This Week 150 Years Ago in Hickman – November 30, 1872

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from November 30, 1872

• The President of the Holly Springs & Brownsville Railroad visited Hickman with a survey party to consult with the stockholders of the Mississippi Levee Company to construct a narrow-gauge railroad from Hickman to Friendship, Tennessee to connect to their mainline. The cost of the project was estimated at $300,000 and would include 14 miles of levee. It was proposed that Lake, Obion, and Dyer counties in Tennessee would raise $200,000 from levee taxes and Fulton County $100,000. The President assured those present that the rail line would be completed by the latter part of 1873. A meeting of the friends of the Mississippi Levee Company was to be held in Tiptonville, Tennessee to raise funds for the railroad / levee project.
• “We mean business” was the popular motto of Hickman according to the Hickman Courier.
• An unprecedented amount of cotton was being sold in Hickman. The market was described as “gorged” and the “cash demanded in handling this season [was] beyond the expectations of buyers.” Local businessmen complained that a banking house needed to be organized in the city to prevent trade going to other nearby ports.
• Traffic congestion on the corner of Kentucky and Clinton Streets in Hickman was so clogged that pedestrians could barely squeeze between wagons. Concerned citizens requested the City Marshal keep the crossroad clear of traffic.
• The Hickman City Council met on November 27^th and allotted funds for the Street Commissioner, W. L. Gardener, $130 for fifty-two days of service, and a dozen men for road repairs. A motion was ordered to pay the City Attorney, George B. Prather, $75 for collecting fines for the city.
• S. Miles of Jordan Station reported that he was defrauded out of $100 by the organizers of the County Fair in Jackson, Tennessee, when he did not receive a “special premium” promised him after he transported his short horn cattle. The organizers declared that Miles’ cattle did not possess “herd book pedigrees” and thus did not qualify for the premium. Miles responded that printed program presented to him did not express that contingency.
• J. Solomon, of Jordan Station, denied soliciting votes from black men during the presidential election. He declared, “I never solicited a vote from any man, white or black, in my life.”
• Dick Moss of Clinton reported that the village was in a “flourishing condition” as four hundred railroad laborers were “giving everything a lively appearance.”
• A severe horse disease was reported spreading in Moscow and Fulton Station.
• The City Council of Columbus passed a resolution to provide for the city’s poor and therefore prevented the County Court of Hickman County from levying a poor tax upon the inhabitants of the city.
• The Paducah Kentuckian favored organizing a new political party to be named “The Liberal Party.” The party would welcome all that were “determined to stay the march of Radicalism.”
• A newspaper published by African Americans was inaugurated in Louisville and titled the Louisville Planet. The editor of the Hickman Courier was apprehensive that the publication would stir up “political bias.”
• The ten-year-old daughter of William Hicks, of Gibson County, Tennessee, was burned to death on November 28^th. The child was in the kitchen near the fire when her dress caught fire and she ran in terror from the building. She suffered for two or three days before dying of her wounds.
• A man by the name of Steam Givens allegedly molested a young girl on her way to school near Eaton, Tennessee. The man was captured in Trenton and was awaiting trial.
• Professor W. K. Jones of the Melrose Institute at Trenton, Tennessee encouraged those seeking a better education in Hickman to attend his school. He stated the Institute had a student enrollment of 175 last fall.
• The Memphis Methodist Annual Conference met in Somerville, Tennessee earlier in the week. W. H. Frost was appointed to manage the Hickman Circuit and William B. Littlejohn to be minister at Hickman. Littlejohn was to preach his first sermon in Hickman on December 15^th.
• John J. Young, a clerk on the Steamer Batesville, married Eliza E. McIntosh of Hickman on November 27^th.