Friday, April 17, 2009

Jefferson Davis Park

Along the riverfront in Memphis is a little park for Jefferson Davis. Davis lived in Memphis after the war (1869-1878) and there is a nice monument of him in the park.




The park also has this monument to J Harvey Mathes of the 37th Tennessee. James Harvey Mathes later became city editor of the Memphis Daily Argus and then later with the Memphis Public Ledger. He also wrote a book on Forrest that I found on google books. I have not read it but downloaded a copy so that I can read it. I also found online that his grandfather, William Mathes, was one of the first white children born in Tennessee.


Finally there are gun emplacements to protect the city from a river navy. Oh wait, those are modern guns. In one of my guidebooks it said that there were cannons here during the Civil War, the wall was different but the location is right. During the scrap metal drives for World War 2 the cannons were melted down. After the war cannon surplus was again given to the park but the vintage was wrong.

1 comment:

Bob said...

I've been following your blog for a while now, and I've enjoyed seeing images of the various battlefields and your writing. I just wanted to comment about the WWII artillery in a Civil War site. My favorite awkward use of WWII guns as park decoration is in LeClaire, IA where they have (or had, it's been a few years since I've been through) are four quad - .50 anti-aircraft mounts placed along the Mississippi, all pointed at the Illinois shore. Just kind of an odd thing that goes along with the view of Memphis you posted.