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Society

City Personals
Mary Clay Brooks

Happy birthday Sadye Bell

Happy birthday wishes go out to Sadye Bell Moore, who celebrated with a Korean themed birthday party over the weekend. She has been lighting the world with her smile ever since she entered it one year ago!

The Marshall Academy gym was transformed into Midnight on the Midway Saturday night for their Junior/Senior Prom. Junior class members, their parents and sponsors worked tirelessly to get the gym looking just right for the big event. Red and white material was draped from the ceiling in the shape of a big top circus tent. There were painted cut-outs of the bearded lady and the strong man for students to poke their faces through for pictures. The gym was lined with booths of all sorts from fortune telling to candy to a lemonade stand. All of the students looked positively stunning in their formal wear! They danced the night away and enjoyed one last big hoorah with one another before graduation!

Inadvertently, Greg Shaw and daughter, Kelsey, and Kim Shaw were left out of the group who attended the wedding of Ann Yager Hamlin and Alex McCrosky in Danville, Ky.. Greg was an usher and is the husband of Lisa Shaw.

Jim and Martha Thomas traveled to Knoxville (Sevierville) via motor home for the weekend baseball series between Ole Miss and the University of Tennessee. They report that they huddled under umbrellas for the first two games and under blankets for the third. Ole Miss came out of the series with two wins. While in the Sevierville area, they went to Cades Cove and reported that they saw about two dozen deer, a few black birds, one squirrel, lots of people, but no bears (they had seen bears the last three visits they made to the area). The mountains were beautiful as the trees were blooming and leafing out. They returned to Holly Springs on Wednesday, March 30.

(To put your news in City Personals, please e-mail maryclayb@yahoo.com; mail to City Personals, The South Reporter, P.O. Box 278, Holly Springs, MS 38635 or call 662-252-4261. You may also e-mail your City Personal news to south@dixie-net.com).

Museuming
Lois Swaney Shipp
Museum Curator

Holly Springs Garden Club and pilgrimages past

In the 1930s Ms. Lillie Stille was the new home demonstration agent and she created wonderful opportunities for everybody in this place.

She started the home demonstration clubs where the clubs were community-oriented and would work for the betterment of the town and county.

She taught Lessye Lee Davis to do great things and great things she did in the black community. Lessey Lee Davis was a hero in this community. In all the schools the 4-H Club was formed. A four-leaf clover was the emblem and the 4-H’s were: hands, head, heart and health. Children learned many skills from this great organization. It included raising farm animals.

The Holly Springs Garden Club was an off-shoot of home demonstration clubs in the early ’30s. The main idea was to start a Pilgrimage similar to Natchez. Natchez Garden Club created their Pilgrimage in 1932 in midst of the great depression. The homeowners opened their houses to the public and a dollar was the price of the whole pilgrimage ticket. The public response was so great, it’s still going strong after 79 years.

Our Pilgrimage celebration began with our 100th birthday in October of 1936, after the town was formed so long ago. In the early days the festival lasted a week. Some of the homes in it were Watson Place*, which was headquarters, Airliewood, Cedarhurst, Gray Gables, Strickland Place*, Polk Place, Walter Place and Old Slave Quarters *, Featherston Place, McCarroll House, Fort Daniel Place, Polk Place, Box Hill, The Pines, The Rectory, The Lindens*, and in Red Banks, Summer Trees and Maplewood. Also all the churches (always necessary for rest stops), the cemetery and the City Hall, which was full of borrowed true antiques from unopened homes. Spirituals from Rust College singers were sung on the square, a Confederate Ball was held in the gym. Miss Pearl Strickland Badow wrote a pageant using Holly Springs history as a basis and it was enacted by the young people of the town.

In other early pilgrimages were Crump Place, Thesion, Mimosas (named changed to Greenwood), Finley, McCrosky, Freeman Place, McDermott, Herr House, Clapp-Fant House, The Lindens*, Falconer Place, John C. Walker House (Herndon).

The Pilgrimage wasn’t held in 1937 as U.S. Highway 78 was being built. It wasn’t held during World War II because gas was rationed and nobody could come. Through the years the Pilgrimage has been our claim to fame to the world and has brought thousands here for this reason. Each year it is different and delightful.

Mrs. Egbert Jones was the “Queen Pin” and president of the Holly Springs Garden Club, who established the Pilgrimage and she also was responsible for saving the Natchez Trace and saving Robert E. Lee’s boyhood home in Virginia and created the National Daughters of the American Revolution. Mrs. Jones should have run for President of the United States as she was so efficient and she could have gotten us out of the Depression earlier. We were fortunate to have had her in our midst and in our behalf.

The * means the buildings are now gone with the wind. The museum is riding high this week in preparation for the Pilgrimage. All of you should go and enjoy it again.

We are having 300 elementary school children through the museum this week. Last week was full of visitors from far-off places. We are like one of the wonders of the world. You have to see it to believe it. We are getting in new local T-shirts and toys for you to buy if you want something local.

You are invited to a book signing by Virginia Brown this Saturday, 1-3 p.m.

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