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The Life and Times of Chester Looper; Chapter One - Narration

July 2, 2023
chapter_1_1277096
CHAPTER ONE / NARRATED VERSION

The Kodak Brownie Camera - An 1888 invention that could freeze time

May 26, 2023
Families like ours have this one invention to thank for all the Looper pictures in this Gallery. The Brownie camera, patented in 1888, sold for $1. George Eastman, inventor of the first inexpensive hand-held camera, had a tremendously successful marketing campaign called The Kodak Girl. The idea was to enlist females, especially young women, to capture memories of families, friends, and events - and to sell a lot of film rolls. It was the first mass marketing success in retail. Photography evolved from a studio-bound practice to a snapshot obsession for the masses.

https://tinyurl.com/5a65ck8m

The Looper Scots-Irish legacy - website links

April 23, 2022
BORN FIGHTING
The documentary by James Webb - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10CfVIxBmg&t=44s

FORGED IN ULSTER YouTube Channel
Video collection that describe the importance of Scots-Irish  
https://www.youtube.com/c/Forgedinulster/videos

SCOTCH-IRISH or SCOTS-IRISH definition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans


LOOPER - A Family History & Autobiography by Spurgeon Looper
Under the STORIES menu tab, click on the PDF to read a first-person account of the Loopers of Overton County - Chester's birthplace.

Looper - A Family History & Autobiography by Spurgeon Looper

March 14, 2022
1964 |  In Knoxville, Tennessee, at Ernest Allred's home, his cousin Harvey Spurgeon Looper gathered our family to read and share his life story/autobiography (1889-1963) and chronicle the significant events, relatives, friends, and associates the Loopers encountered during a period of great changes throughout the world. (You can see a photo of all participants in the GALLERY tab.)

Book Dedication:  To my children and my children's children to the last generation and to our forebearers whose courage and initiative and Christian character helped make our country great, and their lives a source of inspiration and pride for all of us coming after. 

"This chronicle may be justified further by the fact that so far as known to me, there is no other genealogical data or compiled information concerning our own immediate family history available if in existence, or being prepared or contemplated." 

* My copy of Spurgeon's Looper history and autobiography has a loose letter inside the book jacket from Philip H. Birnbaum addressed to Mr. & Mrs. Chester Looper stating - "I have enclosed a copy of the half of Spurgeon's autobiography which we have as promised."

Spurgeon has contributed a valuable account of the Looper/Allred/Speck European (Scotch-Irish) immigration and settlement into Overton County, Tennessee for the first 50 pages. Beyond that is his autobiography, a colorful account of his life and the interesting times he lived. Spurgeon died June 10, 1967.

When Bruce was Eight

December 20, 2021
Yesterday was my little brother Bruce’s 58th Birthday. We spoke by phone this morning, and as we were reminiscing about our childhood, he told me of an event that happened at our grandparents' farm when he was eight. Normally, Bruce spent many happy hours fishing in the pond by the barn down the hill from the house, but on this particular day, Grandpa woke him from a sound sleep to help him with an emergency. A heifer was fixing to give birth, and Grandpa, upon examining her, discovered that her calf was in the breach position in the womb. He had been unable to turn the baby with his adult-sized arm, so with flashlight in hand, he asked Bruce to roll up his sleeve, reach in and move the calf into the birth canal. This he did, which led to the successful birth of a beautiful little calf. Sadly, the momma cow didn’t survive. As Bruce tells it, “I just stood and cried.” A lesson about life and death on the farm.

PLEASANT HILL ACADEMY, 1884 - 1947

March 20, 2019

Historical Notes on the school where Chester was educated 1908 - 1910:

Chester went to school at Pleasant Hill Academy in Pleasant Hill TN, between Sparta, Cookeville, and Crossville. He rode the train to Pleasant Hill and spent the week there.

Two boarding halls were built in 1889: Pioneer Hall for boys and Wheeler Hall for girls. Two cottages, for use as temporary boys' residences, were constructed in 1895. Dodge Hall, another boys' dormitory, was built the following year. A primary school building was completed in 1899, and a domestic science building was built in 1908. When Chester arrived enrollment had increased to over 400.

