Tom has requested it; and I'm happy to comply. The article I did on Hood's invasion of Tennessee is posted to the web page. http://www.netease.net/wayne/Hood.htm It may take a little while to download because of the maps. I'll see if I can rework them later. Edgar ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 8:58 PM Subject: Re: [TNWAYNE] John Bell Hood's invasion of TN > Edgar, would it be possible to post this article as a link from the Wayne > County web site (or on another site) for those of us who don't have access > to the Historian? > > Tom Courtney > [email protected] > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Edie Wood" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 1:45 PM > Subject: [TNWAYNE] John Bell Hood's invasion of TN > > > > I am delighted with the article in the June 2000 Wayne County, > > Historian about General John Bell Hood's invasion into > > Tennessee. by Edgar Byler.,III. I just finished reading this and > > would like to say what a great article, and one i will cherish in years to > > come. I always wondered about the families there after the War. I had > heard > > stories about them having to hide food to survive. This sure tells what > the > > war brought to the area of Waynesboro, Clifton and area's close by. This > > sure was a great > > article and may i ask for more like this. Great Job. > > Edie Wood > > > > > > > > ==== TNWAYNE Mailing List ==== > > Visit the Wayne County, Tennessee Genealogy and History Page at > > http://www.netease.net/wayne > > > > > ==== TNWAYNE Mailing List ==== > Visit the Wayne County, Tennessee Genealogy and History Page at > http://www.netease.net/wayne > > >

For those of you interested in the Wayne County, Tennessee Family History Fair, I've just posted a page on the Wayne County Page about the fair, giving the date, the time and providing a table reservation form. http://www.netease.net/wayne/familyfair.htm If you have any additional questions, please send them to the list. We cannot provide information about lodging, etc., but there should be some information available on the various city and county links given at http://www.netease.net/wayne/community.htm Edgar

Connie Pearl mentions a Genealogy Fair. Can someone tell me about that? My brother and I are planning a trip in the fall to search our Tennessee roots. We haven't set a specific date yet and are looking for events, weather conditions and ancestral roots in Wayne and Lewis Counties. Suggestions are welcome. Family names HAYS/HAYES, GRIMES, VINCENT and allied families. Marcia Hayes Cussins ---- Original Message ----- From: "connie" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2002 9:46 PM Subject: [TNWAYNE] Wayne Co. Fair > Is the Wayne Co Fair going to b the 2nd Saturday in July? We are planning > on coming to the Brewer reunion, going to the grand ole Opera and then to > the Genealogy fair. I probably have missed seeing the dates somewhere > along the time but I thought it was always the 2nd Saturday. Connie Pearl > > > Searching Wallace, Wallis, Holt, Hill, Fowler, Brewer and all related lines > > > ==== TNWAYNE Mailing List ==== > Visit the Wayne County, Tennessee Genealogy and History Page at > http://www.netease.net/wayne > >

Is the Wayne Co Fair going to b the 2nd Saturday in July? We are planning on coming to the Brewer reunion, going to the grand ole Opera and then to the Genealogy fair. I probably have missed seeing the dates somewhere along the time but I thought it was always the 2nd Saturday. Connie Pearl Searching Wallace, Wallis, Holt, Hill, Fowler, Brewer and all related lines

What a wonderful list group you all are! The response to my request to have the posting of the Wayne Co. records (mishap) forwarded to me was wonderful..."Thank You" to all who responded! Mary

