History of Frith Lake Club
A Cultural Tradition of Noxubee County,
Mississippi
By D. A. Sharpe, revised February 3, 2009
One of the social pillars of Noxubee County and the
City of Macon is the Frith Lake Club.
It has a colorful and unique history of over seventy years, which this
article is intended to explore. My
interview in June of 2003 with my father-in-law, T. S. Boggess, Jr. (Mr. T. S.)
is the source of most of this material. He has served as President of the club most years from
1975 till 2008. At age 96, he
stepped down for a rest!
There was
uncertainty as to the origin of the name, Frith. However, communication from Mr. Clyde Frith (cfrith@structall.com) came to me in
February 2009 to confirm the name of the lake as being for his fourth great
grandfather, Joseph Hutchison Frith.
There was a hotel/tavern operating in Macon circa the turn of the
century (that is 1900, not 2000), owned by Mr. Frith. One of the privileges offered by the hotel was to take hotel
guests on day trips down to this lake to fish, which is considered the reason
for naming the lake after him.
Clyde reported to me that J. H. Frith was an attorney in Noxubee County,
and that the first court sessions were held in his home on the Noxubee
River.
Frith Lake is
located about five miles south of Macon on U.S. Hwy 45. An unmarked gravel road going east from
the highway winds around for about three miles over to the Frith Lake grounds. Anyone not familiar with where Frith
Lake is would have difficulty finding the way without help. The lake is unusually deep, with some
claiming it is formed over a large sink hole. One time in the 1990s the Forest Ranger had a captured
alligator that Mr. Boggess gave permission to loose into the lake. This helped reduce the somewhat
bothersome snake population around the lake, but the alligator apparently took
to the road sometime later and most probably headed for the Noxubee River,
which is adjacent to the lake.
The social birth of
Frith Lake began in 1920 when four Noxubee County gentlemen went together to
purchase the land around the lake for the purpose of a social club. They were Mr. Thomas S. Boggess (Mr.
Tom), Lloyd L. Shannon, Julian Eugene Boggess and an attorney, Mr. Len L.
Martin. The two Boggess men were
brothers, and Mr. Tom was the father of Mr. T. S.
A club was formed
with an initial closed membership of 20 or 25 (memory eludes us). It was closed in the sense that a limit
was set on the number of the members and that any new members had to be voted
upon by the membership for approval when member vacancies occurred or when,
over the years, the membership limit was raised.
The initial fee for
membership was fifty cents a month.
The mantle piece of this endeavor was to be a dance club, a social
phenomenon typical of those days in the roaring 1920s. The initial unit of the club house was
completed in October of 1923. It
basically consisted of a housed dance floor room with peripheral screened in
side rooms for food preparation and seating. It is the main entrance room today where the fireplace is
located. Of course, more additions
have been added over the years to reach its size of today. Some memories claim the beginning and
ending of construction was 1923 – 1924. There is a stone under the club house in the middle with its
date inscribed. It is not a very
convenient location to view it!
The socialization
began with summertime use as a camp and dance occasion. The weekends were the height of the
festivities. Usually a live orchestra
was engaged to play. Often this
was a local band. Early dances,
before a club house was erected, took place on a leveled off area of ground
with pine straw forming its base.
In those days, the Noxubee River was good for swimming recreation, which
many enjoyed.
The
camp cook was a black man named Lidge (sp?) Williams. His name may have been a contraction from the Old
Testament prophet, Elijah. He
delighted the people with mighty good chow.
The
families would come out to Frith Lake and pitch campsites to live a few weeks
in the summer. The women and
children lived in their tents and the men lived in their tents. These were somewhat large community type
tents. There was a chow hall tent
where they all gathered to dine.
The women and children would stay during the weekdays while the men folk
returned to work, returning in the evenings and on the weekends.
This pattern of
activity continued through the 1920s, but the economic depression of the nation
in the 1930s reflected in a decline for this club. The financial capabilities of the club and the members
drifted down so far that the property was auctioned off at the Noxubee County
Courthouse for $37 back taxes. One
of the original four founders, Mr. Julian Eugene Boggess, stepped forward to
purchase the property for the back taxes and donated it back to the club. So, he saved the day for the club at
that point.
The camping seemed
to discontinue in the early 1930s in favor of merely coming out to the club
house for dance and other social occasions. About that time, it was started to be called Frith Lake
Country Club.
Edwin Mason Murphy,
Jr. and James Horton gave leadership to the club in the 1930s and the
1940s. Part of this time was when
Edwin was Mayor of Macon. About
1960, the Pine View Country Club, largely under the leadership of Dr. Morris,
was formed, and that resulted in some drainage of members from the Frith Lake
Country Club. Later the Country was dropped. Since then, it has
been know as Frith Lake Club.
Mr. T. S. (Thomas
Shelton Boggess, Jr.) retired from his work at the Food Science Department of
the University of Georgia and returned to the family farm on Magnolia Drive
near Macon in 1973. It was not
long before the Club invited him to rejoin. He was elected President in 1975 and has served the longest
single tenure of leadership for the Frith Lake Club.
Mr. George Winter, a
band leader from Alabama, has been a centerpiece of the Christmas holiday dances
for each year since about 1976 (neither he nor we can remember for sure). This has kept alive the lively element
of Frith Lake Club being a dance club.
Today, the Club has
a thriving membership of between 50 and 60. It meets together about eight months out of the year. Two major events are on their annual
calendar. The Fourth of July
bar-b-que picnic is one, and the annual Christmas season holiday dance on
Friday or Saturday evening after Thanksgiving is the other. The shift to Saturday in recent years
was to accommodate the deer hunters of the Club, who did not want to come in
from their camps on Friday evening when they could get one more day of hunting
in by waiting till Saturday!
My
family and I have attended this Christmas dance for most years since the late
1970s. We cannot remember if we
missed any. Our three children
were teenagers from that time on and more or less grew up going to this annual
dance. Quite a tradition for our
family, and we have loved doing it!
D. A. Sharpe
805 Derting Road East
Aurora, TX 76078-3712
E-mail address:
dasharpe@aol.com
Personal Web Site with
additional genealogical information:
www.dasharpe.com