Utica Area News

I had a huge surprise last Wednesday. A member of the Society of Wetland Scientists Board flew into Huntsville from Wisconsin, bringing me the Lifetime Achievement Award from the SWS. It was totally unexpected, and a major thrill of my professional life. SWS has been in existence for over 50 years, and I was one of the earliest members. I was Secretary, then President, of the South-eastern Chapter. I helped found and develop principles and guidelines for the Professional Certification program, and I served as international President for 2 years in the 1990s during our largest expansion. We now have over 30,000 members around the world. But, I figured my days of serving were past, and when I retired from ERDC, I moved on with my work life while continuing my membership and work efforts. I had not been to an annual convention in several years, so I was unaware that this was in the works. There were a lot of photographs made, and I have a beautiful acrylic award to display. It makes the old girl proud! And happy that I had not been forgotten.

For the first time in a while, none of us Uticans have passed on. That frees me up to write about some of the good things happening around town. Some oldsters posted to Facebook several photographs of former Utica, in the 1950s, and the town looked so good. A full view of Depot St., and a full view of Main St. from the old Price house eastward makes we very proud and also very sad that Utica as we knew it are gone. Virtually all of the buildings were occupied with active businesses. Several industries, including Kitchens Brothers and the “Shirt Factory”, as we called it, were operating. Utica had close to 1,000 people inside the city limits. There were civic organizations working with the town government. (Jaycees, Chamber of Commerce, Twentieth Club, Utica Better Living Club, Lions Club, American Legion with 2 active chapters, and a lot of other town-friendly activities were going on.

Leon Stewart and others have been posting old photos from our yearbooks from the 1940s through the early 1960s. It has been a lot of fun identifying all our old classmates and friends, teachers and others. The worst part of mid-century Utica was the dying of our town. The generation ahead of me, and those up to the present day, graduated from high school, went on to college, then took jobs elsewhere and never looked back. Many of them made lives in other communities and states. Utica’s public schools started to fade away, and a lot of those left sent their children to private schools. The railroad that was the lifeblood of Utica shut down in 1981, 100 years after it came through Utica community.

I am reverting to some recent tidbits of Utica history, about some families who were extremely important to the churches in our town. In 1936, the church furnace once again set the Utica Baptist Church on fire. The damages were repaired and 3 Sunday School rooms were added at the same time for a cost of $520.00. The Longmire family had moved to Utica, as I have noted in past history articles, and they were Baptist. When in church and not supposed to laugh, everything always seems funnier than it would otherwise be. One of those humorous church incidents happened in 1936. Bill Longmire was being baptized, and his dog always attended church with him and sat by him on the pew during services. When Rev. Owen Williams baptized Bill, the little dog looked over the side of the Baptismal into the water and howled so loudly that he had to be removed from the church until services were over! I don’t think any dog has attended services since that time. That old Baptismal is still in the church, under the pulpit.

Professor and Mrs. A.B. Blass, principal at Utica schools, left Utica in 1936 and he was replaced at the church as Sunday School superintendent by Bardie T. Roberts who served two years in that position. In church statistics presented in 1936, Rev. Williams’ salary was $2,100 and $479.30 was given to missions, a great improvement over prior years. Nowadays, we raise tens of thousands for missions alone! The church had 12 rooms and was valued at $8,000 for insurance purposes. The parsonage value was placed at $2,000. The WMU gave $225.84 to missions that year. These dollar amounts seem hard to believe, but things just did not cost as much before WWII.

This came up recently in a Facebook question and I answered it then briefly, but I thought Gazette readers might be more interested. The Goodwin Family moved to Utica about 1906, and were very much important to the town and church life. John Augustus Russell Goodwin (1886-1934) had come to Utica from Forest, MS, to work in Utica. He was married to Myra Reed of Utica pioneer stock, and they had two children, Helen Elise, who married Edward Collette (Buster) Garrison, who later became president of the Bank of Utica, and Albert John Goodwin, who married Anna Wilmot Gibbes of Learned. Mrs. Wilmot Gibbes Goodwin, who was raised in the Lebanon and Learned Presbyterian Churches, joined the Utica Baptist Church in 1936, and was baptized as a Baptist. Mrs. Goodwin recalled that she joined the church one Sunday, was asked to play the organ for church the next Sunday, and was the church organist since that day for over 70 years. Prior to that time, her sister-in-law Mrs. Helen Goodwin Garrison, had been sharing organist duties with Mrs. J. B. Foster, Mrs. F. E. Berry, and others who could play an organ.

Mrs. Goodwin received no monetary compensation for providing wonderful and inspiring music for the church until her retirement from many years of public school music teaching, and after that would only accept a small salary. She continued to teach privately as long as she could. In later years, she moved to Laurel to live with her son Gibbes and his family, and passed away in 1999 at the age of 90. She is buried in the Goodwin Family plot in the Utica Cemetery beside her mother-in-law and father-in-law.