Here is a partial transcription of the entry from deed book 2, page 579: 9 Sept 1889 E.W. Whited deed Methodist Epistable Church Know all men by these presents that we, E.W. Whited and his wife, E. T. Whited, in consideration of our love for the Methodist Epistable Church and the cause of Christ have this day deeded and do hereby convey unto William W. G. Franks, F.M. Foster and J.R. Whited [note: son of E.W. Whited], Trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church and their successors in office for ever a certain tract or parcel of land situated in Civil District No 7 of Wayne County Tennessee on the waters of Wetherfords Fork of Indian Creek and bounded as follows: Beginning at a stake in the mine Road at the corner of the lands of Polly Sinclair and E.W. Whited. Thence with the mine Road South west 70 yards to a stake thence south east 35 yards to a stake thence north east 70 yards to the line between the lands of Polly Sinclair and E.W. Whited thence 35 yards with the line between Polly Sinclair and E.W. Whited to the Beginning. Containing by estimation one half acre to have and to hold in trust that said premises shall be used kept maintained and disposed of as a place of divine worship for the use of the ministry and membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Edgar D. Byler, III" <[email protected]> To: "Randy Whited" <[email protected]>; <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 5:24 PM Subject: Re: [TNWAYNE] Pinhook - Lutts Church? > Randy, > > Do you have a copy of the deed where Mr. Whited sold land to the church? I > ask because there were several congregations of the Methodist church in the > Pinhook/Lutts area during that time frame. They were all part of the > Martin's Mills Charge. > > The Lutts United Methodist Church is still active today. I have a compiled > copy of all the various Methodist Church rolls in the county and there isn't > a Whited listed. Here's a brief write-up on the Lutts UMC as written by the > late Mrs. Elmer (Pauline Darby) Lutts. > > Lutts United Methodist Church > "The Methodist Church was organized at Martins Mills, Tennessee. Records > show Sam Treadway and wife, Laura Chowning were moved by the Tennessee > Conference from Robertson County to Martins Mills in the late 1800's. Mrs. > Lutts states that there was a period of time between 1900 and 1910 they did > not have any records, however the Methodists came together and worshiped in > the Pinhook school building beginning in 1910, as the Lutts Methodist > Church, records indicating the memebrship to be 95 in 1920. The Methodist > continued to worship in the school building until 1936 when James A. > Stricklin made a deed giving on area of land to the Lutts Community for a > church. The present Church Trustees named in the deed were E. M. Abrams, > representing the Methodist Church; John R. Morgan the Baptist Church and Dee > Stricklin the Christian Church. This is in Deed Book 19, page 560, dated > July 5, 1936, On July 23, 1960, the former trustees of the Lutts Community > Church did transfer and convey all the rights, title, claim and interest > they had to H. A. Stricklin, Grady Sinclair and Elmer Lutts as trustees for > the Lutts Methodist Church, Deed book 42, page 180. The deed states, We, E. > M. Abrams and Dee Stricklin as member and only members of the Trustee > committee of the Lutts Community Church have this day bargained and sold, > and by these presents do here by bargain, sell to the Trustees of the Lutts > Methodist Church." end of sketch. > > There was probably a congregation of the Methodist Church in the present day > Lutts area as early as the 1820's. However, no records have survived or come > to light. > > I'd be interested in the name of the church to which Mr. Whited sold the > land. That would tell me where it was located and we could then figure out > if it had been consolidated with another congregation or disbanded. > > Edgar > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Randy Whited" <[email protected]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 8:54 AM > Subject: [TNWAYNE] Pinhook - Lutts Church? > > > > My great-grandfather, Edward Woodard Whited, deeded land in the 1880's to > build > > a Methodist-Episcopal Church near the Pinhook-Lutts area. I have been > unable > > to find any record of a church there. Has anyone run across this? If so, > > where would the church records be? > > > > Thanks, > > Randy Whited > > > > > > ==== TNWAYNE Mailing List ==== > > Visit the Wayne County, Tennessee Genealogy and History Page at > > http://www.netease.net/wayne > > > > > > > > >

