DAYS GONE BY

   John Morgan Fletcher was born in Henry County, Ga., Oct. 18, 1840, and came to Cass County with his parents in 1853, settling on a farm. He attended summer school after laying the crops. He enlisted in the Confederate Army in Oct. 1861, joining Crumps 1st Texas Battalion of Cavalry at Jefferson.
   Following the battle of Elkhorn, he was dismounted and sent to Corinth, Miss. In June of 1862, he joined the 32nd Regiment and was wounded in the battle of Murfreesboro, Tenn.
   After the war, his father Richard Morgan Fletcher began to give parcels of land to his sons as they married. Instead of land, Fletcher was given the equivalent in money for an education. He attended college in Ladonia, Texas, where a scholarly man Col. Featherstone was president. 
   After four years he returned to Cass County and began teaching school. He was a professor at the old Woodlawn Academy in Cusseta (outside Linden) and was teaching in Daingerfield, when he met Miss Sarah Jane Leftwich and was married in 1873. He was elected Cass County treasurer in 1878 and served four years.
In January of 1879, he organized a stock company to publish a democratic paper in Linden and was elected business manager and editor. The paper was named the Citizens Journal and after four years was moved to Atlanta, where it has been published ever since.
   Fletcher wanted the Citizens Journal to champion the causes that he thought were right: in religion, politics, prohibition, morals, education and advancement of the citizens of the county and East Texas.
   He received injuries in a train wreck in 1912, while in route to a Confederate reunion and never fully recovered. He passed away July 1916 and is buried in Pine Crest Cemetery in Atlanta.  Fletcher is the great-grandfather of Charles Nelson, son of JimmIe and Harriet Nelson. Fletcher was her maternal grandfather.