From Ole Miss To The Wagner Girls: Then And Now
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
I write this on Monday, the 25th, which is the first day of 2025 fall classes at the University of Mississippi. Let us all send up our collective thoughts and prayers to Water Valley’s young people — this time with an emphasis on those who are newly arrived at Ole Miss and Northwest. And State, too, I guess. “Blessed Heavenly Father, please get my child to check his email daily. If that is beyond Your almighty power, which I suspect is the case, weekly will do. And help me, Heavenly Father, to understand why a person wouldn’t check his email. Also, please wake him up for class. Thank You, amen.”
Other local fall happenings that probably need a little less begging from the Almighty that they succeed are the “I’m So Water Valley Day” and the Water Valley Literary Festival, both scheduled for Saturday, the 27th. So put both of these events on your calendar! Which reminds me to add “Get him to check his calendar” to the college-kid prayer request.
While the powers of the universe make whatever deals and arrangements it takes to move the mountain that is getting an 18-year-old man-child to check his email, let’s read a Wagner Letter from 1894. This correspondence is to the local Wagner girls who are off at college. It’s from a 25-year-old Earl Brewer, who later became the governor of Mississippi. I have no doubt that the 1894 set of young people would have absolutely loved email!
Water Valley, Miss.,
Oct. 16, 1894
Misses Jessie & Corinne,
Dear Friends: Doubtless you both think that I have forgotten you in this time, but I try to inform you that such is not the case. I would have written before this but for the fact that I didn’t know about the rules of your school, but was informed today by Mr. Salmon that you could receive a letter all O.K.
I am a little afraid of a correspondence with school “children” and have been since I had a twenty-two-page letter read by the prof. in chapel one morning at Oxford (wasn’t that prof. a good reader, though?).
We had a gay time last Thursday in that we went out opossum hunting, only seventy there in the crowd. We went four miles, went and pitched a hut, and had a fine supper. I was with Miss Kate Thomas. And we had several quarrels and came near fighting once.
Wilson has gotten a matrimonial lie in his hat, and it has driven every legal principle out of his head. He went out opossum hunting with us Thursday and is still talking about it. Not about the opossums, but about how beautiful Miss Nellie Jennings looked that night.
Mr. Evan is wishing daily for Miss Jessie to come home. We are going to have an entertainment at the Christian Halls Friday. I wish you could both be here.
Well, it is getting late and I have no news of interest to write you, so I will close.
I would be very much pleased to get a letter from either or both of you.
Give Kalista my best regards. I am your friend,
Earl L. Brewer
