All things are connected, the saying goes. A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and sets off a tornado in Texas, or anyone in the entertainment industry can be connected to Kevin Bacon in seven steps.
We don’t know if the butterfly effect is real, much less whether everyone in the entertainment industry really has a seven-degree connection to Kevin Bacon.
We do know, however, that Madison County has made connections with famous people and events throughout the nation and world.
Below we present some Madison County connections that we found through our connection with the book titled: “Have you heard the one about . . .? History Bits Volume Two; about Canton and Madison County, Mississippi,” written and published by the late historian James H. Lacey, Jr.”
The Teddy Bear not only owes its existence to Mississippi, but it also owes its designation as the state’s official toy to a former Canton Elementary School Teacher named Sarah Doxey-Tate.
The Teddy Bear owes its existence to a hunting trip President Theodore Roosevelt made to a location near the Delta town of Onward, Mississippi, in Sharkey County, in November 1902 at the invitation of then-Mississippi Gov. Andrew H. Longino.
The president did not have any luck spotting a bear, so one of the president’s assistants rounded up a black bear, tied it to a willow tree and called the president to come to shoot the bear. Roosevelt, however, declined, saying it would be unsporting.
A Washington Post cartoonist later immortalized the event, and the cartoon gave Morris Michtom, a Brooklyn candy shop owner, an idea.
“He and his wife Rose also made stuffed animals, and Michtom decided to create a stuffed toy bear and dedicate it to the president who refused to shoot a bear,” the National Park Service’s website states. “He called it 'Teddy's Bear’.”
Michtom later got Roosevelt’s permission to use his name on the bears and began mass-producing toy bears that proved to be so popular he later founded the Ideal Toy Company.
“To this day, the Teddy Bear has worldwide popularity, and its origin can be traced back to Theodore's fateful hunting trip in 1902,” the NPS website states.
It wasn’t until 100 years later, however, that the Mississippi Legislature proclaimed the Teddy Bear the state’s official toy.
Doxey-Tate of Tupelo proposed the idea and carried it through to completion in 2002. Doxey-Tate had previously been a teacher at Canton Elementary School from 1954 to 1958 when she was then known as Sarah Jordan.
Madison County just might have been the place where the light bulb went off in Thomas Alva Edison’s head to create the light blub or any of the other inventions dreamed up by the man who became known as one of the world’s greatest inventors.
Edison reportedly worked as a telegraph operator in Canton sometime between 1865 and 1868, in what would have been one of the future inventor's first jobs, according to one of his biographers who noted that after the Civil War ended in 1865, Edison left his home in Port Huron, Michigan, to “seek his fortune” supporting himself as a “Tramp (telegraph) operator” until 1868.
According to a report in the Aug. 2, 1940, edition of the Madison County Herald that coincided with the local opening of the movie titled “Edison the Man,” starring Spencer Tracy, Joe Garrett of Vicksburg wrote that his late-Aunt Amanda Garrett Cage of Canton had known Edison when he worked in Canton.
The Herald carried the item under a headline reading, “Former Canton Man Portrayed in Film.”
Most Mississippians know of Kermit the Frog’s “Rainbow Connection,” not to mention his Mississippi connection in that his creator Jim Henson grew up in Leland, but most people may not be familiar with America's favorite frog’s Madison County connection.
The famous frog who shared with us that it is not easy being green is named for one of Henson’s closest friends, Kermit Scott, from his time growing up in Leland.
Before he moved to Leland, Scott lived in Canton with his family from 1940 until the end of World War II when his father, T.K. Scott moved the family to Leland in 1946 where he would later meet and befriend Henson and become the namesake for Miss Piggy's "Kermie."
Casey Jones is immortalized for the train wreck that claimed his life in 1900 in Vaughn in neighboring Yazoo County but the wreck also immortalized the deceased railroad man in Madison County at least for a few decades.
The wreck generated bad publicity for the Illinois Central railroad company so after the wreck the company funded a Young Men’s Christian Association building on Peace Street on a piece of property east of the railroad depot in Canton, which also was a busy hub for the railroad company.
The YMCA hosted Bible classes and had an indoor swimming pool with heated water among other offerings. The YMCA was mostly utilized by men who worked for the railroad company and the YMCA was a mainstay in Canton up until the Great Depression.
A chair made in Madison County boldly carried Capt. Kirk where no man had gone before throughout the run of the original “Star Trek” television series from 1966 to 1969.
The chair in which Capt. Kirk, played by William Shatner, sat to lead his Starship Enterprise crew through the galaxies and unexplored worlds was built by Madison Furniture Industries in Canton.
The chair not only soared through the galaxies but also into millions of viewer’s homes and hearts throughout the decades since the show debuted.
In the late 2000s, the chair reportedly sold at auction for $305,000 to Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle.
The New York Times reported on the sale at the time, saying, “It is a commonly held view that Captain Kirk’s chair was built around the black Naugahyde cushioning and slim walnut arms of a model No. 2405 or No. 4449 armchair produced by Madison Furniture Industries of Canton, Miss., between 1962 and 1968. The industrial designer Arthur Umanoff conceived the chair as part of an attempt to replicate the Danish modern look, popular then. Today, vintage examples of the Madison chairs can fetch up to $2,000 on eBay.”
