The Horrible Death and Unmarked Grave of Harmonicist Noah Lewis

Gus Cannon, Ashley Thompson, and Noah Lewis

Lewis was born in Henning, Tennessee, and learned to play the harmonica as a child. He moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in his early teens, where he met Gus Cannon in 1907. By that time he was already a respected original stylist on the harmonica, noted for his liquid tone and breath control, which allowed him to generate enormous volume from the instrument. By then he was also noted for his ability to play two harmonicas at once – one with his mouth and one with his nose, a trick he probably taught to Big Walter Horton, who recorded briefly as a teenager with the Memphis Jug Band some 20 years later. Lewis developed unusual levels of breath control and volume from playing in string bands and brass marching bands on the streets of Memphis.

At their meeting in 1907, Lewis introduced Cannon to the 13-year-old guitarist and singer Ashley Thompson, with whom Lewis had been playing in the streets of Ripley and Memphis for some time, and the three of them worked together over the next 20 years whenever Cannon was in Memphis and not away working medicine and tent shows. When Will Shade's Memphis Jugband recorded and became popular in the late 1920s, Cannon added a coal-oil can on a rack round his neck and renamed the trio (Cannon, Lewis and Thompson) Cannon's Jug Stompers.

Home Depot Uses Historic Cemetery As a Trash Can

When home improvement retail giant Home Depot rolled into Midtown Memphis in 2003, one of the first renovation projects it promised to enable was the maintenance of the Bettis Family Cemetery.

Neighbors near the Bettis Family Cemetery in Shelby County have come forward with concerns as trash continues to fill a very old cemetery.

WREG reported that the cemetery contains what used to be about 15 graves of members of the Bettis family, who lived in the area before Memphis was founded.

The only standing grave left is for both Tillman Bettis and his wife Sally Bettis, who died giving birth in 1826. Her grave is thought to be the oldest marked grave in the county.

A neighbor says that while the gravestones have fallen, the trash is numerous.

“I’d like to see it maintained and just see a little more pride in it because of what it is historically to the city of Memphis,” Jukes said. “It’s awesome in here, and to look like this is just sad."

Jukes said when he noticed the trash, he posted about it on the Next Door app, and he was amazed by the feedback and the people willing to help clean the site.

THE BELOW ARTICLE IS FROM 2003

The Atlanta-based company plans to clean up and maintain the historic Bettis family cemetery, which it purchased as part of the Center City Shopping Center property in December 2002. Located between the retail center and the Madison Avenue Piggly Wiggly, the long-neglected burial ground is enclosed by a three-foot graffiti-filled wall and littered with drug paraphernalia and worse.

Home Depot spokesman John Simley says the company plans to clean up and maintain the cemetery, thought to be the oldest in Memphis.

"We do have at least one other store I know of on Long Island that has a small cemetery on the property and we've sort of incorporated it into our store as best we can," he says. "With the property comes a responsibility for stewardship of it, and we take care of it."

Home Depot plans to demolish the nearby former Seessel's building, which also houses a Radio Shack and Central Wigs, and build a 93,000-square-foot store. Incorporating the Bettis family cemetery into the property will be easier, Simley says, because it will be behind the building whereas the Long Island cemetery is in the middle of the parking lot.

The cemetery has attracted the attention of neighborhood leaders from nearby Evergreen and Central Gardens neighborhoods as well as historic Elmwood Cemetery executive director Fran Catmur because of its historic significance.

Tillman Bettis and his family settled in the area in 1819, one year after the Chickasaw Nation ceded West Tennessee to the federal government. That same year Sally Carr Bettis gave birth to her fifth child, the first white child born in what would become Memphis. When Sally Carr Bettis died giving birth to her ninth child in 1826, her grave became what is thought to be the first marked grave in Shelby County.

Elmwood and the two neighborhoods have investigated the possibility of relocating the interred family members to Elmwood, where other Bettis family members are buried.

Moving the graves would require approval of Bettis decedents and Chancery Court, and the legal fees would only be a small portion of the cost.

"Elmwood is willing to donate the plots there, but it's going to cost probably a minimum of $35,000 to move it because it's important enough historically that it does need to have some sort of archeological study," says Evergreen Historic District board member Carolyn Fisher.

It is unclear how many Bettis family members are buried there. Several grave stones are covered with grass and dirt and others have been stolen.

"Three gravestones are left but I know for sure there are at least nine graves there," Fisher says.

Efforts to relocate the cemetery have been stalled by lack of funds.

"There are lots and lots of people who are for this; it's just that there's no money," Fisher says.

Ultimately, it is not up to the neighborhood associations or Elmwood.

"Whoever owns that property is in the driver's seat," Catmur says.

Simley says as long as Home Depot owns the property, the cemetery will be cared for.

Record Collector Gayle Dean Wardlow

The “Bastard Child of the Park System”

& the Emergence of Blues Tourism in Washington County, Mississippi

By T. DeWayne Moore

Due to the rampant clear-cutting by lumber companies and a lack of planning for reforestation, the Mississippi State Legislature created the Mississippi Forestry Commission (MFC) in 1926. In the third section of an act to develop plans for reforestation, the governor received authorization was to “accept gifts of land” for the purpose of establishing state forests and parks. The state did not acquire any land for parks before to the onset of the Great Depression, which limited such endeavors across the nation. The 1932 election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought with it a New Deal for all Americans, however, and he established the Emergency Conservation Works (later renamed the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in 1937) and resumed the development of the national park system.[1] In early 1934, some representatives of the state park division of the National Park Service approached the MFC about a cooperative program to develop state parks was possible, provided that the state furnish the land. Since neither the MFC nor the counties had statutory authority to purchase lands for the development of state parks, and the state had no legal justification for the use of state-owned lands for park development, the MFC solicited the assistance of legislators, civic organizations and individuals, all of whom sponsored a bill introduced in that year's legislative session. Known as House Bill 446, it allowed states to establish state parks using state-owned lands; it also authorized counties to purchase land for the future development of a state park.[2]