This Week 150 Years Ago in Hickman – September 1, 1876

Stories of Interest from the Hickman Courier from September 1, 1876

• Several night robberies occurred the week prior in Hickman. Tom Buck and others were the known victims of the thefts.
• Fulton County Sheriff B. R. Walker brought four prisoners to the Kentucky State Penitentiary earlier in the week.
• It was reported that a party of individuals were “distributing documents to the colored people of Hickman” threatening “terrible butchery of negroes in the Southern States” if they voted in the upcoming election. The editor of the Hickman Courier responded by declaring “if the black people desire to vote the Republican ticket, let them do so peaceably and quietly.”
• The Fulton County Teacher’s Institute met earlier this week in Hickman. Professor A. W. Mell and Commissioner R. T. Tyler were recognized for their efforts in successfully managing the convention.
• The Common School in Fulton County planned to begin its fall session on September 4^th under Superintendent Beverly Caldwell. All white citizens in the county between six and twenty were encouraged to attend the school.
• The Hickman City Council met on August 29^th, where the Street Committee reported work done on the wharf for $63.10. The same committee discussed raising the West Hickman Levee to above the high-water mark and to employ an engineer to survey project. The City Marshal was authorized to notify J. H. Plaut to “put down pavement in front of his property on Kentucky Street, commencing at the corner of Jackson Street.”
• The ladies of the Methodist Church in Hickman announced a concert for the following week to raise money to purchase a library for the Methodist Sunday School.
• A widow with “several children” in Hickman was seeking assistance from the community as her children “suffer from something to eat.”
• L. McCutchen, of Hickman, returned from his trip through “Western and Eastern States.” He claimed that the Democratic Presidential ticket of Tilden and Hendricks was being well received in the Northern States.
• The Democrats of Fulton, Hickman, Graves, Obion (Tennessee) and Weakley (Tennessee) held a “glorification meeting” in Fulton on August 24^th. There were between 8,000 and 10,000 people that attended – the “biggest political gathering in this section since the war.” Speeches were made by Issac Caldwell, David T. Linegar, Ed Crossland, A. R. Boone, L. S. Trimble, William W. Tice, William Steele and Waller C. Caldwell. It was reported that a “perfect frenzy of enthusiasm pervades the rank and file of the old Democracy of the Purchase” and that the “crowd came by rail, wagons, carriages, horseback and by foot and from every direction.”
• The First Congressional District Committee authorized the holding of a convention to be assembled in Paducah on September 27^th to select a candidate for Congress. The front runners were A. R. Boone and Oscar Turner.
• The Democratic Party of Fulton County scheduled a “Mass Convention” to be held at the Fulton County Courthouse in Hickman on September 11^th. Delegates to represent the county at the First Congressional District Convention in Paducah on September 27^th were to be appointed at the meeting.
• A debate and discussion between Democratic and Republican electors of the First Congressional District was to be held at the Fulton County Courthouse in Hickman on September 15^th.
• The Hickman Democratic Club planned to erect the Tilden and Hendricks flagpole on the courthouse hill in Hickman on September 15^th. David T. Linegar of Cairo, Illinois was invited to make a “salutation speech.”
• Congressional candidate Oscar Turner wrote a longwinded open letter to the Paducah Herald accusing A. R. Boone of “fraud and trickery” during his Congressional campaign and that he supported the Radical Party during the Civil War which elected Lucian Anderson to Congress.
• Congressional candidate Oscar Turner was scheduled to give an address at Jordan Station on September 6^th.
• The Republican Party in Paducah appointed ten black men to canvass Ballard County to “undo the work wrought by the speeches” of Ed Crossland and Joshua Fry Bullitt.
• McKenzie Male and Female College (presently Bethel University) secured the services of Professor Shepherd of Virginia as the chair of the Mathematics Department. He was a graduate of Randolph-Macon College and the University of Virginia.