Pleasant Hill Academy was created to provide education to rural students on the Cumberland Plateau. The school was established by the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Christian Church and was a boarding school dedicated to liberal arts, sciences, agriculture and vocational training. The school was also accredited by the University of Tennessee, and all graduates were automatically accepted to UT. 

TODAY the original Pioneer Hall is open for tours. Pioneer Hall, the second Academy building to be constructed, was completed in 1889. Having served at various times as a dormitory, classrooms, a library, and offices, it stands today to tell the story of the Pleasant Hill Academy and the community, including the health facilities from which evolved the Cumberland Medical Center. Exhibits, which represent the lifestyle of early Cumberland County, include a country store, dormitory rooms, the principal's office, the tools of health care and the arts and crafts of the period. 

Pioneer Hall was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

http://www.pioneerhallmuseum.net/index.html 

Pleasant Hill is located at 35°58′37″N, 85°12′1″W . Pleasant Hill was first settled by European Americans before 1819.

Fentress County's Mark Twain cabin finds a permanent home

December 15, 2020
Many people wonder why there's a Mark Twain Park in the middle of Jamestown. Since it was directly across the street from Chester's first store, I thought you needed to know.

The historian, entreprenuer, and renown horse-trader John Rice Irwin knew the real story of the dilapidated, abandoned cabin sitting in a field near Sgt. Alvin York's home on the Wolf River. John knew it was extremely important to preserve that particular cabin. For three years he kept after the land owners to let him buy that old cabin that was near complete ruin. Finally, he made a deal and meticulously moved the cabin to The Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee (just north of downtown Knoxville) and expertly reconstructed it to it's original state. Today it's open everyday but Christmas to visitors.

What John Rice knew, and few others noticed, was this was the cabin was where Samuel Clements (later known as Mark Twain) was conceived. His two sisters were born there and his mother was four months pregnant with Samuel when the family decided to move by wagon to Florida, Missouri for a new business opportunity.

The following article explains how this history would have been lost if not for a high school class project in Livingston, Tennessee in 1952.
 
http://www.josephinesjournal.com/twain.htm

Jamestown's beginnings & the Mark Twain connection

May 6, 2019
Jamestown was built upon the site of a semi-permanent Cherokee village, which probably made use of the many natural rock shelters in the area. Before the founding of Jamestown, the area was known as "Sand Springs" for the many bubbling springs located within the city. The last remaining spring is located in the Mark Twain City Park, just northeast of the county courthouse. This spring provided water to the family of John M. Clemens, father of noted author Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), before they moved to Missouri. John Clemens served as the first circuit court clerk. He also drew the plans for the first courthouse and jail.

The town of Jamestown was brand new at the time the Clemens family moved there, and it was John Clemens’ belief that it would become the metropolis of East Tennessee. He took an immediate and active interest in the development of the place, established the county-seat there, built the first courthouse and jail, and was promptly elected as circuit clerk of the court. It was then he decided to lay the foundation of a fortune for himself and his children by acquiring land. Grants could be obtained in those days at the expense of less than a cent an acre, and John Clemens believed that the years lay not far distant when the value of property would increase perhaps a hundred thousandfold. The land he bought was covered with the finest primeval timber, filled with precious minerals, and could hardly fail to become worth millions, even though his entire purchase of 75,000 acres probably did not cost him more than $500.00. It was later thought that possibly the acreage totaled to around 100,000 acres.

In Mark Twain’s autobiography, he tells what happened to his father’s investment in the property in Fentress County. He says, "The vast plot of Tennessee was held by my father twenty years in tact. When he died in 1847, we began to manage it ourselves. Forty years after, we had managed it all away except 10,000 acres and got nothing to remember the sale by. About 1887, the 10,000 acres went. My brother found a chance to trade it for $250.00."


