Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from October 7, 1871
• Construction began on the new Fulton County jail.
• The Hickman City Marshal arrested two men with stealing a skiff from Columbus as they passed the city wharf.
• Fourteen family members had been poisoned at the home of John A. Sloan near Hickman. A daughter-in-law of Mr. Stone mistakenly used a bottle of “rats bane” when preparing sweetmeats. All narrowly escaped death according to Dr. J. W. Gourley.
• James Chapman fell out of a skiff and drowned near Island No. 8 on September 29th.
• Moses W. Galloway, former sheriff of Graves County, established a two-story flour and gristmill in Hickman adjoining the Oswald’s Furniture Factory.
• The Hickman Courier reported the cotton market was becoming very active, but the merchants were buying at very slim margins and expecting no direct profit from the trade to Hickman. However, exports were “unprecedentedly large and the crops everywhere throughout the country have been immense.”
• A petition was circulating in Hickman calling for the formation of a “union and reform party.” The document claimed, “neither the present Democratic or Republican parties are equal to the correction of the evils which now afflict the country.”
• The Hickman District free school planned to begin classes on October 9th under the supervision of Professor J. T. Boyle.
• Some citizens complained that a number of juveniles were “firing pistols, burning terrapins and tearing down saplings for grapes” on the Sabbath and should be stopped.
• Blankenship and Leonard, two fishermen from Hickman, caught a catfish 5 feet 8 inches long and weighing 157 pounds.
• The Circuit Court was in session at Clinton. Murty O’Brian was sentenced to be hung for murder.
• Mary Ann Maddox of Hickman died on September 28th at age sixty-one.
• Reverend New Farris married W. H. Pyle and Lenora Brown of Obion County on October 3rd.
• The Union City fair began the week of October 2nd. Attendance had been “quite large each day.”
• A man was captured and arrested at Union City for the murder of Mrs. Stephen Hamlin a few days earlier in Nashville.
• The Paducah Kentuckian reported a “ku-klux” raid that occurred in Weakley County, Tennessee on September 22nd. A party of hooded men set fire to the homes of black families near Boydsville. Two black men were shot and killed and two other men burned to death inside a cabin.
Jackson Purchase Historical Society