This Week 150 Years Ago in Hickman – June 3, 1871

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from June 3, 1871
• The newly elected Board of Magistrates for Fulton County were scheduled to receive their commissions and to be inducted into office on June 5th.
• More new houses are now being constructed in Hickman than had been for many years.
• Picnics and barbecues were becoming popular in Hickman and were heard in every direction in town.
• The citizens of East Hickman held a community picnic on June 2nd.
• The students of Beech Wood Seminary had a picnic on June 3rd at Chalybeate Spring.
• The German citizens of Hickman celebrated a picnic that included an exercise by school pupils, several speeches, and evening ball on May 29th.
• Corn crops in Fulton County are reported better than ever known before.
• Obion County reports that the wheat crop is a failure but corn and cotton look promising.
• H. C. Bailey was appointed as a delegate by the Hickman Methodist Church to attend the Annual Methodist Conference in Trenton, Tennessee on November 18th.
• Horace Maynard, Tennessee politician and educator, briefly visited Hickman on May 31st.
• The Masonic Fraternity of Hickman planned to have a public celebration on June 24th.
• A proposition made by 200 citizens of Paducah subscribed to contribute $1,000 each to build an extensive cotton factory in the city.
• The Order of Good Templars of Hickman planned to have a grand celebration on June 17th and have invited neighboring lodges to attend.
• The Independent Order of Odd Fellows of Hickman organized a meeting at their lodge on June 8th.
• The Fulton County Fair Association proposed publishing a number of advertisements in their annual pamphlet.
• Candidates for the State Senate and Legislature were scheduled to address their constituents at the Fulton County Court House on June 12th.
• Powell & Brothers began construction on a produce warehouse in Hickman.
• Thomas W. Neal, editor of Dyersburg Gazette, was in Hickman on June 1st and was serenaded that night by the Hickman Star Band at the Planter’s Hotel.
• Robert Summers of the Columbus Dispatch and Ed K. Warren of the Mayfield Democrat visited Hickman on May 28th.
• The doctors of the First Congressional District of Kentucky met in Paducah on May 25th and organized a District Medical Society.
• A man by the name of Snow was shot by a man named Chambers near Harris’ Station in Obion County on May 24th. Snow survived the shooting but is not expected to live. The confrontation was over the ownership of a cow.
• Chicken cholera was reported to have been ravaging Graves and Calloway counties.
• A jailbreak occurred in Trenton, Tennessee as five prisoners escaped on May 30th.
• The Hickman County Executive Committee declined a convention for the purpose of nominating a Democratic candidate for the State Legislature after declaring it unnecessary.
• The Superintendent of the Kentucky Common School Districts was compelled to accept Collin’s History of Kentucky.
• Mary Livermore, a leading champion of women’s rights, in a recent public speech declared that there will be “no more grand noble men until women are enfranchised.”