Read the whole article at http://www.josephinesjournal.com/twain.htm

"Jamestown is going to be 'big' someday"

April 11, 2019
My grandfather, Chester Looper, often said that Jamestown, Tennessee, "would be big someday. Just wait!" It was long after his passing in 1987 before I discovered what he thought was possible and hoped would happen someday. I never understood why he thought "big" things would happen to this small town at US 127 and Hwy 52 and a population of 1000. I assumed it was just the wishful thinking of a man who did his best to grow his businesses and promote the town on which he had staked his future. I discovered that Jamestown, at one time in the 1940s, was part of the Federal Taft Memorial Highway Master Plan. This 1,710 mile north-to-south motor route was designed to connect Canada to Ft. Myers, Florida and pass right through Jamestown. This was the main reason they built the new bridge next to Sergeant York's home place on the Wolf River. (Click on the Bridge Dedication Announcement attachment to see more details.)

Until the late nineteenth century, the United States emphasized the construction of railroads rather than highways. Few cohesive road networks existed, and most roads were in a deplorable condition. The Good Roads Movement began about 1880, peaked with the passage of the Federal Aid Act of 1916, and ended about 1926 with the development of the U.S. routing system.

THE GOOD ROADS MOVEMENT, led by farmers and railroad interests, initially stressed local road improvements, often termed “farm-to-market” roads. About 1910 the Good Roads Movement splintered when individuals in the automobile and tourism industries began promoting the development of transcontinental or interstate roads to connect primary towns. Interstate corridors sometimes required the construction of new roads, but more often, highway associations overlaid the interstate designation onto an existing route. In order to receive the designation, however, local officials had to agree to improve the route to predetermined standards.   

By 1926 over six hundred highway associations were operating in the United States with roughly 70 percent of their routes overlapping. Virtually all of these early interstate routes became state routes and played pivotal roles in local as well as regional and national traffic patterns.

Apparently, Chester Looper knew about this possibility and probably was promoting it while serving as the two-term mayor of Jamestown. But, with every town's mayor in America doing the same, Jamestown didn't see the Taft Memorial Highway finished, and eventually the main east-to-west interstate corridor (1-40) was built 35 miles south, and the north-to-south interstate (1-75) was 47 miles to the east.

Chester was ready, but the motor route opportunity passed by just a little too far down the road. Neighboring towns of Crossville and Cookeville had won the interstate lottery in the 1960s.  

To learn more:

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/historic-highways/ 

Pickett State Park - "the greatest swimming hole in Fentress County"

May 6, 2019
In 1933, the Stearns Coal and Lumber Company donated nearly 12,000 acres of land to the State of Tennessee to be developed as a forest recreational area. Initial development of the area by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) occurred between 1934 through 1942. This was a Federal Works Program initiated during the great Depression.

Stella and Chester loved taking the grandkids for "recreation" out at Pickett - 12 miles from Jamestown.

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/pickett-state-rustic-park/

What is the origin of Speck Cemetery's tent graves?

July 5, 2018

Located in the Highland Rim and western Cumberland Plateau area of Tennessee is a folk culture type of grave covering called a tent grave.

There are hundreds of these structures from near Albany, KY and across Tennessee mainly in the counties of Fentress, Overton, Putnam, White, Warren, Van Buren and continuing into Coffee County.  They are also found in limited numbers in northern Alabama and northern Arkansas.

The principal material is sandstone from the Hartselle Formation which occurs in outcroppings in the area.  Other materials used to a lesser degree are limestone, tin or metal, concrete, and on rare occasions marble. 

Variations occur in the construction of the tents.  In Overton County the sides are often supported by an iron rod whereas in the White County area they are supported by a triangular end section of stone inserted underneath.   While many are not inscribed others may have a separate grave marker or inscription on side of the slab rock. 

Reasons for their construction are often given as protection from animals such as cattle walking on the graves or to protect the grave from the weather.  The date of the tent graves generally is between the middle 1800’s to the mid 1900’s.

WHERE IS SPECK CEMETERY LOCATED?

https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/18815/speck-cemetery

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