Kathy: Do you have STANFIELDs from Wayne Co.? My direct ancestors, James WEST 1786-1851, and wife Mary "Polly" STANFIELD 1790 - ca 1848, were in Wayne Co at the end of their lives. They apparently were very close to Polly's brother John STANFIELD. They lived near each other in Warren TN 1830 - 40, and Wayne TN 1850. Dennis West in Knoxville, TN ==================== Kathy wrote: From: [email protected] Date sent: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 00:19:16 EST Subject: [TNWAYNE] Re: TNWAYNE-D Digest V02 #15 To: [email protected] Thank you too for the info., although very sad to hear what has happened to so many records. I was hoping to find more records than have already been found and recorded for my ancestors: KING, LAY, COLE, STANFIELD, COTTON, LYONS, THOMPSON and allied lines. Thank you all you do and have done. Much appreciated! Sincerely, Kathy Gregory

Thank you very much, Edgar, for all the work you've done and continue to do for the history and preservation of Wayne County records. I have to add my thanks to the many that are pouring in. I appreciate what you do very much though I may not say much about it. The Wayne County site on the Tennessee web is the best and most informative I've seen. Thanks for sharing your efforts with all of us. Joan Rose

Thank you too for the info., although very sad to hear what has happened to so many records. I was hoping to find more records than have already been found and recorded for my ancestors: KING, LAY, COLE, STANFIELD, COTTON, LYONS, THOMPSON and allied lines. Thank you all you do and have done. Much appreciated! Sincerely, Kathy Gregory

Somehow....I missed the vanished record message...or it got deleted in error...could someone please forward a copy to me. Thanking you in advance. Mary

....and a copy of the vanished County Records is in the front of my Warthen notebook. Appreciate all you work. Barbara W.

May I add my thanks as well. I just joined the mail list and your account of the records was the first message I received. Very helpful, as are the numerous records you 've posted on the Wayne County site. I have HAYS/HAYES ancestors in Wayne Co in the early to mid 1800s. Possibly GRIMES and VINCENT as well. Would appreciate sharing with anyone researching the same lines, especially William R. and Sarah Hase/Hays/Hayes and their son John Wesley Hayes who married Hulda(y) Ann Grimes after the Hayes family moved to Lewis County between the 1860 and 1870 censuses. My brother and I are hoping to visit Wayne County in the fall and I would like to collect as many research leads as possible. Hope to hear from any of you. Marcia

I also copied it and put in the front of my McCarn book that I was working on this morning! Thanks so much for your help. Lynda Breeding ----- Original Message ----- From: jag <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2002 9:24 AM Subject: [TNWAYNE] VANISHED CO. RECORDS > Thank you Ed: I appreciated your message about what happened to the Wayne > Co., TN court records. I, for one, have printed this off and it will be > kept in the front of my CLEMENTS (Wayne Co., TN) workbook for future > reference. I appreciate you and all your hard work. Because of you and > others like you, the WAYNE CO., TN list is the BEST! Also, research done > onsite in your county produces much better results than in most counties & > towns across the Southland. > Best regards, > Lynda Green > Stephenville, TX > > > ==== TNWAYNE Mailing List ==== > Visit the Wayne County, Tennessee Genealogy and History Page at > http://www.netease.net/wayne > >

Thank you Ed: I appreciated your message about what happened to the Wayne Co., TN court records. I, for one, have printed this off and it will be kept in the front of my CLEMENTS (Wayne Co., TN) workbook for future reference. I appreciate you and all your hard work. Because of you and others like you, the WAYNE CO., TN list is the BEST! Also, research done onsite in your county produces much better results than in most counties & towns across the Southland. Best regards, Lynda Green Stephenville, TX

I'm hoping the person who requested the below lookup is on this list since their email address isn't correctly setup in their email program and I can't send it directly to them. The following is from the book, "Marriage Records of Wayne County, Tennessee 1857-1929", by Irma Matthews Plott. On page 133 it has Lonnie Hays married to Grace Beard on 15 August 1920. It was solemnized by Joseph Holt, MG. Hope this helps. Good luck with your research. Jerry W. Murphy [email protected] Jerry's Homepage: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jwmurphy/ Rootsweb List Administrator: ALFRANKL-L, TNHARDIN-L, TNWAYNE-L, BRATTON-L, COCHRAN-L, HAFLEY-L, PATTERSON-L, SOWERBY-L Wayne County, Tennessee Web Page: http://www.netease.net/wayne Wayne County Computer Club: http://www.netease.net/waccc ----- Original Message ----- From: "Your Name" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, February 10, 2002 12:23 AM Subject: marriage records > I am seeking information on Lonnie C. Hayes and Lillian Grace Beard > marriage records. I think they married some time between 1925-1928 in > Wayne Co., probably Cypress Inn, or Lutts. All information will be > greatly appreciated. thanks. > > >

