Jackson Purchase Historical Society

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from September 25, 1874

• The Congressional district’s Farmer’s Council met the week prior in Mayfield to discuss the nominees for Congress but the “meeting developed considerable differences of opinion” on which candidate to back. The meeting adjourned without a declaration of support for a nominee and agreed to gather in Benton on October 13th.
• The Paducah Kentuckian declared in its September 21^st issue that it supported Caswell Bennett as its candidate for Congress. The Mayfield Democrat supported A. R. Boon; the Paducah Tobacco Plant supported Oscar Turner; the Fulton Gazette was reported to support “anybody to beat Turner” and the Eddyville Telegraph was behind Bennet for Congress.
• The Democratic Executive Committee of the First Congressional District called for a Convention to meet in Paducah on October 15^th. Democrats from Fulton County were asked to meet at “their usual place of voting” on October 10^th to appoint delegates from their precincts.
• Nine men accused of the murder of black prisoners in Gibson County, Tennessee were arrested and brought to Memphis. A hearing was held where three were discharged and six held in jail on a $3,000 bond each.
• Sadly, the remaining issues of the Hickman Courier for 1874 and all 1875 have been lost to history. It was not until the May 19, 1876 issue that the newspaper was again preserved for posterity.

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from September 18, 1874

• The Beulah Baptist Association planned to hold its next annual meeting in Hickman.
• The German Seminary in Hickman announced classes in drawing, music, French, Italian, German, Latin, Greek, Natural Philosophy, English Literature, Mathematics, Bookkeeping and Civil Engineering. The school headmaster was A. W. Swanitz, an American educated in “one of the best European schools,” an engineer, and former United States Surveyor.
• The Hickman City Council met on September 14^th to pay the hardware store of Baltzer & Knoerr $25.90 for “repairing tools” and passed a motion that “all parties who may come forward within the thirty days from this date and pay their taxes for the present year will be released from paying the additional percent allowed by law.”
• George Martin, who stole J. T. Goaders horse two weeks prior, was apprehended at Bell’s Station, Tennessee and returned to Hickman on September 16th. Martin confessed and was housed in the county jail to await trial.
• The Fulton County Court met the past week to address the authorization to close the old route of the State Road that crossed the property of J. H. Dodds. Overseers of State roads were named and included Silas Boaz, J. H. Carpenter, Henry Johnson, and J. M. Caldwell. S. N. Steinberger was granted a merchant’s license to sell “spirituous liquors in quantities not less than a quart” at his store in Lodgton. The sheriff was ordered to condemn one acre of land from W. C. Brown near Lodgton to construct a schoolhouse. The following officers were sworn in: John A. Wilson, county court clerk, Peter George, coroner, Robert Y. McConnell, surveyor, George B. Prather, county attorney, William D. Taylor, jailor, and Jonah H. Montgomery, county judge.
• The first cotton of the season was brought to the Hickman market on September 14^th by J. W. Hester of Obion County, Tennessee.
• The semi-annual meeting of the Southwestern Kentucky Medical Association was scheduled to be held in Fulton on October 14^th.
• The Fulton County Democratic Committee called for a meeting of its members to be held on September 20^th to discuss a Congressional nominating convention.
• The Columbus Dispatch reported that petitions had been circulated in Ballard County to call an extra session of the State Legislature to enact “some kind of a stay law” to stall creditors from foreclosing on mortgages in the fall and winter caused by the seriousness of the drought.
• The Paducah Tobacco Plant stated that Oscar Turner, candidate for Congress, wished not to participate in the proposed Democratic Party nominating convention.
• The Paducah Kentuckian reported that the friends of John W. Blue, of Crittenden, were considering whether to submit his name as a candidate at the Democratic nominating convention in October.
• The details of the killing of fifteen black men in Gibson County, Tennessee was reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The article declared that a few days prior in Picketville, Tennessee that Joe Hale and four other citizens of Gibson County bought a roasted pig from Joe Webb, a black man. Hale and his friends ate to their fill and gave the rest to an unnamed black man. Webb and his friends disputed Hale’s right to give the leftover food to those not in his party. The men almost came to a fist a cuff, but Hale and his friends departed after a few angry words. The next day, three young men by the name of Munroe, Morgan, and James Warren were allegedly shot upon by “some thirty or forty negroes” while riding horses three miles from Picketville. The men abandoned their horses which were killed or badly wounded. A man called Jim Walker was considered suspect in the shooting and a posse sent to locate him. Once captured Walker confessed that a group of black men, chiefly from Humboldt and vicinity, were organized to protect Webb from the Ku Klux clan and planned to ride to Picketville to burn the town. Sixteen black men were arrested and jailed in Trenton for the plot. Later 86 armed and masked men surrounded the jail and demanded the prisoners. The jailer gave the men up and shortly afterwards the prisoners were marched out of town and murdered. The one man that escaped, Douglass Jamieson, managed to untie his hands, “jump into the underbrush,” leapt into a creek and swam for freedom. The governor of Tennessee offered a “reward of $43,000 for the lynchers.”
• Governor John C. Brown of Tennessee visited Trenton on September 8^th to attend the Democratic Party County Convention. He reportedly gave a “masterly speech” calling for the community to bring in the “guilty parties” and deliver a “speedy punishment.”

