Dr. John W. Wickham Papers Collection

In 2018, Vennie Evans donated this collection to the Montgomery County Archives. Vennie Evans is the granddaughter of E.T. Wickham and grandniece of Dr. John W. Wickham. Her mother Mary Evans (1918 - 2013) was the daughter of E.T. and Lena Annie Wickham.

John William Wickham (1860 - 1915) grew up on a farm in Palmyra, Tennessee before attending Vanderbilt Medical University in Nashville. He used tobacco crop profits to fund his medical education. Dr. John W. Wickham returned home to Palmyra to practice medicine. A physician's visiting list from 1894 and ledger of medical payment in the collection document his daily work. Wickham married his adoptive cousin Fannie Cunningham. The couple were parents to a daughter Pearl. In addition to his medical career, Wickham served as a state representative for Montgomery County from 1901 to 1903. The collection features Wickham's announcement of his candidacy for the Democratic nomination to represent Montgomery County in the General Assembly of Tennessee.

On December 27, 1903, Pearl Wickham died after an illness. Dr. John and Fannie Wickham received several condolence letters that are housed in the collection. In addition to letters and other papers, there are holiday cards addressed mainly to Fannie Wickham spanning from 1925 to 1936.

This collection also includes photographs of Enoch Tanner (E.T.) Wickham (1883 - 1970) and his sculptures. E.T. Wickham was the brother of Dr. John W. Wickham. The youngest child of Robert and Betty Wickham, E.T. married Lena Annie Yarbrough in 1906. A photograph of the pair with another Wickham couple shows E.T. as a young man. Although E.T. and Lena settled on a farm with their brood of nine children in Robertson County, they moved back to Palmyra during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

During World War II, Ernest Wickham perished in France fighting. E.T. crafted a stone grave marker for his son in the Wickham Cemetery. A few years later, he created a sculpture of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Snake, his first large scale project. E.T. constructed a cabin near the family homeplace that he moved in with wife Lena in 1952. E.T. then set about creating an outdoor sculpture park filled with concrete imagery of frontiersmen, prominent Tennesseans (such as Andrew Jackson, Alvin C. York, Austin Peay, and Sam Davis), and religious figures. Dr. John W. Wickham was commemorated with a statue of a traveling physician on horseback. Another family member, son Ernest, appears as on top of concrete podium in a World War II memorial dedicated to the fallen soldiers of Montgomery County.

Photographs from the 1960s show E.T. Wickham posing with visitors at his sculpture park. Unfortunately, due to preservation issues and vandalism, many of Wickham's sculptures are no longer extant. Some pieces were removed to Austin Peay State University while others are housed behind a fence in Palmyra. Photographs taken in the mid-1990s to early 2000s reveal the deterioration of extant sculptures on the family's property.