BlankMany of you on the list have written at one time or another about the lost records in Wayne County, Tennessee. It may be a bit presumptuous of me, but I thought I'd give you a record of what happened to those records since I may well be the only person living who knows. It has been brought to my attention that I didn't have any of this written down, and as we all know, nothing in life is certain, especially memory. I will address the main records groups used by most genealogists by the offices in which they originated. County Court Clerk -- Marriage records. The marriage records for Wayne County, Tennessee survive from 1857 to the present. The main book from 1857 to 1898 is actually only half of the record. It is actually the "minister's return" or "license return" record book, which recorded whether or not the marriage had actually taken place. There are a few scattered bond books (or what we would call "license application") in existence between 1881 and 1898. What happened to the earlier (1820-1857) marriage records? Many of the original loose marriage bond and returns were lost over time and neglect. The rest were burned when the courthouse burned in January 1972. They had been stored in the attic of the 1905 courthouse in boxes along with other records and served as fuel for the fire. I personally know they were there because the last two weeks in December 1971 I worked in that attic, along with Mr. Charles Gallaher, sorting through all those bundles separating the original marriage bonds covering the period 1820 through the 1890's. Only a Xerox copy of one bond/license/return from 1854 survived. And that was because it was the first one found during the initial search over Thanksgiving holidays in 1971 and I took it to Florence, AL to have it copied. There wasn't a single available copier in all of Wayne County (as far as I know) at the time. The original bond (application) books (Volumes A-I?) covering the period 1820 - 1878 or 1881 were, according to lore, stored in the attic of the 1905 courthouse. In 1918, someone left the trapdoor to the clock tower open. It rained in causing the ceiling of the courtroom (which was directly beneath the attic storage area and the clock tower) to collapse. The books were so badly water damaged it was said (and I've not found record of this) that the County Court ordered those records taken out on the Eagle creek turnpike and burned as they were no longer usable. The "minister's return" book for the period 1820 - 1857 apparently was still in existence as late as the 1920's, possibly even as late as the 1930's. The late John F. Morrison, Jr. of Lawrenceburg, TN whose father, John F. Morrison Sr. had been County Judge in the late 1890's and early 1900's stated that this errant book was about 13" tall by 9" wide and approximately 2" thick, half-bound with a leather spine and blue paperboard covers. Mr. Morrison had worked for his father before moving to Lawrenceburg and was familiar with all records in the courthouse as an attorney, historian and genealogist. What happened to that first book of marriage returns is unknown. It probably walked out of the courthouse in someone's satchel. That basically covers the marriage records. Wills, Inventories and Settlements & County Court Minutes 1820-1848 Who knows? I've never been able to find a definitive answer to this although I believe that they were destroyed between 1863 and 1865 when Waynesboro was basically abandoned and the courthouse was open for vandals, hogs, chickens and cows. Although where those hogs, chickens and cows came from in 1864 is a mystery since Col. Capron of the 16th Illinois Cave. stated in a telegram to Gen. Thomas in Nashville that he couldn't find enough forage to feed his troops. If the records from 1848 to the present survive, one would assume that those earlier records would have also survived. I did not find them among the shelves of record volumes in the attic of the 1905 courthouse, although there were JP docket books and other records there from the 1820-1850 period, all of which were destroyed in the fire and had never been microfilmed. Registrar's office (deeds, etc) These records are complete from 1820 to the present. Interesting that these records survived neglect, war and fire. But land records will survive where almost nothing else will. Circuit Court Clerk The earliest surviving record book in this office is a docket book covering the period 1836-1842. The actual Court Minutes begin in 1851 (and we are presently transcribing and publishing that first book). We do have court testimony concerning what happened to the earlier volumes of minutes. Matthew J. Sims, who was elected Circuit Court Clerk in 1866, testified in 1867 that the former clerk (the one holding office in 1861) had removed the books from the office and carried them home where they were lost. He also testified that when Waynesboro was abandoned in 1864 that the courthouse had been ransacked and the records scattered and destroyed. I still wonder if some soldier in either the Union or Confederate Army, passing through Waynesboro in 1863-5, might not have taken one of those books, or some of those loose papers and those originals are now sitting in someone's attic or trunk, untouched since that time. We will never know. Hopefully they were not used by some clerk who hurriedly grabbed a handful of papers or sheets from the book as he hastily ran to the nearby outhouse. Those loose circuit court records which survived the 1972 fire were either hauled off to the land fill or bulldozed into the fill around the current courthouse. At least that is the information supplied by several people who managed to salvage some of those loose records while the bulldozers were working. I know of few case files and other loose circuit court records which survived the 1972 fire since the Circuit Court Clerk's office was on the second floor of the 1905 courthouse and sustained the greatest damage from the fire. Clerk and Master's Office The Clerk and Master is an officer of the court appointed by the Chancellor of the Chancery Court. The Chancery Court (or Equity Court) was not created as an independent court in the county until 1851. Prior to that time, individuals wishing to file an equity case could file in any Chancery Court in the state of Tennessee.(that isn't exactly true since the laws governing the place of filing changed through the years between 1796 and 1848. You must know judicial history in Tennessee in order to determine which Chancery Court would have been appropriate for filing an equity suit and I'm afraid that for this message it would be too complicated to address) We have complete record volumes from 1861 to the present. Evidence suggests that the sitting Clerk and Master in 1862 absconded with the earlier minute and docket books and they were never returned. It is therefore possible that those earlier books still exist but are held privately. All surviving loose Chancery Court files between 1851 and 1920 have been cleaned and microfilmed. The earlier decades of the court (1851-1871) have incomplete files. And even some of the later cases are missing or have parts missing. A rather large bundle (measuring approximately 9" in diameter) of affidavits in a 1918 case disappeared from the courthouse basement storage room as late as 1990. Another set of exhibits in a case from 1909 disappeared between 1982 and 1984. Trustee's Office The earliest surviving tax records for Wayne County are 1836 and 1838. But these are only copies which were sent by the Wayne County Trustee to the Tennessee Secretary of State in 1836 and 1838. No original tax record prior to 1873/4 survives. We do have a complete record from 1873/4 to the present. I do not know what happened to those tax record books prior to 1873. I did not find them in the attic of the 1905 courthouse and they were certainly not available in the Trustee's office, otherwise they would have been microfilmed in 1966-8. I've never heard anything about the record books for 1820-1872. I was always told they were destroyed when the courthouse was burned in the civil war. At least that was what I was told when I first started researching in the courthouse in 1966. I didn't learn until later that the courthouse in Wayne County had never burned!! At least not until 1972. Again, neglect and carelessness probably were the cause of the loss. School Commission/Board of Education Here we open a can of worms. In 1974, Mr. Gallaher and I located the old School Commission minutes 1866 - 1908 in an office in the Bank of Waynesboro building. These had not been microfilmed and were on wooden shelves and in piles on the floor of that corner office. Sometime between October 1974, when I left Wayne County, and January 1982 when I returned, those books and other records disappeared. I've been told by a former Bank of Waynesboro president that they were hauled off to the land fill and I've also been told that they may have been moved elsewhere. So far, no one seems to have any definitive knowledge of what happened to those records. The Minutes of the Board of Education 1913 to present do survive and are available. I could go on, but that covers the major courthouse records. Sometime soon I'll reminisce about what was actually stored in the attic of the 1905 courthouse. I'll try to do that soon before my memory fades. The last time I was there was 30 years ago, afterall. Edgar Edgar D. Byler, III Editor, Wayne County Historian Co-coordinator, Wayne County, TN Genealogy and History Page http://www.netease.net/wayne/

