Jackson Purchase Historical Society

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from March 7, 1874

• The Mississippi River was reported as breaching its banks and flooding lowlands and nearby risings.
• Farmers in the region feared heavy and prolonged rains would “retard spring farming operations considerably.”
• Seven-month Fulton County pigs were reported to weigh 265 pounds.
• A Temperance law was likely to be voted upon in Fulton County in May. It would prohibit the manufacture and sale of any quantity of “spirituous, vinous, or malt liquors, etc.”
• Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, the Kentucky State Geologist, was expected to visit Hickman to examine the “overflow district” below the city for the possible construction of a levee from Hickman to Madrid Bend.
• A number of stragglers, thieves, and counterfeiters were rapidly filling up the Fulton County Jail.
• Three counterfeiters, Jordan D. James, M. F. Cox, and George Lewis were arrested and charged after passing counterfeit money on several instances in the vicinity of Hickman. When captured, a package of $140 counterfeit bills was located under a log near where they were found.
• John Box, a prisoner sentenced for robbing the Powell & Brothers Grocery Store in Hickman, attempted an escape when being transferred from the Fulton County Jail to the State Penitentiary. He was recaptured after a desperate struggle with members of a local posse.
• Candidates for Circuit Judge met at Clinton on March 2^nd. Joseph M. Bigger and William A. Robertson debated the major issues of the day. A local correspondent reported “no new points between the aspirants and no new candidates.”
• Congressman Ed Crossland supported legislation that reduced the salaries of Congressmen by some $3,000 annually. He also reiterated that he would not be a candidate for Congress in the next election.
• C. Jones was nominated as Clerk of the Court of Appeals and was “heartily endorsed” by the Democratic Party.
• Jonah Montgomery and Joseph H. Roulhac announced their candidacies for Fulton County Judge.
• W. Stubblefield announced his candidacy for Fulton County Jailer.
• William Frenz’s circulating library offered $3.00 annual memberships and 10 cents per volume rentals for non-members for up to two weeks. He claimed his library had over 400 books and “all new works by the most popular writers of the day.”
• The young men of Hickman organized a “grand social cotillon party” for the evening of March 11^th.
• The first issue of the Fulton Gazette was received by the Hickman Courier and declared it to be a “spicy, newsy sheet, and favorably compares with any of its contemporaries.”
• W. Egbert and Bell Scott were arrested in Ballard County by Sherriff L. F. Marshall and charged with the murder of Mrs. Egbert. Mrs. Egbert was presumed to have been poisoned and her body was to be exhumed for testing.
• The Whisky Party of Paducah defeated the Temperance Party on March 2^nd by 76 votes prohibiting the sale of liqueur in the city.
• The Signal of the South (published in Troy, Tennessee) reported that a woman had drowned in Reelfoot Lake during a fishing expedition. The skiff that she and her husband were using overturned, and she could not be rescued. The woman was visiting from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• The supposed robbers of the Hickman Express, Harry Nelson and Dave Kirk, were arrested in Gleason, Tennessee.
• Men that wear coonskin caps in Dyer County, Tennessee had been shooting at people who commented on their hats.
• The Huntingdon Republican reported that dogs attend church in Huntingdon, Tennessee, as the dogs cannot be left at home.
• A cave-in on the riverbank at New Madrid was reported by the New Madrid Record as receding into the Mississippi at 20 feet an hour. It fell so fast that “some of he houses had to be kept constantly on the move in order to keep them from going in with the bank.”
• Frank Gibbs wife, Mary Routin Gibbs, died of pneumonia on March 4^th.