My friends - A number of our subscribers have sent notes to me, asking that I talk a bit more about the Fidelity community in Calloway County and about Professor Wilson's book, "Fidelity Folks". In lieu of the delayed terminology posting that was set for today's JP List, I will review some things about Fidelity. Fidelity was a community located in the south-southeast part of Calloway County, on the Blood River, and somewhat east of New Concord. Brandon's Mill was northeast of Fidelity(and Professor Wilson has a chapter in the book on Brandon's Mill). Professor Wilson provided two excellent graphics inside the covers of his book. One is a map of the area of the County where Fidelity was situated, and includes such landmarks as the locations of Fort Henry, Shiloh Landing, Buffalo Landing, "Mill Jimmy's Mill", Sulphur Springs Church, "Marse Peter's[Rowlett] Tobacco Factory" and other such buildings, with roads, creeks and rivers shows, as well. The other drawing is entitled, "Fidelity - 1888-1906", and shows houses, the school house, the dentist's home, the "graveyard", Union Church, the tobacco factory, general store, Fidelity Hotel, and other buildings on the street or two that ran through Fidelity. These are really useful and remarkable drawings. I have scanned them and plan to put them up on the Jackson Purchase Images website for a time. I cannot do so today, because RootsWeb, on whose server the Images web site is held, is doing routine maintenance on their servers and I cannot get access to ftp the images up to the server. However, those of you that are interested in these drawings, and would like to see them at once can send a private e-mail to me, and I will send the image files directly to you. Fidelity had, by 1900, almost disappeared. My late grandmother, who was born in 1883, remembered passing through in a buggy, numerous times, what was still called Fidelity in the 1893-1898 time frame, when she was a child, but, even then, it was only a vestige of its former self. Professor Wilson was well remembered by his former students as a man who was an excellent instructor, who was somewhat eccentric, and who had a fabulous, infectious "giggle" that he often employed in his teaching technique. In reading over the book again, he uses some literary license, I think, that tends to build upon, and enhance, his remembrances, but may not be absolutely factual relative to the actual events. The book was written in 1946, and his style and remembrances, for example, reflect the general regional thinking, even as late as 1946, about the African-American residents of Fidelity. He is complimentary in all respects, but, for example, he titles one chapter, "Our Uncle Remus", which, in today's society, might not always be universally well received. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating, and now a rare, book, and I hope to bring more selections from it to the JP and Calloway lists as we go along. There will be no data posts per se over the weekend, as we head into the July 4th festivities next week, but I hope to return with a file offering of some type at some point. -B =========================================================================