Editor’s Note: A version of the following Did You Know originally ran in Hoptown Chronicle’s weekly newsletter, The Scoop, on July 18, 2019.
Charles Mayfield Meacham was a longtime Hopkinsville journalist who also served as the city’s mayor from 1906 to 1914 and wrote the last comprehensive local history of the community.
A descendant of Christian County settlers, Meacham was born here in 1858. He bought an interest in the South Kentuckian newspaper in 1879 and continued to publish a Kentuckian newspaper in Hopkinsville until 1920.
Meacham was president of the Kentucky Press Association in 1893.
Relying on 40 years of newspaper files and local institutional knowledge, Meacham wrote “A History of Christian County: From Oxcart to Airplane” in 1930.
In the preface he wrote, “I have been identified with the press of Hopkinsville, and have long cherished the ambition to write a history of Christian County. With the files of a paper I published for forty years, and other records of historical events, I feel that I can point to this book as a correct recital of the events it seeks to record. … This book will be a record of the achievements and triumphs of the people of the past, whose lives have become a part of the county’s history, supplemented by my own recollections of the achievements of those who have lived in and developed the county since the pioneers passed away.”
Meacham died in 1943 and was buried at Riverside Cemetery. His history book is available online.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
