DEATH NOTICES FROM THE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
1880-1882,
(OF THOSE PERSONS BORN UP TO AND INCLUDING THE YEAR 1830)
By Jonathan Kennon Thompson Smith
Copyright, Jonathan K. T. Smith, 2000Special thanks to go Mr. Smith for allowing his work to be posted on the web
and to Laurel Baty who transcribed Mr. Smith's book, thus making these web pages possible.
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INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
The NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE became the official periodical of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and extant issues date from 1846; from 1851-1854 this publication was entitled the NASHVILLE AND LOUISVILLE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE and in 1858 it reverted to the simpler, CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, Nashville. These publications featured articles dealing with church polity, doctrine, news from the conferences, religious celebrities, even current market reports and one of the most popular of its regular items, the obituaries and death notices, most of which were for deceased Methodists but not entirely.
The editors of the early Methodist newspapers/periodicals recognized the importance of publishing obituaries of ordinary persons as well as the more noteworthy ones. These obituaries varied considerably in content; some were replete with essential vital statistics of the deceased persons as well as comments about ancestry, marriage, children, migrations, church related activities and milestones and oft-surprisingly frank comments about individual character. Present-day obituaries pale before their old-time counterparts, lacking in most instances the intimately human element in the reporting.
During the period covered by the abstracts provided in the present publication the number of obituaries published in the CA became voluminous. The present writer has chosen to abstract (and duplicate a few) all those obituaries detectable of persons who were born before and including the year 1830 as these generally contain more genealogically significant information.
Jonathan K. T. Smith
Jackson, Tennessee
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