yesterday's tennessee

SAM LOWRY

W. V. Barry

May 22, 1936
Progress

Our Editor Makes Another Trip

[Mr. Barry and sister Mrs. G.T. Ray go to her home in Humboldt, and while walking around town, Mr. Barry meets a former resident of Henderson County.]
One of the most interesting characters I met while taking a walk in the more elevated section of the town, much of which is occupied by colored people, who have comfortable homes, was Sam Lowry, a colored man, aged 76, who left this county, between Sardis and Scotts Hill, more than forty years ago. Sam seemed to remember all the older citizens of Lexington, Sardis, Decaturville and Saltillo, and his memory was clear on happenings of fifty years ago. He told me that the late Sam Howard, when trustee of Henderson County, paid him for teaching school. Sam is one of the tribe of Negroes brought from South Carolina by old Doctor Lowry, who was never married and left many Negroes on his lands, titles to which were partly conveyed in a bill filed on pauper's oath by an old man of Mt. Pleasant, Tennessee. I was told that Sam had a good name in Humboldt.