In a front page story of The Advocate-Messenger on Feb. 18, 1933, Jerry Turner Sandidge was going to be honored for his 92nd birthday at First Baptist Church on Sunday. He was the oldest member of the church, and was believed to be the oldest resident in Boyle County.

According to the story, J.T. Sandidge was born Feb. 20, 1841 in Turnersville, about five miles south of Stanford. He was named for his mother’s family.

The story said when he was about 14 years old, he moved with his family to Hardin County, where he lived for 40 years.

Sandidge recalled the outbreak of the Civil War when he was 20 years old, he said. But he nor his brother saw service because they were drafted only a short time before the war ended.

Sandidge said he vividly remembered the Battle of Perryville and he saw Sherman’s army of 300,000 marching south through Elizabethtown. He said he would have fought as a Confederate, even though he nor his father ever approved of slavery. Sandidge said, however, that his father had owned about a dozen slaves, “but was more than willing for them to have freedom.”

Even though he voted against Abraham Lincoln for president, he said that the speech he heard Lincoln give at the courthouse in Elizabethtown while campaigning, “was one of the greatest speeches he had ever heard.” He stated that he thought Lincoln was one of the grandest men who ever lived. And if he hadn’t been assassinated “Lincoln would have accomplished glorious things for the south.”

According to Sandidge, during his younger days, people lived more simply and righteously “and that there was much more of friendliness socially.” He added that people in 1933 were not as good as the modern inventions that they were using at that time.

In another front page story, it was reported that the antique desk, once owned by George Speed Frye, who was the first collector of internal revenue for the old 8th District of Kentucky, was donated to Centre College.

The massive walnut desk had been in the Lawson Dry Goods Company store for years. And since the firm was going out of business, John Lawson was giving it to Centre.

Centre College officials hadn’t decided where to put the large desk, but thought it “may repose in the library or in the executive offices in Old Centre building.”