirmish with General Forrest at Bolivar, earned a dubious place in Purdy legend. The story is told how, on a patrol to LaGrange, he carried with him a band of Confederate prisoners and, at every mile post, killed one of his countrymen. Troy Hurst, 70-year-old Negro who still lives at Purdy, tells that his father and his father's mother were bought by Colonel Hurst when his father was 6. Hence Troy's last name. "Pappy drove for Colonel Hurst on that LaGrange trip," Troy says. "He even talked Mr. Hurst out of killing a couple men."'Didn't Stop Running'
Clarence C. Dodds, 76, who bought the Hurst place in 1919, recalls being told by the late J. H. Bailey how Mr. Bailey was captured by Hurst and placed under guard in a garden next to the home. The guard went to sleep, and while he dozed, Young Bailey "took off running, and didn't stop 'til he got to the (Tennessee) River," 16 miles away. A crease of a bullet is still in a red cherry staircase in the Hurst home, where a foe of the colonel's fired at him as the Union sympathizer made a hasty retreat upstairs. The strong Union sentiment that existed in McNairy County is reflected in a vote by the county of 1,318 for separation from the Union and 586 against. Five Confederate units were organized at Purdy and Maj. Benjamin Wright furnished the two sons, "Brig. Generals John V. Wright and Marcus J. Wright, to the South's cause. Purdy, before the war, had reached its zenith. In the postwar years strong feeling that had been stirred by opposing factions refused to be resolved. A number of persons moved. But others were intent on restoring Purdy to its former prominence. Purdy University, which had ceased operation when the war came, only three years after its opening, was reorganized. The Purdy News was functioning, and in 1879 the McNairy County Independent began publication. Testimony that the town was liked and disliked came as late as the turn of the century, almost a decade after "Selmer on the Railroad" had inherited the county seat. At a Purdy reunion, after a number of orators had told in glowing terms how the town had functioned prominently, one gentleman who had not been asked to participate took the platform and declared: "Don't talk to me about Purdy being a Heaven on earth. If there ever was a hell on earth, this was it." Purdy's most recent and probably what is its last revival came in 1914 with organization there of a high school by the Memphis Presbytery. "It was the greatest thing McNairy County ever had," said Mrs. Ophelia Wilson Williams, who now lives at 1432 Faxon in Memphis. Mrs. Williams was one of two matrons, and also served as dietitian. At one time, almost 100 boarding students were enrolled from a half dozen states, and the Memphis Juvenile Court sent several young people there for training. After almost 20 years, the home mission board of the Presbyterian Church abandoned financial support of the school and recommended it to laymen of the church. Then, in 1933 fire destroyed the 12-classroom main building, and after two terms held in a dormitory the school died. Today, Purdy has retained a white grammer school. The Negro grammer school has been abolished two years. Religious life revolves around the small Presbyterian Church, where worship services are held once monthly. The Inman store is the only one left.
There's Little Left
Nearby, in the driveway at the Thomas Henson home, bricks from a walkway bordering the old courthouse site are still embedded in the earth. Sandrock from an old tavern foundation has been piled into a foot-high fence. Remains of the jail's foundation litter the ground beyond a grove of locust trees. On her front porch, a white-haired women sits rocking, her shoulders bowed with the years. Perhaps, as have lots of people, she wonders what the old town would have been like today with the railroad. The memories are there, and conjecture. And little else.
Copyright, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN. Used here with permission. No additional reproduction or distribution of this article in any form is permitted without the written approval of The Commercial Appeal (http://www.gomemphis.com). Originally published (date of publication
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