Meridian's rail history focus of Saturday event

Oct. 5—The Queen City's early railroad history will be the center of attention on Saturday, Oct. 7, as Rose Hill Storytellers share their tales during Stories in the Round at the Meridian Railroad Museum.

The event will begin at 10 a.m. at the museum, located at 1805 Front Street. Admission to the museum is $5 for adults. Children are admitted free. Admission will include a tour of the museum.

"It is an exciting program, and we welcome people of all ages to come out to our event," said Anne McKee, executive director of the Meridian Rails Historical Society and the Meridian Railroad Museum. "It will be a fun event for anyone who loves history and people who are dedicated and interested in railroads, especially railfans."

Down the street from the museum, the Earth's Bounty Festival will be going on from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. in Singing Brakeman Park, so it will be a good time to take in both downtown events.

Stories in the Round is technique used by storytellers to draw their listeners into the story being told, McKee said. Attendees sit in chairs that are placed in a circle. Storytellers, dressed in period costume, then step inside the circle to tell their stories.

"The period costume will catch the eye, then the people will feel like they are in that circle in the story, McKee said.

Saturday's program will cover Meridian's railroad years from 1850 to 1930.

Among the stories the Rose Hill players will narrate is one about Charles M. Rubush, a contractor who built the railroad buildings that house the museum and several other landmark buildings in downtown, including the Lauderdale County Courthouse and Grand Opera House. Rubush will be portrayed by Ward Calhoun.

Rose Hill storyteller Zane Royal will take on the role of Walton Moore, one of the earliest railroad workers in Meridian. He moved to Meridian from Georgia as a newlywed in his late teens to help lay the tracks of the Mobile and Ohio rail line, which was working its way from Mobile through Mississippi northward in the 1850s.

McKee will step into the circle to tell the story of Richard McLemore, the city's first permanent settler in the 1830s, while Bill Lowe and Dawson Hand will take to the circle to tell the story of a pair of gandy dancers. A slang term used for early railroad workers, gandy dancers were the section hands who laid and maintained railroad tracks before machines came along. The name came from the "dancing" movements of the workers as they tried to keep the track in alignment as they worked, McKee said.

Two storytellers, Carol Sue Wiggins and Donna P. Colburn, will portray two lady railroad passengers who come through Meridian en route to their destination, describing what travel by steam engine was like back in the early 20th Century.

A new player, Wandalla Campbell, will be joining Stories in the Round to portray Susie Glover.

"Susie a young woman who just needed a job in about the late 1920s or maybe early '30s. We don't know a lot about her. We have a picture of her where she's standing with the baggage handlers," McKee said. "Now, that'd be hard work. That's picking up those big sacks of mail or whatever it is and swinging them onto the carriages that would take them out of the loading area and then on to the train itself. She just needed a job, and she came to the railroad to see what they had open, and she said I can do it."

McKee said Glover worked as a baggage handler for about five years, eventually impressing the managers who moved up her in positions. She eventually was picked to call out the train numbers and locations to passengers waiting at the station.

"She decided to sing out those number sand those locations and she had a beautiful alto voice," McKee said. "Her voice carried throughout the railroad station, and she became a Meridian celebrity. People would come in and bring their families and just sit and listen to her call the trains."

Stories in the Round is hosted by the Meridian Railroad Museum in conjunction with members from the Rose Hill Storytellers.

Contact Glenda Sanders at gsanders@themeridianstar.com.