Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from September 21, 1872
- The Hickman Courier, after not publishing an issue the week prior, initiated a new format with thirty-six columns – four more than past issues. The publication also joined a “Cooperative Newspaper Union.”
- The drought in region was becoming “absolutely alarming” as cisterns and wells dried up and farmers hauled water from distances several miles away.
- Hickman merchants were reported to have received their fall and winter stocks.
- The Hickman wharf was being graded and graveled and the wreck of an old wharf-boat was removed.
- The Hickman Minstrel troupe and Hickman Brass Band gave a concert in Clinton on the evening of September 21st.
- The Fulton County Fair was scheduled to begin on September 24th. Local officers and manager were confident of its success. However, rumors began to circulate that the Fair would be postponed due to the drought.
- The public roads were reported to be in “unusually good condition.”
- The Hickman City Council met on September 18th to pay laborers for street repairs. Ten men were paid $127.10 for services rendered.
- Isaac H. Trabue, a Republican candidate for U. S. Congress, visited Hickman on September 20th and gave a speech at City Hall. The editor of the Hickman Courier wrote the “few faithful” were pleased with his speech but that “Radical candidate” would be “sacrificed.”
- Henry Houston, a young lawyer from Paducah, planned to address the Republicans of Fulton County the following week.
- John Martin Sr., Democratic primary candidate for U. S. Congress, was accused of being a “carpetbagger” and fraudster by the Hickman Courier and Paducah Tobacco Plant. Martin prior to moving to Paducah from Memphis in 1867 took the “Iron Clad Oath” declaring he never took arms against the Union or supported the Confederacy, which he denied taking earlier in the campaign. He was also found to be associated with businessmen in Memphis that embezzled money from the Tennessee School Fund not long after the Civil War. Martin denied both allegations.
- A Christian revival took place at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Union City, Tennessee on the week of September 16th.
- A woman was shot in an altercation between two men in Newbern, Tennessee. The shooter was captured and jailed at Dyersburg.
- Two men and a woman were mistakenly poisoned and died in Crockett, County, Tennessee. The Trenton Gazette reported that a box of matches unknowingly fell into pot of coffee and the combination of sulfur and other chemicals poisoned those that drank the coffee.
- A malignant type of typhoid fever was reported in West Tennessee. Many deaths were reported to have occurred from the disease.
- Construction on the Mississippi Central Railroad between Jackson, Tennessee and Cairo, Illinois was begun the week prior.
- A contract to extend the Mobile & Ohio Railroad to Cairo, Illinois was to be completed by the first week of October.