Lawrence County History Trivia

On this day in 1942, Lawrence County’s own Fred Thompson was born..

Fred D. Thompson was born in Sheffield, Alabama, but grew up in Lawrenceburg and was a 1960 graduate of Lawrence County High School. Remembered as a class clown by friends, the 6’5″ Thompson was also a gifted athlete.

In his memoir ‘Teaching the Pig to Dance,’ Fred reminisced about many of his teenage misadventures in Lawrenceburg, including one incident when he threw a bottle of water into a window fan at the Blue Ribbon Café, accidentally shattering the window and earning him a lecture from café owner Dudley Brewer.

One of the turning points in Thompson’s life came when his then-father-in-law gave him a copy of Clarence Darrow’s autobiography. As he told the Boston ‘Globe’ in 2007, after reading Darrow’s book, Thompson knew he wanted to be a lawyer.

Fred earned a law degree from Vanderbilt in 1967. He obtained a job as an assistant U.S. Attorney and was introduced to Senator Howard Baker, with whom he formed a close bond. Thompson was Baker’s campaign manager in 1972. Baker, who was the ranking Republican on the Senate Watergate Committee, obtained a position for Thompson as committee counsel.

In his role as committee counsel, Thompson asked one of the most critical questions of the Watergate investigation. During a public hearing on July 16, 1973, Thompson asked White House aide Alexander Butterfield if he “was aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President.” The question sparked a chain of events which precipitated Nixon’s resignation a year later. Thompson’s 1975 book ‘At That Point in Time’ recounted his experience in the Watergate hearings.

Thompson began an unlikely film career after successfully defending the whistleblower in a political scandal case in Tennessee. The story inspired the book ‘Marie: A True Story’ by Peter Maas. When the book was made into the film ‘Marie’ in 1985, Thompson played himself alongside Sissy Spacek, Jeff Daniels, and Morgan Freeman.

Fred’s film career went on to include parts in ‘Days of Thunder,’ ‘The Hunt for Red October,’ ‘Die Hard 2,’ and a recurring role as district attorney Arthur Branch on the television show ‘Law and Order.’

In 1994, Thompson successfully ran to fill the unexpired senate term of Vice President Al Gore and won again in 1996. He declined to run in 2002 and returned to acting.

On September 5, 2007, Fred announced on ‘The Tonight Show’ that he was running for president. He kicked off his presidential bid with a massive rally on the Square in Lawrenceburg on September 15. Thousands of people packed into the Square to hear Fred’s 25-minute speech, which he closed with, “The things I learned here have never left me, and I want to thank you for that, Lawrenceburg.”

Unfortunately for Fred, his campaign failed to gain traction, and he quit the race in January 2008.

Fred passed away on November 6, 2015 from a recurrence of lymphoma. He is buried in Mimosa Cemetery in Lawrenceburg.

Sixty years ago today, on August 13, 1964, the first African-American students enrolled in Lawrence County High School and Loretto High School and the Lawrence County Schools System was desegregated.

According to Carpenter and Carter’s ‘Our Hometown,’ the transition from segregated to integrated classrooms in our area went relatively smoothly, without the violence that characterized integration in some other areas of the nation.

While segregated schools for black students were available through the eighth grade in Lawrence County prior to integration, Lawrence County’s black students had to catch a bus to Mt. Pleasant–a roughly 50-mile round-trip each day–if they wanted to attend high school prior to 1964.

In a post we did about this subject ten years ago, some of our readers shared their memories of those first days of racial integration.

Brenda Wright McDonald and Carolyn Pulley both remembered attending an assembly in the LCHS gym shortly before the school was integrated where school faculty explained to the student body what was happening.

Terry Evans recalled that someone asked Coach Leonard Staggs of LCHS if he was going to allow black students to play football or basketball, to which Coach Staggs replied, “If they prove they can play, then they will play.”

Coach Staggs backed up his words with actions when Ernest Smith became the first African-American student to play sports for Lawrence County High School soon thereafter.

Kate Moore shared her memories that, despite opposition from a few parents at having an African-American teacher at Lawrenceburg Public School, second grade teacher Vera Davis “became a much-loved teacher at LPS, teaching second grade there for many years until her retirement.”

What are your memories of integration in Lawrence County?

