Tennessee State Library and Archives GARRETT, JILL KNIGHT
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State of Tennessee Department of State Tennessee State Library and Archives 403 Seventh Avenue North Nashville, Tennessee 37243-0312 GARRETT, JILL KNIGHT COLLECTION ca. 1800-1969 Processed by: Mary Washington Frazer (1970), Marylin Bell (1975), and Cathi Carmack (1997) Archival Technical Services Accession Numbers: 1621, 1969.338, 1970.057, 1970.072, 1970.081, 1970.096, 1971.076, 1971.123, 1971.128, 1971.158, 1971.160, 1972.033, 1972.044, 1975.014, 1975.080, 1976.205, 1994.143, 1994.144, 1994.145, 1994.146 Location: VII-C-4-6 and Mss drawer #3 Microfilm Accession Number: 1196 MICROFILMED INTRODUCTION The Jill Knight Garrett Collection contains material primarily concerning Maury County, Tennessee, and those counties of Middle Tennessee located along the east back of the Tennessee River between the Buffalo, Duck, and Cumberland rivers. Some material on northern Alabama is also included. Mrs. Garrett collected these materials during her career as a historian, writer, and genealogist and donated the collection to the State Library Archives in numerous small accessions. The collection was reprocessed in early 1997, involving the removal of numerous published items for transfer to the State Library holdings and the addition of approximately 5 cubic feet of materials not previously processed. The materials in this finding aid measure 10 linear feet. There are no restrictions on the materials. Single photocopies of these materials may be made for purposes of scholarly research. Copying on a large scale is prohibited. In 2019, in accordance with replevin laws, a portion of the physical collection was deaccessioned and repatriated to the Maury County Archives. This repatriation only impacted official county records generated in Maury County, Tennessee. As a result, boxes 2-13 are available at TSLA on microfilm only. SCOPE AND CONTENT The Jill Knight Garrett Collection is composed of materials collected by Mrs. Garrett during her career as a historian, genealogist, and writer. The collection is divided into twelve series; there are also two oversize maps housed separately. Most of the collection deals with Maury County, Tennessee, but there is also material concerning Giles, Dickson, Hickman, Houston, and Humphreys counties in Tennessee and counties in northern Alabama. The Cemetery Records Series (Series I) includes data for Houston, Humphreys, Marshall, and Maury counties, Tennessee as well as Lauderdale County, Alabama. A folder of records for the Freeman family of Pike County, Illinois (former residents of Dickson County, Tennessee) is also included. The Civil War Records Series (Series II) includes claims, lists, and five rosters of Confederate units from Tennessee. The Clippings series includes articles on various historical sites and events in Alabama and Tennessee as well as on Jesse James, “Johnny Shiloh”, and Ed O’Neal. The Correspondence Series (Series III) includes letters of 29 different correspondents, most writing during the Civil War. Many letters are original, but some are typescripts. The letter from C. D. Bailey, 1886, chiefly concerns the running of trains into Scottsville, Kentucky. A letter from John Brahan to Thomas Jefferson in 1809 discusses the death of Meriwether Lewis. A. B. Cathey’s letter to Frank H. Smith in 1903 deals with the mapping of Wayne County, Tennessee. An original letter of Judge John Catron, 1827, concerns a court case. William Cochran’s letter from Texas to his mother in Maury County, 1849, tells of farming conditions, reports of Indian trouble, and his election to the Texas legislature. A circular letter, 1886, contains affidavits from M.E.M. Ellis, Sarah J. Brashears, Wm. F. Hinton, and M. E. Brashears regarding the confession of robbery by Elias Woodall of Allen County, Kentucky. Two typescripts of letters from Jesse James, using the alias J. D. Howard, were written from Nashville, Tennessee in 1879. A letter from Park Marshall of Nashville in 1914 concerns a controversy over the Natchez Trace involving the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology. Thirty-three letters of John R. Peacock to Jill Garrett concern Mrs. Garrett’s research into the Civil War in Maury County. Elyzabeth Ridings’ letter to her nephew Alfred Tomlinson in 1871, written from Waverly, Tennessee, describes her large family and how they came through the Civil War. Twenty typescripts of John W. Robinson’s letters to his family during the Civil War were written from Clarksville, Tennessee, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and Port Hudson, Louisiana. Pleasant F. Russell’s letter of 1927 describes his Spanish-American War service with Company B, 1st Tennessee Infantry. Neppie Rushing Smith’s correspondence, 1956-1957, transcribed by Mildred Sullivan Gambill, chiefly concerns genealogy and the history of Benton County, Tennessee. Judge John Stanton’s letter to Jill Garrett informs her of her selection as Maury County Historian in 1970. A typed transcript of a letter of unknown origin concerns the death of John Sidney Branch in the Mexican War, 1847. Other