Jackson Purchase Historical Society

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from June 10, 1871
• A Temperance Festival was scheduled in Hickman for June 17th. The arrangements were reported to be on an extensive scale and to be a grand affair. All the lodges in the county were invited and over 500 members of the Good Templars planned to attend.
• Francis Miller commenced building a garden and facilities for music and general festivities for all occasions. He planned to construct a ball room and other buildings in the near future.
• Bondurant & Drewry declared they planned to establish a tobacco warehouse in Hickman.
• The Reverend Steel planned to deliver a series of lectures at the Methodist Church in Hickman on the subjects of Church history, doctrines, and polity.
• The Hickman City Council met on June 7th and ordered the opening of Fulton Street in West Hickman from Brooklyn to Catlett Streets. The Council also made payments to Albert Blackman for $1.75 and W. L. Gardner for $9.25 for removing dead hogs.
• The Auditor of the First Judicial District reported that there were 148 criminal prosecutions in the district for the year 1870. Of these Fulton County had 13, Hickman County 80, Ballard County 0, McCracken County 36, Marshall County 8, Calloway 11 and Graves County 0.
• George W. Silvertooth was scheduled to make a speech on political issues in Mayfield on June 19th.
• Delegates appointed by the Democratic Convention on May 3rd were requested to meet at the Hickman Courier office to cast their vote for Register of the Land Office.
• The Board of Magistrates for Fulton County planned to meet on June 12th to discuss the construction of a new jail, a bridge across the Bayou de Chien and several other matters of public improvement.
• Candidates for the State Senate and Legislature spoke at Clinton at the Hickman County Court House on June 5th.
• Candidates for the State Senate and Legislature were scheduled to address interested members of the community at the Fulton County Court House on June 12th.
• A lottery drawing to support educating the blind was to be conducted by J. R. Golladay in Hickman in early July.
• The Masons and Good Templars of Jordan Station planned a grand celebration for June 24th.
• A dead body was found floating in the Mississippi River near Hickman on June 4th. The body was naked and could not be identified.
• A chicken cholera was prevalent in Graves County.
• The wheat crop of Lyon County was greatly injured by rust.
• The caterpillars have destroyed two-thirds of the orchards below the Cumberland.
• The Directors of the Paducah Fair Company decided to have their county fair from October 11th to 13th.
• Several men in Ballard County brought a law suit against the Mobile & Ohio Railroad Company for $100,000 in damages for not building a rail line extension through the county as contracted.
• The earliest wheat harvest known has begun in Southern Illinois and the yield is abundant.
• The Tobacco Fair was to be held at the Ballard Warehouse in Cairo, Illinois on June 28th.
• The merchants of Union City, Tennessee met at Temperance Hall on May 26th to discuss how business owners in the city had been misrepresented and slandered to lending institutions in Cincinnati and denied credit.
• A fiery disaster was avoided on June 9th just south of Rutherford Station, Tennessee when Jack Baker, conductor of freight train No. 6 of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad, and brakeman E. Tiffany put out a fire on a car of coal oil and powder. The flames were smothered only a few feet away from forty kegs of powder. Tiffany’s clothes, hands and face were burned and car badly scorched.