The Lexington progress. (Lexington, Tenn.) 1884-current, 1921-04-22

Thursday of last week, the tenth
day of April, was an anniversary On
that day / rode in wagon from Per-
ryville to Decaturville, in company
with my brother, Charles d. Barry,
who had founded the Decatur County
Beacon on the 10th day of September,
1880, and on that tenth of April,
first met our townsman, Hon p. O.
Roberts, deputy Clerk of the County
Court of Henderson county, who is
now in his 10Th year and | believe is
the most wide-awake, active and eff
cient man | know who has gone more
than five years over the allotted
three score and ten years. OF his
bunch of six children, Albert, Clara,
Lillian, Maude and Herbert, all are
yet living and, likewise, Mrs. Roberts
is "lucky" woman for her years. The
Hon. P. o. ought to reach 100-and
we hope that Mrs. Roberts and the
children will all be here to help cele-
brate his centennial.
Well, there was thick ice on that
morning of April 10th, 1881 and not
until the 10Th was there a spring like
day-a fact to which Lawyer w. s.
Maxwell called the attention to my
ather-in-law, the late Curry P. Dem
nison, for until the 10th the woods
seemed to be as dead as in December.
When the fall Of that year came, at
about the 10th of November and later,
| the Dennison Hotel boarders sat out
doors every night until ten o'clock, in
shirt sleeves, with all house doors and
windows open-and Maxwell again
called attention of Mr.. Dennison to
the remarkable fact.
Possibly every man who was pres
ent at the Dennison Hotel at that
time is now dead except the writer
and d. Hyder Selph, young lawyer,
now resident in Oklahoma, who got
but one case while he was in Decatur
vile and made such a blunder in that
that he quit, in disgust, all attempt
to practice law, and spent some
years as a tramp before he took the
road to success.
Maxwell was an aged looking man
at little more than fifty-but he took
a notion to rejuvinate, and succeeded
to such an extent that he lived to be
up in eighty and finally died in Perry
county, a very young looking man
for his great age. He had bad teeth
and wore very ordinary clothing, so
in the determination to cast aside his
aged look, he had his bad teetht pull
ed and got dentist, DR.. Croker, who
visited Decaturville periodically, to
make him some new ones; he came to
Lexington and had Tailor Jim Pinks-
ton (long since dead) to make him a
suit or two, left Decaturville and
went to Brown County, Texas, where
he became County Judge and spent
several years before growing old and
returning to his children in Tennes-
see. We remember one time Judge
Maxwell getting mad at a woman and
the remark that she twas no
thing but a d-n scrub anyhow-had
fetlocks four inches long" Judge
Maxwell was a thin and stopped man
when | knew him but have been told
that he Strengthened up and took on
so much flesh that he became a large
man. By the way, he was law
partner of of the late "Jeems" w.
Doherity and at one time they lived
and kept house on the top of the
hill, on the SCOTS Hill road, on the
edge of Decaturville-the Walters
place, | believe it was called. Judge
Doherty, too, has long since gone to
test that conversation he always said
he intended to have with Peter at the
pearly gate, which the Judge said
would conclude with the statement !
from Peter that a man who had liv-
ed in Decaturville for 16 years "had
had all the hell he needed" no matter
how bad he had been. The
Judge loved Decaturville, lived there
in preference to any other place in
the world-hence took the liberty of |
making such remarks.
On that 10th day of April | was
taught the letter boxes in the news
type case There was no point sys-
tenn in type them by my younger
brother, Frank, who died in Jackson !