November 19, 1926, Progress
Died November 9, 1926; was US Attorney of the Western District of Tenn. Born in Hardin County, near Saltillo, November 23, 1858.
[W.V. Barry, publisher and editor of The Lexington Progress, gives account of the funeral, then completes the article with the following personal remarks:]
"While the service was in progress I sat and listened and knew that save and except only his brothers and sisters, I had known T.A. Lancaster longer than any other person in the large crowd. He taught school in Decaturville the year I married there and the year that I left and moved to Lexington, 1883 and 1884. He consulted me about settling in Jackson to practice law in 1891, and went there against my advice, for I told him that on account of being a Republican, he could not make any money out of his profession in Jackson. He tried it one year, got enough and came to Henderson County, where for several years a Democrat stood no more chance than a Republican in Madison. But back to the Good Old Days in Decatur County, when Ack and Bill used to go to the Teachers Institutes in Decaturville and in county school houses and get simply wooled all over creation, as it were, by Prof. Harry Denver, who was a postmaster in the art of argument-but no matter how many monkeys Denver made of the Lancaster boys, they stuck to him to the end and finally got all he knew-and that was the only way they could get him to unload his information.
Before Judge Lancaster married, he was a frequent visitor in my home after the evening shades had fallen and many a night he sat on my front porch at my present home, and raised up his voice in the old folk, love and sacred songs of the day to guitar accompaniment.
Being of different politics, he a leading politician, and I the publisher of a newspaper, it is remarkable that we got along so well through so many years. I never had but little business with him; we owed each other for no favors, so what I may say about him is absolutely disinterested. In the practice of his profession, he was the smoothest lawyer who ever came under my observation, so I believe that his smooth temper, his exceptionally fine manners, his home life and his great devotion to the cause and advancement of education were the chief things for which he was entitled to credit--with the understanding that he was an indomitable worker and continued to persist in hard mental and physical effort long after he should have retired to devote his time to getting all the pleasure he could of the remainder of his life. I do not believe, in fact, I have come to know that the office to which he had been appointed did not break him down, but I do believe that if he had taken my humble advice he would be living today-unless things that happen are foreordained to come to pass. May his soul rest in peace.--W.V. Barry"
[Note on Prof. Harry Denver: He was Harry P. Denver, born June 23, 1846, New London, Connecticut; died January 1911. He taught school in this area for twenty years or more. He and his wife, Callie Denver (born 1856) are buried in Lexington Cemetery.]
source: Brenda Kirk Fiddler