Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from January 27, 1872
- The Hickman City Council met on January 24th where the Finance Committee paid several laborers for road repairs, feeding prisoners and prosecutions concluded by the City Attorney. City bonds were received, approved, and ordered to be filed by the City Clerk. A motion was presented to the Council that a fence be installed on Magnolia Alley near the residence of H. W. Destle.
- A mail route was established from Hickman to Morse Station. The route was via Mud Creek, Cayse’s Station and Lodgeton.
- The bill incorporating the Mississippi River Levee Company, for the purpose of building a levee from Hickman to Tiptonville, passed the Kentucky State Senate.
- The Charity Ball held at the Council Chamber in Hickman on January 23rd was well attended and raised significant donations for the poor of the city.
- Otto Hertweck held a ball at their home in Hickman on January 25th. Over one hundred people attended and was considered the “gayest of the season.”
- The home of J. W. Porter of Old Hickman caught fire on the night of January 22nd but was extinguished before much damage was done.
- The residence of Samuel Landrum of Hickman was discovered on fire on the morning of January 23rd but extinguished before it caused much damage.
- C. McDougal, incarcerated for murder in Mayfield, was removed from the Graves County jail and brought to Paducah to be kept safe from the threat of being lynched.
- Jack Ryan, sentence to be hung for the 1864 murder of Nancy Owens of Graves County in Mayfield on January 19th, declared to a reporter from the Paducah Kentuckian that “he will declare unto death that he was innocent of the crime.” Ryan stated that he escaped capture from a company of Rebel guerrillas and when on the run met up with man named Fagan before he encountered the Owens’ family. Ryan claimed that a drunk Fagan shot and killed her. An effort was made to commute his sentence to life imprisonment, but the Governor refused to alter the sentence and Ryan is to be hung sometime in March.
- The Mayfield Democrat reported that Boyd Adams, an early pioneer, and politician from Graves County, passed away earlier in the week.
- A party of men entered the village of Brewer’s Mill in Marshall County and fired shots into the home of Peter Brewer on January 24th. The men broke down the door and fired several shots without effect and departed. They retuned a few days later to shoot another “fifteen to twenty shots” at the house. No harm or damage was reported.
- Thomas Corbett, State legislator from Ballard County, delivered a bill to the Kentucky House of Representatives to “prevent persons from interfering so as to induce laborers or servants to abandon their contracts, or to employ such without the consent of their original employer before the expiration of the contract.”
- James Denham was shot and killed by William P. Landrum three miles from Dresden, Tennessee after an altercation where Landrum was stabbed by Denham several times during the confrontation.
- P. Prestwood, the postmaster at Dresden and former State legislator from Weakley County, attempted suicide by taking laudanum but an antidote was used before the drug took full effect.
- A clergyman from Dyersburg published a series of articles in the Dyersburg Gazette condemning “dancing as an amusement” and declared the act to be immoral.