GENEALOGICAL ABSTRACTS FROM REPORTED DEATHS
THE NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE 1905-1907
By Jonathan Kennon Thompson Smith
Copyright, Jonathan K. T. Smith, 2002

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

            For many years the NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE was the official periodical of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Its subscribers were served a generous portion of news, secular and entertaining as well as religious information and articles. One of the most popular features of the periodical over the year were the obituaries, published about church leaders, active lay members of the church, celebrities and ordinary folk. Because of its prestige and wide distribution members of other Christian denominations sometimes published the obituaries of their dead in the CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE.

            In 1905 the periodical was expanded in each issue to at least thirty pages in length with enlarged print. Many photographs were illustrated in the periodical. These did not reproduce well in the microfilming of the CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE issues years ago. Individuals could probably obtain much clearer copies of these photographs from original issues, when extant there, from the Methodist Library, Drew University, Madison Avenue, Madison, New Jersey 07940.

            The present compiler has made an effort for accuracy in gleaning information from the CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE but he advises all persons finding mention of individuals interesting to them to obtain photocopies from the original issues involved from the library mentioned just above.

            The conferences of the church were called annual conferences, for instance, the Memphis Annual Conference. For clarity the compiler often lists the conferences by the church name, as for instance, Memphis Methodist Conference.

            Of particular help to the compiler have been Jack D. Wood and Robert D. Taylor, Jr., librarians, Tennessee Room, Jackson-Madison County Library; Ms Jackie Wood, acquisitions librarian and Memphis Conference archivist, Lambuth University; Reese Jacocks Moses, the premier genealogist of Haywood County, Tennessee; Ms Dorothy Moore, faithful member of the Dancyville United Methodist Church. There are still many good Samaritans in society and the compiler has benefited from their efforts, including David L. Donahue who has placed or made arrangements for the placement of decades of the abstracted data from the NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE on-line for interested computer searchers.

Jonathan K. T. Smith
Jackson, Tennessee
December 2002

 

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