HEARNE & CO-SPURLIN SUIT

Old man Jack Durham did not testify in Spurlin’s favor in the 1892 suit. He was a straight man and knew how things were. Spurlin’s mother was the sister of Senator John H Reagan, and his father was a Jew. He was wearing a cap when he first came here.

(In the bottom of my father’s old trunk are letters and materials from the time he was in the legislature early in the century. Some letters to him are signed "Spurlin." In one he suggested appropriation of funds to assist Mrs. John H. Reagan, then a widow. The Reagans were one of the several very prominent families at Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I saw a plaque on one building saying it was John H. Reagan’s birthplace. Postmaster-general of the Confederacy, later Senator from Texas, and chairman or member of First Railroad Commission, a statesman.

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