Dear all list members. Over the last thirty so years I'm come to the conclusion that Wayne County, Tennessee suffers from collective amnesia where pre-civil war history of the county is concerned. The loss of so many county courthouse records during the war and afterwards is partially to blame. But there are other factors - 1. Many families left the area either shortly before or directly after the war and took with them their own records and records pertaining to any organizations in which they were involved. 2. Those families which moved into the county post war didn't have any knowledge of the early history of the county. 3. Long time residents, for whatever reason, didn't pass on tales and oral history to their descendants. (This applies no only to Wayne County, Tennessee but to every part of the world.) 4. Communities which grew and developed during the 19th century all but disappeared in the first quarter of the 20th, their residents scattered to the four winds. 5. Clerks and secretaries of fraternal organizations, churches, and governmental offices (county, city, etc.) were and are negligent in keeping their records and making proper disposition of those records when their term of office expired or they were replaced or died; or their local organization chapter ceases to exist. It is regretful that we don't have more information on the first fifty years of the history of the county. It may well be out there (as the "X-Files" TV show is wont to say - "the truth is out there") hidden in someones attic or trunk. The original Union Baptist Church minute book 1825-1861 was found by a cousin in her grandmother's trunk in west Tennessee. Another cousin in Texas found the original minutes and records of an Oddfellows Lodge which existed in the Little Cypress Creek area in the period 1870-1884; they were in her gg-grandmother's things. I was given, back in the 70's, original carbon copies (very deteriorated) of city ordinances and minutes for the city of Collinwood (from the 1920's) by a lady in Florence, AL whose father had been City Recorder between 1921 and 1925. The orignals of these have been lost due to neglect. All we, as reseachers, can do is to continually search for these "vanished" records and hope that they may one day be found. And hopefully if any of you find any of these records you will have the forsight to share them. Too many times people have "found" records at flea markets and antique stores, purchased them and squirrelled them away yet again from the sight of hungry researchers. It has been our policy at the Wayne County Historical Society to assist in getting original records microfilmed by the Tennessee State Library and Archives, and in preparing and publishing (both in the journal and on the web site) those records where possible. It is an on-going task. There are always budget constraints as far as the microfilming is concerned and there are times when permission to copy and publish records has not been given for whatever reason. So if you have in your possession, original copies of records pertaining to Wayne County, TN or if you should find such records wherever you may be, please let us know and share those records with the rest of us. Edgar Edgar D. Byler, III Editor, Wayne County Historian Co-coordinator, Wayne County, TN Genealogy and History Page http://www.netease.net/wayne/

