Learning,Speech,&Attention Defects

           My name is Thomas Crosthwaite.  I was born June 26,1936, in Laweranceburg, Teneessee,  then a small town in the south central part of the state. It was here that General Andrew Jackson marched his troops through what is now downtown Lawrenceburg, on his way to New Orleans, where the deciding battle of the war of 1812 took place. . 

        Sixteen miles north of Lawrenceburg lies Summertown where I grew up and my mother taught school for many years. A major skirmish of the Civil War took place there one afternoon when Nathan Bedford Forrest raided  a union camp near what is now Summertown. Many union soldiers were killed that afternoon. Summertown was a wildderness known as the Barren. It became a community when a number of former Union soldiers returned lured by cheap land. .

        To the north of Summertown lies Maury County, Tennessee., home of several Civil War relics. Among them is a pre- Civil War mansion,  which has been said to have cost over a million dollars to build with slave labor, an astonishing amount at that time. It is called Rattle and Snap because it's owner lost it in a poker game. 

       Tennessee is the home of three presidents. Andrew Jackson, James K. Poke and Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson could neither read nor write, yet he married a school teacher and became the 17th President of the United States  between 1865 to 1868.