After J.A.R. Goodwin’s death in 1934, Mrs. Goodwin took care of her mother-in-law the rest of her life, and Miss Myra passed away a few years ago after nearly 100 years of life. Myra Goodwin outlived her husband by more than 50 years. The church has been blessed to have such a gifted, dedicated, willing person as Mrs. Goodwin to give of her time so faithfully over and over at all church functions, including the many weddings that have taken place in the church. Her role in making the church worship service meaningful can never be expressed in mere words and in training budding young musicians is still seen and heard in every church in Utica and a few other communities.

Mrs. Goodwin’s legacy in training others to play will live on for many years, as the current church organist Mrs. Debbie Ellis Strong, and most of the people in Utica who know how to play a piano or an organ, learned from Mrs. Good-win. Mrs. Goodwin was my and many other Utica school children’s teacher for all 12 years of music classes, and her memory and her teaching lives in all of us.

The Goodwins had two sons, Rev. John Albert Reed Goodwin, ordained from the Utica Baptist Church and who was pastor of Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, before his death, and Lake Gibbes Goodwin, a businessman who lived in Ellisville, Mississippi. These two Christian men also followed in the footsteps of their grandparents, J.A.R. and Myra R. Goodwin, and Mr. and Mrs. John Lake Gibbes of Learned.

The head of the Gibbes family in southwestern Hinds County was Dr. Henry Dessasure Gibbes Sr. (1811-1875) and his wife Jane (1813-1906), who came here before 1836 from Old District 96 (Abbeville District), South Carolina. He was a founder of the Lebanon Presbyterian Church in 1854, al-though there is a gravestone at Lebanon for John B. Gibbes (1805-1836), son of W. S. and A. F. Gibbes, so an earlier generation of Gibbes may have also been in Lebanon by 1836 and their graves moved to Lebanon when the church was founded. Wilmot Gibbes Goodwin was a great granddaughter of Dr. Des and Jane C. Gibbes.

At the Baptist Church, Rev. Williams tried once again in 1937 to have missions included as a regular budget item, but once again the church did not approve this plan. I don’t know that any of our churches were able to do more. During 1937 revival services, E. Douglas Puckett, John Wesley Vance, Mrs. Emma Pagan, Ruby Fulgham, Eunice Sanders, Joyce Herring, Royce Roberts, Mary Frances Mathews, and Rubel Cowart joined the church. Also in 1937, the church gave $526.99 to missions, the WMU gave $570.80 to missions, and the church voted to raise Rev. Williams’ salary for 1938 to $2,400, double the amount it had been when he started his ministry in 1923.

The Puckett, Mathes, and Boyd families intermarried over the years and were all Baptists. The Edwin Douglas Puckett family has been active in the church since 1937. Mr. Puckett was a deacon, and Mrs. Puckett was a Sunday School teacher. Their 5 children were all members of the church: Grover Douglas (Sonny), Lawrence, Doris Ann (married to Earl Mathes), Patsy Lee (married to Larry Boyd), and Victor Bruce. All have passed on except Patsy, who was a loved classmate and pal as we grew up in Utica. That is another story and we got into some mildly excited escapades as teens!

Mr. Puckett owned an automobile repair garage in Utica for many years. The first of the Puckett family to arrive in the community were James A. (1847-1919) and Nancy E. (1853-1927) Puckett, who are buried at Cayuga. Both Earl Mathes (Utica Class of 1948) and Larry Boyd are deacons in the Utica Baptist Church, and both Patsy and Doris have been Sunday School teachers and choir members. Mathes and Boyd children and grandchildren are active church members like their parents.

Larry Boyd (Utica Class of 1961) is the son of Dick and Lillie Fairchild Boyd, and is retired from work in Vicksburg. He is still working hard mowing and tending to church grounds and other lawns around Utica. His brother Don Ray Boyd and family also were members at Utica before they moved to Terry. Don’s wife Mary Jane has passed away, and he is remarried to Frankie. The first of the Boyd family to arrive in the community were Thomas J. (1851-1906) and Amanda S. (1846-1887) Boyd, who are buried at Lebanon. There are numerous Boyd connections in the Chapel Hill area. Church members Ben and Beatrice Boyd, and their daughter and husband Lamar and Jeannette Adair, were also members and dedicated workers in the Utica Baptist Church. The Adairs have moved to Brandon, MS. Their son James grew up in the Baptist Church and was ordained as a minister from Utica. He and his wife Mary Margaret are missionaries in Zambia, a dangerous part of Africa, and all three of their children were born there. All we can do is pray for their safety, and send money for schools and missions there.

Earl Mathes is a member of the Morrison family who moved northwest of Utica in the mid 1800s, followed by the Mathes family 2 generations later. The Joseph T. Morrison Family Cemetery is located about 100 yards off Tommy Ford Road behind the Mathes homeplace. Earl Mathes is retired from a military career, then taught mathematics at Utica High School until he retired from teaching in 1994. He is currently retired from being a city alderman for many years! Earl tried to keep the town’s finances in good condition, a task I am sure was not easy. Until next week, send me your news!