McNAIRY COUNTY, TN - HISTORY - First Monday at Purdy  
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               OLD TIMES IN McNAIRY COUNTY
          McNairy County Independent, June 23, 1924


                        First Monday

If there is any one institution that particularly belongs in
McNairy County it is "First Monday" The day is as old as the
county, and associated with it are some of the most interesting and
thrilling chapters in the history of the old county.  It was a day
at old Purdy before Major Benjamin Wright went west to fight in the
war for the Independence of Texas, before the Mexican war, before
any now living in the county were born. For nearly a century men of
all classes, ages, conditions and stations have been a part of the
First Monday crowd. It was the day for the discussion of all
problems, local and otherwise with which the people were concerned.
On that day political conventions were held. Candidates for
district, county, state and national positions were considered.
Slates were made and broken.  It was, the day for the muster, and
for the organization of the people for all purposes.

Reading from an old book which we have before us, there appears an
article about the crowd and happenings on a First Monday in old
Purdy eighty-two years ago.  Some of the names are so suggestive of
the different sections of the county, and of the people who then
composed its citizenship, that we call the roll of some of them for
you.  As you read these names, there will instinctively come to
your mind the picture of other days.

" From the fifth district came the Chambers, with their friends and
allies, Elbert Stinson, Henry Sharp, John Barnhill, Robert Houston.
>From the ninth district we behold Benjamin Sanders, a man of
inflexible integrity, and very popular in his neighborhood Then
there were the Damron, Atkins, Wardlow, Burks, Coln, Farris, George
Darnell, Sharp, and Stubblefield.

"From the tenth district were Sanders McKenzie, tall erect, and
taciturn as an Indian, John Kendrick an old Virginian, a mighty
hunter, and the first Thompsonian physician in the county.  Wm.
Caruthers, Old Nettie Erwin, a Presbyterian elder, Holman Ducan,
Pope Norvell, Thomas Veal, Solomon  Await, a preacher, Squire
Wilburn, McCann and Rainey, Ussery, Cardwell, Jackson Preston, the
McKenzies, Andrew and David and Ruben, "old Puppy" Smith, Theopolus
Hamm, Ellis, Tom Tinsley, William Strawn, Larkin Rushing, old man
Leighton, Levi Anderson, John Gilchrist, Benjamin Sanders, Esq.,
Thomas Sanders, Sr., father of Thomas and Joel K., John Cobb,
Thomas Beck, John Green and Forbes.

"From the Adamsville district came George Adams, for whom the town
was named, Jack  Lindsay, Bolton Skillman, old Jimmie Wilson, John
Helbert, Joel Stanley, Anderson Cox, the Scotts, Surratts, Parmer
Pierson, Combs, old Billy Rogers, Carrolls, Hills, Tidwells,
Higgins, Barr, and Williams.

"Then we see the Barnes, John Paschal, Chamnessess, Dancers Pugh
Cannon, a Revolutionary soldier, Phillips, Berkeen, Landreth,
Anderson, Trice, Johnson Sewell, Frankie ? Beard, Major Horton,
Jacob Lorance, Sweat, Street, Kirby, Gillispie, Tatum, Kernodle,
John S. Joplin, John Brooks, Horn, Rains, Luttrell, Alfred Needham,
Felix Todd, McGees, Capt. Adams and his sons, Mitchell and James,
Lumpkins, and McCann, and John H. Meeks

"In Purdy on that day were C. H. Dorien, the tavern keeper, Wiley
B. Terry and Wm. S. Wisdom, merchants, Samuel Pace, tailor, Maclin
Cross, lawyer, Crump Brothers, doctors, A. A. Sanders and Richard
Harwell, merchants, Jack Kinkead, the keeper of the inn, Rulean and
Weedon, tanners, Malugen, the jailer, George and James Burtwell
running the carding factory, James Conner, teacher in the Boy's
Academy, Old Jimmie Reed, the brick mason, Nat Shull, and Long Tom
Johnson, Harbert Taum clerk for Wisdom.

W. D. Jopling, the old red fox, John V. and Marcus J. Wright, D. M.
Wisdom, Samuel Chaney, Calvin Shull, and many others who won honor
and glory in the years that followed were school boys in old Purdy
that day, eighty two years ago, and on a first Monday.  You can no
more disconnect or disassociate McNairy county from the First
Monday days, than  you can forget its history and the achievements
of its men and women.

We of another day and generation witness the First Monday day now.
the old ones have passed away, but with the memory of those good
old days and the picture of the past before us, we are glad there
was and is such a day.