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/