At least 22 Jingo men are in Tennessee's World War I record
A state record compiled in the 1930s lists Williamson County's World War I soldiers one by one. At least 22 of them gave Jingo, the name Fairview went by until 1937, as home.
Clayton J. Lankford was born at Jingo on Nov. 17, 1894. He was inducted into the Army at Franklin on July 23, 1918, and went overseas on Sept. 20. Twenty days later, on Oct. 10, 1918, he died of lobar pneumonia. He was 23.
His entry sits in the "Dead" section of the World War Record of Ex-Soldiers of Williamson County, a typed ledger held by the Tennessee State Library and Archives. The record gives his address as Rural Free Delivery Route 1, Jingo, Tenn., and lists the person notified of his death as his father, typed as "High T. Lankford," of the same route.
Clayton J. Lankford’s entry in the Dead section of the ledger. His address and his father’s are both typed as Rural Free Delivery Route 1, Jingo.Source: Adjutant General of Tennessee (Tennessee State Library and Archives), World War Record of Ex-Soldiers of Williamson County, compiled 1933–1936 | Courtesy of the Tennessee State Library & Archives
Lankford was one of at least 22 men in the ledger with a Jingo address. That was the name of the post office here until 1937, when it became Fairview, according to the city's . The Fairviewian will tell that story on Aug. 1, the 90th anniversary of the name change.
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The ledger was compiled from 1933 to 1936 under the direction of Mrs. Rutledge Smith, historian of the Tennessee Department of the American Legion Auxiliary, according to its title page. It draws on the files of Maj. Rutledge Smith, who chaired Tennessee's Council of Defense during the war, on the state adjutant general's office and on the federal provost marshal general's report to the secretary of war.
It counts 765 Williamson County men in all:
596 listed as neither killed nor wounded
23 wounded
22 dead
47 Army officers
14 Marines
56 sailors
3 Navy officers
4 listed under fraudulent enlistments, dishonorable discharges and desertions
The ledger’s summary page for Williamson County. These totals are countywide; one of the 22 dead, Lankford, gave a Jingo address.Source: Adjutant General of Tennessee (Tennessee State Library and Archives), World War Record of Ex-Soldiers of Williamson County, compiled 1933–1936 | Courtesy of the Tennessee State Library & Archives
The county's draft board registered 2,073 men on June 5, 1917, and 4,987 across all three wartime registrations, the record shows. It reports 619 accepted at camp.
Each entry gives a name, serial number, address, where and when the man entered service, his units, his time overseas and his discharge. "OS" means overseas. Many entries are only a few lines long.
The Jingo men
A Jingo address in 1918 meant the Jingo post office and its rural routes, an area that doesn't match today's city limits. Here is who the ledger lists.
Wounded. Abe H. Cohen of Route 1, Jingo, was born in Pochep, Russia. He was inducted at Franklin on Jan. 20, 1918, served in Company D of the 328th Infantry, and is listed with the Toul and Marbache sectors and the St. Mihiel offensive. He was slightly wounded on Sept. 18, 1918.
Clinton Cunningham of Jingo had enlisted at Jefferson Barracks, Mo., in October 1913, years before the United States entered the war. He went overseas in July 1917 with an artillery battery, and the record lists him as severely wounded about Oct. 5, 1918.
Charlie C. Stinson of Route 2, Jingo, was inducted in September 1917 and served with Company K of the 117th Infantry. He was slightly wounded on Aug. 7, 1918.
Navy. Charles Shelton Tarr of Jingo enlisted in Nashville on April 14, 1917. He served aboard the USS Montana from June 1917 through the Armistice and left the Navy in 1919 as an electrician third class. Charles William Bixler, also of Jingo, served on the USS Finland in the spring of 1918 and spent the rest of the war at a naval hospital in New York. Walter Gentry Lampley of Route 2, Jingo, enlisted in Nashville on Feb. 14, 1918, and served aboard the USS Leviathan from July 1918 through the Armistice.
Overseas. Walter F. Tidwell, born at Jingo, enlisted in May 1917 and was overseas with the 20th Engineers from March 1918 to June 1919. Robert Shannon Hay, born at Jingo in 1897, went over with the 151st Infantry in October 1918 and didn't come home until September 1919. George W. Mangrum served with the 112th Infantry. Ray Parmer Lampley served with a military police company. Gervase Stinson, also of Route 2, Jingo, was inducted in November 1917 and was overseas with the 148th Infantry from June 1918 to April 1919. Jessie Carter, Noah A. Harrison, James T. Jones and Perry McCord also went overseas.
Stateside. Seymour A. Douglas, who was born in New York City, served as a sergeant at Camp Pike, Ark. Freeman Deal, Robert Marshall Edwards, Felix L.F. Hutcherson, Samuel Nalls and Clifton C. Zarbe also served stateside, according to their entries. Deal, Nalls and Zarbe were discharged in 1918 with disability certificates.
Who went together
The induction dates show neighbors leaving in groups. Carter and Hutcherson were inducted at Franklin on June 28, 1918, and Nalls is listed a day later. Douglas, Mangrum and Zarbe went on May 24, 1918. Deal, Edwards and Hay went on Aug. 8, 1918, with consecutive serial numbers.
Lankford and Noah Harrison, both from Jingo routes, were inducted on the same day, July 23, 1918, and were assigned to the same replacement company. Their serial numbers are three apart. Harrison came home in July 1919. Lankford didn't.
Not every Jingo man was from Jingo. The record lists birthplaces in Russia, New York, Illinois and Kingston, Tenn., alongside the men born at Jingo. Two more are typed as "Ferndale, Tenn." and "Lyle, Tenn." Those are most likely Fernvale, the community just south of Fairview, and Lyles, in Hickman County.
What the record doesn't show
The Fairviewian found no use of the name "Fairview" in the ledger's machine-read text. The name hadn't been adopted yet.
The city’s 2040 Comprehensive Plan traces the post office’s names: Christiana in 1858, Jingo in 1880 and Fairview in 1937.Source: City of Fairview, Fairview Forward: The 2040 Comprehensive Plan, adopted May 2, 2019 | Fairview Research Archive
The list of 22 may not be complete. The ledger's 108 scanned pages were machine-read, and that text often attached addresses to the wrong man, garbled them or missed them. The Fairviewian read every page of the original images, entry by entry, for the word "Jingo." Men from the area who gave a Franklin or other route address aren't counted, and a faint or misprinted entry could have been missed.
The record lists each man's units and dates. It doesn't say why anyone enlisted or what any of them thought of the war.
If your family has letters, photographs or discharge papers from any of these men, The Fairviewian would like to hear from you.
Where to remember them
Fairview's place to honor its veterans is Veterans Memorial Park, at Evergreen Lake on Black Pine Road. The city held a grand opening for the park on Sept. 26 and called it "a lasting tribute where our veterans can be remembered, recognized, and honored for their service and sacrifice." It thanked American Legion Post 248, Ascension Saint Thomas and Innovative Lawns for helping make it possible.
The park has flagpoles for the branches of the military and a walking trail of a little under half a mile around Evergreen Pond, according to the city's Parks Master Plan.
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