Randy, Do you have a copy of the deed where Mr. Whited sold land to the church? I ask because there were several congregations of the Methodist church in the Pinhook/Lutts area during that time frame. They were all part of the Martin's Mills Charge. The Lutts United Methodist Church is still active today. I have a compiled copy of all the various Methodist Church rolls in the county and there isn't a Whited listed. Here's a brief write-up on the Lutts UMC as written by the late Mrs. Elmer (Pauline Darby) Lutts. Lutts United Methodist Church "The Methodist Church was organized at Martins Mills, Tennessee. Records show Sam Treadway and wife, Laura Chowning were moved by the Tennessee Conference from Robertson County to Martins Mills in the late 1800's. Mrs. Lutts states that there was a period of time between 1900 and 1910 they did not have any records, however the Methodists came together and worshiped in the Pinhook school building beginning in 1910, as the Lutts Methodist Church, records indicating the memebrship to be 95 in 1920. The Methodist continued to worship in the school building until 1936 when James A. Stricklin made a deed giving on area of land to the Lutts Community for a church. The present Church Trustees named in the deed were E. M. Abrams, representing the Methodist Church; John R. Morgan the Baptist Church and Dee Stricklin the Christian Church. This is in Deed Book 19, page 560, dated July 5, 1936, On July 23, 1960, the former trustees of the Lutts Community Church did transfer and convey all the rights, title, claim and interest they had to H. A. Stricklin, Grady Sinclair and Elmer Lutts as trustees for the Lutts Methodist Church, Deed book 42, page 180. The deed states, We, E. M. Abrams and Dee Stricklin as member and only members of the Trustee committee of the Lutts Community Church have this day bargained and sold, and by these presents do here by bargain, sell to the Trustees of the Lutts Methodist Church." end of sketch. There was probably a congregation of the Methodist Church in the present day Lutts area as early as the 1820's. However, no records have survived or come to light. I'd be interested in the name of the church to which Mr. Whited sold the land. That would tell me where it was located and we could then figure out if it had been consolidated with another congregation or disbanded. Edgar ----- Original Message ----- From: "Randy Whited" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 8:54 AM Subject: [TNWAYNE] Pinhook - Lutts Church? > My great-grandfather, Edward Woodard Whited, deeded land in the 1880's to build > a Methodist-Episcopal Church near the Pinhook-Lutts area. I have been unable > to find any record of a church there. Has anyone run across this? If so, > where would the church records be? > > Thanks, > Randy Whited > > > ==== TNWAYNE Mailing List ==== > Visit the Wayne County, Tennessee Genealogy and History Page at > http://www.netease.net/wayne > > >

