INCIDENTS IN COVINGTON 1873 | When the train from Memphis, crowded with gentlemen, with now and then a plug-ugly sandwitched [sic] most uncomfortably among decent people, reached Covington, a great concourse of people greeted us. We repaired to a grove hard by, when the mayor of Covington, an excellent type – setter of the olden time in Memphis, welcomed us most cordially to the ancient village. He was profoundly in earnest, and introduced, as his representative, Mr. Cummins, who spoke as follows:
Mr. Johnson, and gentlemen of the City Council of the city of Memphis; and Mr. Beckley, and gentlemen Justices of the County Court of Shelby County; and Mr. Norton, and gentlemen directors, managers and builders of the Paducah and Memphis raiload; and gentlemen;
The pleasant duty of welcoming you to the hospitalities of our village today has devolved upon me; for the lord mayor of whom Covington boasts, though gifted with the wisdom of a Solomon for the direction of our little municipality, and with the fabled strength of a Samson wherewith he executes the rigors of the law within our borders, yet in another and not less striking way bears resemblance to that first and greatest legislator whose history is recorded – the earliest of the ancients and the first great governor of a nation – for our most worthy mayor, too, is slow of speech, and delegates me to extend to you, in his name, and in behalf his town, their greetings on this occasion. you, gentlemen, today, bring us assurance of a new era, of the dawn of a brighter day to our hitherto secluded town; for a moment ago our ears were gladdened with the shrill whistle of the railway locomotive, and through the heart of our town we saw passing those tasteful coaches in which you rode, borne along on massive wheels of iron, which, acaree(?) an hour since, made the noise of their motion reverberate along the streets of your city of Memphis. I said that you herald to us a new era; for ’tis now just forty years and four days since the first four-horse mail stage traversed these same streets; and during all this long time have we lived shut out from the moving outside world. Our country was well portrayed by the poet-latureate(?) when he wrote: “Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag: Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree.”
No wonder, then I know you say, that Covington puts on a gladsome face and bids you welcome. Recurring to that time when, as I said, the first four-horse mail-coach rumbled through our town; and recalling the conditions of our respective towns of Memphis and Covington then, and comparing their changes and growth within this half century, we can hardly realize the wondrous changes of time and the untiring industry of men. Then your great city, now the metropolis of our State and of the middle valley of the Mississippi, the cotton market of the south, could not boast the size and importance of Covington. Even our river town of Randolph then overshadowed your Memphis. But the enterprise and industry of your people enabled them to rightly improve the advantages of locality with which nature had favored your bluffs, and Memphis today stands among the first cities of our nation in point of numbers, wealth and commercial prosperity. We, today, step forth from the quiet seclusion in which we have so long dwelt, for in this greeting we extend to you we together celebrate the great work of the Paducah and Memphis railroad, and its completion to this point. For a long time this road was but on paper – its life uncertain, and its final success and completion was hardly thought of. Its charter was granted in 1858, and the line first surveyed in 1859. The war-cloud then lowering over our country forced its projectors to suspend their work, and not till 1867 did this great work again attract attention, and even then it seemed as though doomed to failure. But the untiring Mitchell, who first “broke dirt” and cast the first bank near this place in September, 1869, gave to the road fresh life; and, after him, your far-seeing Lacey and energetic Norton have accomplished the work. And as it has been no little task to build this great highway, non, too, will it be no little road when done. Here we will have one of the nation’s thoroughfares past our doors; day by day will pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Pacific again to the Atlantic, from the lakes to the gulf, and again from the gulf to the lakes, the travel of the world. No winter’s snow will impede transit here, neither will tropical heat deter the pleasure-seeker from passing over this line, and through our land. Here, too, will be freighted; hour after hour, the costly goods and skilled handiwork of our cousins of the north and east, together with their bread stuffs and manufactures, as well as all our importations from across the seas. While in return we send our thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds of our staple of the south, and the tempting luxuries and fruits from the tropics to them. Here, too, gentlemen, is opened to you of Memphis a garden for your city, and a suburban village. The richness of our soil, which we believe to be unsurpassed in our State, is comparatively unknown outside our immediate vicinity: our cotton-lands equal in production the richest soils of Mississippi, Arkansas or Louisiana; our hill-sides abound in choicest fruits and richest vintage, while our storehouses and barns are filled with corn enough for a year to come. It is the pride of our farmers to vie with Bourbon, or Fayette, Kentucky, in their short-born cattle and Ayershires, or with Ewell or Cockrill, or Head, of our own State, in their Leicesters, Cotswolds and Southdowns. In conclusion, let me say that ours is a land of plenty; this new and great road opens it up to you, and we bid you welcome to our midst.
Hon. A. T. Lacey, of this city, followed Mr. Cummins in an appropriate speech, after which the party adjourned to the hotel of Mayor Shelton, where a splendid dinner, presided over by that gentleman, was partaken of by all the guests of the road, and the leading citizens of Covington. So ended a day well spent.
[The Memphis Sunday Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., June 29, 1873]