Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from July 28, 1876 (Revised)

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from July 28, 1876

• The Hickman City Council met on July 22^nd and passed a motion to call for an election for City Marshal to be held on August 7^th. Sallie Freeman was also released from the penalty for non-payment of back taxes.
• The overgrowth and brush before the Fulton County Courthouse in Hickman were cut down to give the “court square a splendid view of, and, from the river.”
• Moulton Street in Hickman was being newly paved.
• A new mail agent for the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad station at Hickman was to be appointed soon, and Thomas J. Lane appeared to be the leading candidate.
• The Hickman business house of Corman & Company was refitted “from floor to ceiling, outside and inside, and everything sparkles with glittering newness.”
• The Fulton County Agriculture Society held a meeting at Hickman City Hall on July 22^nd and elected John R. McGehee as President and George Warren as Secretary. The committee appointed to solicit stock subscriptions reported sixty-six members had committed to $10 a year for ten years. Eleven men were elected Board of Directors and M. D. Johnson was chosen as Board President, J. K. Murphy as Vice President, M. B. Shaw as Treasurer, and A. D. Kingman as Secretary. A motion was passed for a Treasurer’s bond fixed at $2,000, a Secretary’s bond at $1,000, and a salary fixed at $25 a year each. The board planned to meet again on August 2^nd.
• The Nashville American reported that a 60-year-old man died in the streets of Hickman on July 21^st after pawning his pocket watch for medicine. The newspaper declared that no inquest was held and that his corpse was placed in a casket within a half-hour of his demise. The Hickman Courier responded that the man died of cholera in a wagon shop in town and that the county furnished a coffin and burial “fully six or seven hours” after his body was retrieved.
• The body of W. H. Cross was found floating in the Mississippi River opposite Stubblefield’s Slaughterhouse on the morning of July 27th. He was reported to have drowned on July 25^th after he fell from his boat “under the influence of whiskey.”
• C. Donahoe of Lodgeton was robbed of $17.30 while on a fishing and hunting trip at Reelfoot Lake.
• It was predicted that there would only be a “half-crop” of tobacco in the Jackson Purchase this season.
• The election for Hickman City Marshal and Fulton County Sheriff was to be held on August 7^th.
• The Tilden Reform Club was held at the Hickman City Hall on July 28^th.
• A “big barbeque” was to be held at Mud Creek, northeast of Hickman, on July 28^th. C. T. Allen, Democratic Elector of the First District, was expected to be present at the event.
• Another barbeque and public speaking were scheduled on August 4th at Smith’s Spring “between Archer’s Spring and Little Bayou de Chien.” Oscar Turner, A. R. Boon, Lawrence S. Trimble, Ralph Silvertooth, and other candidates were expected to address the attendees. A grand ball was to be held that evening at the Moscow Seminary.
• Henry H. Houston, a popular attorney from Paducah and former officer in the 20^th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, was announced as the Republican candidate for Congress in the First District.
• The editor of the Hickman Courier declared that he was not in favor of Party Conventions unless they were “absolutely necessary.” He found from experience that the “will of the people is often defeated by fraud and trickery and the cunning of political shysters.”
• The Louisville Commercial sarcastically published an editorial which stated that the “farmers of the First Democratic Gibraltar district of this State are the greatest sufferers on the continent. They are getting ninety cents a bushel for wheat, they have plenty of hog and hominy, they get eight to fifteen dollars a hundred for their tobacco, and there is not one of them in a hundred who pays any other tax to the National Government.” The editor of the Hickman Courier responded, “the ‘stupid set’ of the ‘Gibraltar district’ know that the public money has been stolen, wasted, and squandered, as never before in our history, and all the subtleties of the protective tariff cannot hide the fact that it is taken from the toil and sweat of our honest labor.”
• T. Allen, Democratic Elector of the First District, addressed the citizens of Fulton County on July 28^th at the county courthouse.
• The Mayfield Democrat reported that “not a single lady attended the Radical [Republican] meeting,” but that a “hundred ladies were present at the Democratic meeting.”
• The week prior a coal boat in the vicinity of Island No. 10 capsized due to the current of the river with the entire crew being lost. A body of a man was found about ten miles downriver on July 21^st, but the body was too decomposed to identify. The rest of the crew had yet to be found at the time of publication.
• The Caldwell County Grange called for a convention of the tobacco growers of the First Congressional District for August 28^th in Princeton.
• Kee [Columbus] Dyer of Troy, Tennessee accidently shot and killed himself on a camping trip on the night July 26^th. He apparently had been “drinking to some extent” and fell upon his pistol. Dyer was 22 years old and left behind a wife but no children.
• A farmer by the name of Jones was believed to have been fatally shot near Conyersville, Tennessee by two travelers who spent the night at his residence.
• Emerson Etheridge and Henry S. Foote were reported to be preparing to tour Tennessee to support of Republican candidates across the State.
• Earnest Fowlkes, son of W. A. and Lizzie Fowlkes, died at Hurricane Hill, near Dyersburg, at age of 6 on July 26^th.