Jackson Purchase Historical Society

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from May 16, 1874

• Oscar Turner and A. R. Boon, candidates for Congress, addressed a large group of citizens before the Fulton County Court House in Hickman on May 11^th. Turner identified himself with the Granger movement and favored the Federal Government “issuing a national currency dollar for dollar for its bonds” to reduce interest rates and the national debt. Boon “covered nearly identically the same positions on National politics as presented by Turner,” though not a member of the Granger organization and opposed National banks and currency.
• William Lindsay, candidate for governor, visited Hickman on May 11^th and was warmly received by his “Fulton County friends.”
• W. W. Robertson, Joseph M. Bigger, Edward I. Bullock, and Charles Marshall, all candidates for Circuit Judge, campaigned in Hickman on May 11^th. The candidates for Commonwealth Attorney, A. B. Stubblefield, Bernard A. Neale, and Dick Moss, also campaigned in the city that day.
• A Common School Trustee was to be elected in the Hickman District. The district had a fund of “several thousand dollars” for public education.
• The Hickman Cornet Band composed a song titled “The Warren Gal-op.” The editor of the Hickman Courier declared it to be “good music any way.”
• Thieves have been “prowling” around in East Hickman and broke into several houses during the week. Jesse Tams, who was out of town, lost a “considerable quantity of bacon.”
• A number of houses of prostitution in the black community in Hickman were observed according to the Hickman Courier and that these “dens” should be broken up and to “put the males and females to work on our farms.”
• The Fulton County Court held their May term meeting in Hickman. The Court focused on numerous road repair projects in the county. A new road from Fulton to Rock Springs was ordered to be constructed.
• The Fulton County Bible Society planned to hold their annual meeting at the Hickman Methodist Church on May 17^th.
• John Shepherd, of Jordan Station, invented a bucket to keep sweet milk pure and sweet in the hottest weather. A perforated rim at the top of the bucket allows impure air which collects at the top of the bucket to escape.
• John Skinner, a prisoner from Kansas in the Fulton County jail, was denied habeas corpus by Judge John Wingate.
• Bill Kelly, a black man arrested in Hickman by Marshal Gardner for murder, was executed in Nashville before a crowd of over 6,000 people on May 8^th.
• Farmers in the lowlands of Fulton County were reported to have suffered the worst losses since the flood of 1867.
• A man by the name of King turned State’s evidence in Memphis that listed 150 citizens in the counties of Fulton, Hickman and Graves and the Tennessee counties of Weakley and Obion that were believed to be associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
• The City of Mayfield voted for a subscription of $25,000 in capital stock for the construction of a narrow-gauge railroad track from Cairo to Paris via Mayfield.
• J. Hawes, the young man who killed Ed Keen in Ballard County, was tried, and acquitted before a Magistrates’ Court in Blandville.
• Thomas J. Pickett announced in Paducah that he would be the Republican candidate for Congress in the First District.
• The Paducah Kentuckian reported that James Colter, a quarryman at Hillman’s Ironworks in Paducah, had departed for England to receive his inheritance from a distant relative that died seventeen years earlier. The property he inherited was estimated at $300,000.
• The Masonic Brotherhood of Paducah prepared to celebrate St. John’s Day on June 24^th. Emerson Etheridge was expected to be present to make a speech.
• The Southwestern Kentucky Medical Association planned to meet in Paducah on May 26^th.
• The District Council of the Patrons of Husbandry planned to assemble at Paducah on July 24^th.
• Joshua Straus, a tobacco dealer from Milford, Delaware, committed suicide on the steamer Thompson Dean near Paducah earlier in the week.
• A mad dog was reported to have bitten the child of Mr. A. Brasfield and another child in Dresden, Tennessee. Brasfield’s child, who received the Maddox “mad-stone” cure, died after suffering excruciating pains and spasms. The other child was expected to die soon.
• The wife of G. B. Toombs of Obion County, Tennessee fainted and fell into a fire and burned herself badly earlier in the week.
• T. J. Caverhill was murdered at Rutherford Station, Tennessee during a home robbery last week. He was struck in the head with a hatchet before his young child and robbed of $600.
• Tom W. Neal, editor of the Dyersburg Gazette and prospective candidate for the Tennessee State Legislature, visited Hickman on May 15^th.
• The steamer James Howard was met and boarded near Cairo by the Fulton County Sheriff, with a sizable posse, to arrest the entire crew which was involved in a robbery and mutiny. The crew showed some resistance but was “overawed” by the sheriff and his men.
• John P. Hall, Internal Revenue Collector for Western Kentucky, died in Paducah on May 8^th.