For most of its six-mile path between the Natchez Trace and CC Road, Laurel Hill Road is a path through the wilderness. The property it traverses is heavily wooded and part of nearly 20 square miles of land owned there by the State of Tennessee.

But just downhill from Laurel Hill Cemetery, at the spot where the road takes a sharp turn and crosses Little Buffalo River, like the ruins of an ancient civilization reclaimed by nature, you can still see the remains of what was once a bustling little industrial village. Bricks piled here and there and the odd piece of metal protruding from the ground are all that remain of the Laurel Hill Cotton Mill.

Laurel Hill was once a village built on the Little Buffalo River. By the late 19th century, it is estimated that as many as 400 people lived there. Named for the abundant mountain laurel that grew in the area, by the late 19th century the town boasted a school, a post office, several sawmills, a spoke mill, a headen mill, a grist mill, and, of course, the massive cotton mill.

The cotton mill was a brick building, believed to have been built in the 1840s. A chancery sale for the property in 1869 described it as four stories, 80 by 40 feet, with 2,000 spindles, batting card, 56 looms, and “all machinery necessary for manufacturing four-quarter sheetings.” The property also included a six-room “cottage,” 1,800 acres and a tan yard with 60 vats.

During the Civil War, the mill is said to have produced material for Confederate uniforms until Federal occupation forced its closure. An 1875 blurb in the Pulaski ‘Citizen’ says that the mill produced “heavy sheeting, yarns, and bolting.”

In 1903, the owner decided to close the mill and open a new cotton mill in Arkansas, a situation which the Nashville ‘American’ described as “a great drawback to this community” and that it would throw “a great many out of employment.”

The paper was correct. When the mill whistle ceased, the village disappeared in short order. Today, all that remains of the bustling little town is a cemetery and a pile of bricks by the river. 

How many people do you think you could get to verify that you are a good person?

One Lawrence County man got the signatures of 190 people!

The reason? Civil War veteran drama.

In the spring of 1906, 78-year-old James S. Finley of Lawrenceburg applied for a pension from the State of Tennessee for his service in the Confederate army. In 1861, Finley enlisted in Company A of the 32nd Tennessee Infantry. He was a Methodist pastor in civilian life, and on October 28, 1861, he was elected chaplain of his regiment.

After the fall of Fort Donelson and the capture of a large portion of the Army of Tennessee in February 1862, Finley claims that he was ordered to return home until further notice. He says that when the men of his regiment were exchanged in October 1862, he reported to the conscription officer, who promptly issued him a discharge due to his status as a minister. He says that for the duration of the war, he “lived a quiet and peaceable life,” minding his own business at his home in Marshall County.

Finley’s account and his extant service record satisfied the Tennessee Board of Pension Examiners, and he was allowed to draw his $5 per month–once. After one check, Finley’s pension stopped and he was given no reason why.

As it turned out, some local Confederate veterans were outraged that Finley’s name was added to the pension roll, and they wasted no time letting the state know. Finley found out about this when the Pension Board mistakenly sent him a letter that was probably intended for the governor. It said:

“As soon as his name appeared in the published list of new pensioners, we received protests from some of the leading citizens of Lawrence County…and from Marshall County where he lived during the war. It was charged that he saw little or no service in the army, that he left the army in 1862, and that thereafter he affiliated with the other side, acting as pilot and informer for the Federal troops in this section of the state.”

Finley’s neighbor, the schoolteacher and Union veteran J.J.W. Starr, wrote a flurry of letters to the governor and the Pension Board denying the charges and insisting that Finley be allowed a fair and impartial hearing regarding the case.

T.H. Meredith, a local Confederate veteran and court official, did not mince words in his angry letters to the Pension Board. He claimed that Finley helped the Union army during the war, that he began the first Northern Methodist church ever seen in the area, that he consistently voted the Republican ticket, and that he was “a low-down cuss, and he deserves a kick from all honest men.” Meredith had some harsh words for J.J.W. Starr, too, calling him “the most contemptible Yankee that ever struck our county,” and that he “meddles in a great many things that do not concern him.”

