Stories from the Past

Brewer

In the 5th district (Howesville) of the 1850 census for Decatur Co, James Q. (Quisenbury) Brewer is listed as having a saw mill and he was also Justice of the Peace. According to Bill Chumney, he moved to Perry County in 1838 by wagon train from Chatham County, NC. Water from Cub Creek was diverted through his saw mill to provide power. Mr. Chumney says, “I remember…seeing an old leather bound ledger that my grandmother had that James Q. used to keep his customers’ charges and payments on both the saw mill and justice of the peace fees.” We share Mr. Chumney’s feelings of regret that the ledger no longer exists.

B.R. Jennings‘ transcription of   “Paducah Daily News” microfilm:

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 1888      The New Mail Service

The new steamboat mail service on the Tennessee River, which goes into operations this week, lands mail at the following places four times per week: Paducah, KY; Altoona; Star Lime Works; Birmingham, Aurora, Enterprise, Blood and Warburgh, KY; Dildah’s Landing TN; Pine Bluff; KY; New Buffalo, KY; Paris Landing, TN, and Bayne, Molke, Danville, Ariadne, Clayton, Johnsonville, Rockport, Cuba Landing, Ship’s Landing, Ledbetter, Britt’s Landing, Denison’s Landing, Parker, Brodie’s Landing, Mouse Tail, Perryville, Webb, Cedar Creek Landing, New Era, Lego, Peter’s Landing, Bob, Clifton, Laden, Swallow Bluff, Point Pleasant, Saltillo, Cerro Gordo, Coffee Landing, Savannah, Pittsburgh Landing, Hamburgh, Pyburn’s Bluff, Boyd’s Landing, and Walnut Grove, TN; Eastport, MS; Chickasaw, AL; Waterloo and Smithsonia, AL, Florence, AL.

February, 1883

Mr. Will Scott returned from a business trip up the Tennessee today. He reports great excitement in certain parts of that country over small-pox. The ports of Saltillo, Waynesboro, Clifton, and Decaturville maintain a strict quarantine and will allow no one to land there. There were sixteen cases of the disease at Johnsonsville and there have been six deaths from it. The water from the Ohio is backed up the Tennessee for nearly seventy-five miles.

April 23, 1885     East Perryville Burned

On landing at east Perryville, on the Tennessee, night before last, the Henry A. Tyler found that the two-story frame building there, used as a dwelling and a hotel, had just been burned down. The steamer took a lot of peanuts from the warehouse of Mr. J. H. Tate, at the landing, and on  rounding out the officers heard bells ringing, and discovered that the large warehouse they had just left, and the store adjoining, were already in flames and being rapidly consumed. There was no insurance on any of the property and both fires are supposed to have been incendiary work. The two fires were fully one hundred yards from each other and several hours apart. Mr. Tate was the merchant and shipper of that landing, and, of course, his loss will be serious. East Perryville, is immediately opposite old Perryville, 158 miles above this place.