My great-grandfather, Edward Woodard Whited, deeded land in the 1880's to build a Methodist-Episcopal Church near the Pinhook-Lutts area. I have been unable to find any record of a church there. Has anyone run across this? If so, where would the church records be? Thanks, Randy Whited

Dena and others, At present only two early church records for Wayne County are known and available. We transcribed and published the old Union Baptist Church records (1825-1860) and they are available on-line at http://www.netease.net/wayne/unionbaptist.htm The other set of early church records are for the Salem Primitive Baptist Church in the Topsy community. These have not been published but are available on microfilm from the Tennessee State Library and Archives. These records reportedly begin in 1820. Both the above records are individual church records and contain a list of the members, minutes of the church meetings and occasionally a record of a death or marriage. But from my experience in transcribing the Union Baptist Church records, there is little information in the records concerning vital information. Seems the chuch clerk was more concerned with "church" business than with information about the members. At present the above two records are the earliest I know. The records for the Presbyterian Church in Clifton begin in 1854 and the surviving records for the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Waynesboro begin in 1866, although that congregation began existance as the Green River Camp of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church before 1832. The records for the old New Providence Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Ashland Presbyterian Church are available on micorfilm but don't begin any earlier than the 1860's. There should be conference and circuit records available for the Methodist churches in the county, but I've not had the time to do any research on them. I do not know of any Methodist congregation records earlier than the last decade of teh 19th century. If anyone has any additional information regarding available church records in Wayne County, Tennessee please let me know or send the information to the list. Edgar Edgar D. Byler, III Editor, Wayne County Historian Co-coordinator, Wayne County, TN Genealogy and History Page http://www.netease.net/wayne/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dena/Dick Iverson" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 3:00 PM Subject: [TNWAYNE] Early Church Records > > Hello, > > I am aware that many of the early records for Wayne County were > destroyed by fire. However I would like to know if there are any church > records, about 1825-1835 that still exist? My gr.gr. grandparents were > in 1830 Census of Wayne county. How long they were there I do not > know. They were Ephriam and Mary Danley Cofer. There was also a James > Cofer in that census, who might have been a father to Ephriam. > > Would appreciate any help, in locating some information on this family. > > Thanks You, > Dena Cofer Iverson > Vancouver, Washington > > > ==== TNWAYNE Mailing List ==== > Visit the Wayne County, Tennessee Genealogy and History Page at > http://www.netease.net/wayne > > >