Jackson Purchase Historical Society

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from June 8, 1872

• A “splendid rain” visited the region on the evening of June 3^rd.
• The contract to build the West Hickman Levee was awarded to Luke Dillon at 12 ¼ cents per cubic yard.
• An additional passenger train was added at Hickman. Trains departed at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. and the evening train returned the same day.
• A Building Association of mechanics and laborers was organized in Hickman to take shares in stock for the organization of a bank. The bank was conceived to enable members to borrow money to purchase homes. Laborers were noted as averaging $2.50 a day.
• John Green and Benton Jones were arrested for robbing a young man named Arthur Smith. Both were being held in the county jail until their trial date on June 12^th.
• The festival at the Black Baptist Church was well attended and the proceeds were to be used to purchase church property. Many white visitors were reported to have attended to aid in the church’s efforts.
• The Hickman Methodist Sabbath School proposed a picnic for June 13^th and invited the members of the Baptist, Christian and German Sunday Schools.
• Members of the Methodist congregation presented Reverend S. B. Adams with “a fine suit of clothes.”
• Reverend N. N. Cowgill of the Episcopal Church scheduled a religious service at the Hickman Methodist Church on June 9^th.
• The Grand Lodge at Hickman appointed A. G. Caruth, William S. Rand and Jeff Brown in October of 1871 to prepare a ritual for black men to participate in the organization but no action was reported to have been devised.
• The Hickman Minstrel troupe planned to give a performance at Moscow on June 15^th. The Hickman Cornet Band was expected to be in attendance.
• John Martin, candidate for Congress in the First District, planned to campaign in Blandville on June 10^th.
• The Democratic Party of Fulton County scheduled a meeting at the county courthouse on June 10^th. The editor of the Hickman Courier expressed that he was “anxious to see every democrat and anti-Grant man in the county present.”
• State Legislator A. S. Arnold contemplated whether to resign his office to engage in a business in Louisville.
• Tobe Orr, a private detective, arrived in Clinton with a man named Wetherford accused of participating in the rape of Mrs. Shelton and her daughter a few months earlier. The man was placed in the county jail, but the sheriff soon removed the prisoner to Louisville fearing some of the town’s citizens may attempt to lynch the accused.
• John Ryan was hung in Mayfield on May 31^st. Ryan was convicted of murdering Miss Owens in Graves County in the fall of 1864. He protested his innocence on the gallows.
• The First Congressional Teachers’ Institute was scheduled to meet in Mayfield from June 24^th to June 30^th. The public were invited to attend.
• A considerable number of laborers were at work on the rail line of the Paducah & Memphis Railroad between Troy Station and the Obion River.
• The Paducah Tobacco Leaf reported “flattering prospects for crops of all kinds” in the Jackson Purchase this growing season.
• President Grant vetoed a bill to pay J. Milton Best of Paducah for his house which was destroyed by Union troops during the Civil War.
• Franklin Bennett of Union City, Tennessee reportedly lowered a pail of butter into her well in 1850 to keep it cool but the rope broke and the pail went to the bottom. The week prior the well was cleaned and the pail removed, the butter was still “sweet and fresh” after twenty-two years.
• W. Campbell declared himself a candidate for U. S. Congress in Jackson, Tennessee.
• On June 2^nd, Elizabeth H. Weatherly was killed, and Grace Curtis seriously wounded after a train on the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad was derailed nineteen miles west of Nashville. Both were enroute from Memphis and considered to be “fast women.”