Civil War letters are from George D. Armstrong, James Lowery Davis, Joshua Delk, J. N. Fitzpatrick, Edgar Allen Foster, J. Thilman Hendrick, John T. Hodges, Ike P. Howard, John McClanahan, John D. McGill, Frank Gillette Smith, and John Trotter. Series V and VI, Maury County Court Cases and Maury County Court Records, are original records collected by Mrs. Garrett. The court cases are arranged alphabetically by plaintiff’s name. With a few exceptions, most cases are dated in the 1820s or 1860s. Court records are arranged by type of document. Many of these loose records may contain information duplicated in the bound records located in Maury County and on microfilm at the State Library and Archives. The largest groupings of records include judgments, pauper’s records, and road records. The researcher will note that road records are arranged in two different groups: by name of road and by date. Those arranged by name of road were part of Mrs. Garrett’s original collection and were presumably arranged in this manner by her. Those filed by date were part of a later accession of materials which have been added in reprocessing of the collection. Because of the large volume of material, these have not been rearranged to fit Mrs. Garrett’s original filing scheme. The Diaries and Memoirs Series (Series VII) includes 18 excerpts or complete diaries/ memoirs, most dealing with the Civil War. These are all either typescripts or photocopies. Writers include Redick C. Carnell telling of his boyhood impressions of Waverly at the time of the war, Carroll Henderson Clark of Van Buren County, who served with the 16th Tennessee Infantry, and Thomas Maitland Hogan of Hickman County, who served with Company G of the 48th Tennessee Volunteers. Four from Maury County who wrote of this period are Whitfield McConnell, who wrote in detail of his imprisonment at Johnson’s Island and his escape; William James Moore, who served in Coleman’s Scouts; Robert D. Smith, Ordinance officer in the 2nd Tennessee Infantry; and John Thomas Williamson, who served in the 51st Tennessee Infantry. Also included in this series is a memoir of Rowena Webster giving glimpses of life during the Civil War as seen through the eyes of a young girl. Much of the memoir tells of life at “Beechwood,” home of her brother-in-law and sister, Colonel and Mrs. Andrew Erwin, near Wartrace, Tennessee, although parts of it describe incidents around Huntsville and LaFayette, Alabama and Nashville, Tennessee, as the family moved in an attempt to stay out of the direct line of battle. There are personal accounts of Gen. Pat Cleburne and Gen. W. J. Hardee. The Miscellaneous Documents Series (Series VIII) includes wills, legal documents, land records, photographs, and other documents arranged by name of person or group. The Genealogical Data Series (Series IX) contains information filed by family name, with the exception of one folder of materials on families from Santa Fe, Tennessee. The Organizations Series (Series X) chiefly concerns Maury County, Tennessee organizations such as the Columbia Temperance Society, Concord Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the Phintias Lodge of the Knights of Pythias, the Maury County Historical Society, the Napier Iron Company, and the Order of Pale faces. Types of records include minute books, constitutions, treasurer’s reports, and a church session book. The Historical and Biographical Sketches Series (Series XI) contains collected sketches by other authors filed by title, mostly concerning historical events or places in Middle Tennessee and northern Alabama. Many deal with the Civil War. Series XII, Writings of Jill Knight Garrett, includes four unpublished manuscripts reflecting Mrs. Garrett’s research on early Maury County history, guerrillas and bushwhackers in Civil War-era Middle Tennessee, the Ku Klux Klan in Maury County, and Lauderdale County, Alabama. The oversize items consist of two Maury County maps and a Columbia, Tennessee, hotel registry, 1899-1900. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Jill Knight Garrett was a Maury County, Tennessee, historian, writer, and publisher. In 1965, the Maury County Historical Society was organized in her home with Mrs. Garrett serving as the editor of the quarterly, Historic Maury. She and her mother, Iris McClain, wrote and published numerous books on Maury, Humphreys, Hickman, Dickson, Rutherford, and Houston Counties. She published The Maury Genealogist and The River Counties, both quarterlies, and contributed to numerous scholarly publications such as the Tennessee Historical Society Quarterly. She contributed feature stories to the Columbia Daily Herald, and many articles from her column “Hither and Yon” were reprinted in two volumes. Mrs. Garrett was recognized in historical circles as an authority on the Civil War as well as the War of 1812. A graduate of the University of North Alabama, she was a life member of the James K. Polk Memorial Association and held memberships in the U. S. Daughters of 1812, the Maury County chapter of the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities, the Students’ Club, and the Maury County Creative Arts Guild.