The Jackson Purchase Historical Society (JPHS) will meet at the Calloway County Public Library, 710 Main Street in Murray, KY at 10:30 am on Saturday, September 28. The program will focus on a forthcoming book documenting churches – buildings and congregations — that have passed from the scene in Callaway County. They remain, however, important parts of the history of the county and the communities they served. Forms will be available to order the forthcoming book, which is sponsored by the Calloway County Genealogical and Historical Society. The book reports on the research involved as well as the history of each church. Unfortunately, the program will not be available via ZOOM but will be recorded and posted on the JPHS website in the future.

Bobbie Smith Bryant will be well known to all who are interested in Jackson Purchase History. She is the author of several very well-received books – including A Beautiful Star: The Life of Lois Etoile Brewer, Farming in the Black Patch, Passions of the Black Patch: Cooking and Quilting in Western Kentucky, Forty Acres and a Red Belly Ford. In addition, she was a contributor and editor of the recent bicentennial history of Calloway County, Calloway County, Kentucky: Celebrating the First 200 Years 1822-2022. She writes about local history for the Murray Ledger & Times and is a frequent contributor to the Journal of Jackson Purchase Historical Society. She also shares her work by speaking at JPHS, CCGHS, and other local history meetings often.

“The Society is very happy that Bobbie will be sharing her latest project with us at our September meeting. Anyone who has heard her speak before knows that her presentation will not only be informative but entertaining and interesting,” according to JPHS president Bill Mulligan. “The bygone churches project is not only interesting in itself as a part, and a very important part, of Calloway County history, but it is a project any local historical organization should consider to record and preserve this important aspect of their history before it is lost,” he concluded.

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from September 11, 1874

• The coming trade year was predicted to be “necessarily hard on businessmen of small capital” since many farmers would be forced to carry over their debts into the next year due to the serious drought.
• The Hickman Young Men’s Christian Association met on September 10^th and elected Reverend J. D. Bush as President and James Wearn as Secretary. The Association was to meet again on September 11^th.
• The Hickman Circuit Court met on September 7^th where the newly elected Judge W. W. Robertson and Commonwealth Attorney Bernard Neale assumed their duties of their offices.
• A large number of Hickman citizens invited Emerson Etheridge to deliver an address in the city to be scheduled in the near future.
• The semi-annual meeting of the Southwest Kentucky Medical Association was to be held in Fulton on October 14^th.
• Buck Cook, Lum Carter, and Matt Kimberland stated they would accept a wager made by a Madisonville, Kentucky company which would pay any man that could consume thirty partridges in thirty days. One stated he would also eat sixty squirrels during the same thirty-day period.
• The three Democratic candidates for Congress met at Clinton on September 7^th. Oscar Turner, A. R. Boon and Caswell Bennett gave speeches.
• Hickman County voters were reported largely in favor of a Democratic Convention in the District.
• The Democratic candidates for Congress met in Paducah on the evening of September 8th where the audience was “very demonstrative in favor of a Convention.”
• The Democratic Executive Committee of the First Congressional District met on the evening of September 8^th in Paducah and resolved to hold a Convention on October 15^th to nominate a Democratic candidate for Congress. Boon and Bennett have agreed to participate, but Turner had yet to respond.
• President Ulysses S. Grant and former Confederate President Jefferson Davis condemned the murders of 15 black prisoners in Trenton, Tennessee. Federal troops were ordered to the district and to be “stationed at different and convenient points” and give “needful aid in the discharge of [local] official duties.”
• One of the members of the mob that killed 15 black men, a man by the name of Lassiter, accidently shot and killed himself with a shotgun earlier in the week in Gibson County, Tennessee.
• Alex W. Campbell, a prominent attorney from Jackson, Tennessee, had been rumored to have been retained at a fee of $30,000 to defend certain parties involved in the murder of prisoners in Trenton.
• One black man was killed, and two others were shot and wounded in New Madrid, Missouri. Five or six white men were imprisoned and awaiting trial.