Oxford’s Favorite Historian Jack Mayfield Dies at 71

Jack Mayfield, Historical Consultant. File photo. 

By Alyssa Schnugg
News Editor
alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com

“Jack knew it all,” said Will St. Amand, president of the Lafayette County Historical and Genealogical Society about Jack Lamar Mayfield, a local historian who died Saturday at the age of 71. “We lost a pillar.”

Mayfield died at the Oxford Health and Rehab in Oxford after a long battle with cancer.

Mayfield worked in the insurance field and then became a Northwest Community College history professor, South Panola High School teacher and newspaper columnist. The hundreds of columns he’s written for local news publication, including Hottytoddy.com since 2004 have been gathered by the Lafayette County Historical and Genealogical Society and so far—five volumes—each containing about 100 of Mayfield’s history columns have been printed and bound.

“I was just working on the sixth,” St. Amand said.

Mayfield is also the author of one of the most popular history books about Oxford, “Images of America: Oxford and Ole Miss,” and a book of postcards made from photos of old-time Oxford, “Postcards of America: Oxford and Ole Miss.”

For more than 10 years, Mayfield showed off Oxford’s history to visitors and residents who wanted to learn more about our “little postage stamp of native soul” while also enjoying a ride on Oxford’s iconic double-decker buses by doing historic tours for Visit Oxford.

Copies of his columns have been provided to Visit Oxford to be used by future tour guides if needed.

Jack Mayfield shows off his award. Photo by Alyssa Schnugg. 

This summer, Visit Oxford named the turret room in its historic building on the Square after Mayfield, who would sit in the room while waiting for the tours to begin.

A memorial service will be held for Mayfield at a later date, according to his obituary from Waller Funeral Home.

Mayfield is survived by two sisters, Nancy Hawkins and her husband, Tom of Cordova, Tennessee and Sylvia Pryor and her husband, Jim of Oxford; a son in law, Matt Scott of Oxford and four grandchildren, Cami Dacus, Thomas Dacus, Ella Scott and Emma Scott. He was preceded in death by his daughter, Amanda Scott.