John B. Kennedy, another local Confederate veteran and court official, took aim at Finley’s personal life, claiming that Finley had been married three times; the first wife “he treated so shamefully and so brutally…that she finally went insane and died,” the second he divorced, and the third he ordered from a “matrimonial service.” Kennedy went on to say that Finley “is the worst old Philistine who has so far escaped the jawbone.”

In the autumn of 1909, a petition circulated requesting Finley’s reinstatement on the roll, stating that he was “a person of good moral character and worthy of belief.”

The petition, seen here, is impressive. It contains 190 names of men from a variety of walks of life. James D. Vaughan, the father of Southern Gospel music, signed it, as did the mayor, a doctor, a dentist, multiple pastors, several Civil War veterans of both sides, as well as butchers, merchants, painters, carpenters, harness makers, brakemen, newspaper editors, bakers, and the city marshal.

Finley died in 1911, but was never reinstated to the pension roll. He is buried in Mimosa Cemetery in Lawrenceburg, surrounded by both his detractors and most of the 190 men who signed their names to vouch for his character.

While all of Lawrence County’s cemeteries are historic to some degree, only one cemetery in Lawrence County is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

St. Mary’s Cemetery, five miles east of St. Joseph, on Gieske Road is the only remnant of the abandoned German Catholic settlement of St. Mary’s. Established in 1872, the community of St. Mary’s had a log Catholic church and was home to a handful of German immigrants who came to Lawrence County as part of the German Catholic Migration of the 1870s.

The parish was eventually absorbed by St. Joseph and the log church is long gone, but the little cemetery at St. Mary’s remains, and it is still an active burial site. Buried there are members of the Gieske, Kerstiens, Henkel, Regensberg, and Bergob families, among others.

Some of the earliest stones, like this one marking the grave of Theresia Bergob, have German epitaphs. Although some parts of the stone have been worn almost illegible by more than a century of the elements, Theresia Bergob’s stone (as far as I can read it) says the following:

HIER RUHT
THERESIA BERGOB
GEB den 27 FEBR 1842
in Beisinghausen Gemeinde
Reiste Westfalen
GEST den 25 OCT 1908
Deuneliebe songinicht
mehrdein Erkaliendein
Erblassen schulg uns Wunder
lief und schuwer

The German epitaphs, combined with the cemetery’s association with the German Catholic migration, make the cedar-ringed burial ground unique enough to meet the rigorous criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

St. Mary’s Cemetery was listed on the National Register on October 10, 1984.

July 1884 was windy in Lawrence County. Brief, loud summer storms raked the fields, watering the earth but bending and damaging corn stalks throughout the area. And on the 30th, in the midst of that stormy summer, one of the most influential men in the community of Appleton breathed his last.

News of the passing reached Lawrenceburg by special messenger the next morning, and a local minister set out from his home on Pulaski Street to fulfill his last promise to an old friend.

Colonel Alexander G. Dobbins was 68 years old when he took his last breath. He died of cancer, no doubt surrounded by family in the midst of his massive and prosperous farm. He certainly had plenty of family left to carry on his name; his first two wives had given him five children each before dying, leaving his third and final wife–a woman eighteen years his junior–a number of stepsons to help maintain her estate.

An expert in livestock, Colonel Dobbins built a successful business empire despite his limited education. At the time of his death, he owned three mercantile houses and at least 4/5 of a square mile of land in Lawrence County’s third district. He was generous and well-liked, and very active in his masonic lodge.

Years before, Colonel Dobbins had asked his old friend W.T. Nixon to preach his funeral. And so it was, when word of the Colonel’s passing reached Lawrenceburg early the next morning, Nixon saddled his horse Old Nell and rode south to fulfill his promise.

About eight miles south of Lawrenceburg, Nixon and Old Nell were caught in a sudden violent storm and had to take shelter at the home of Rice Wilburn. When the storm let up, Wilburn joined him and they arrived at Colonel Dobbins’s home around 2:30 that afternoon.

Nixon kept his word to his old friend. He was sure to remark on the fact that Colonel Dobbins “had never taken a chew of tobacco, had never smoked a pipe, never drank a drink of whiskey and had never sworn an oath.” He was buried with full masonic honors after the sermon.

His vow completed, Nixon started back to Lawrenceburg at 5:30 and finally arrived home at 11:30 that night, the 18-mile journey taking him six hours over a very “rough road.”