Jackson Purchase Historical Society

This is the day our nation remembers its sons and daughters who died while in the military service.  Although celebrated since 1866, it didn’t become a national holiday until 1967.  First called Decoration Day, it’s alternative name, Memorial Day, was first used in 1882.

Commemoration takes many forms: placing flags on military graves, a moment of remembrance nationwide, the flying of flags at half-mast, parades honoring the dead and the veteran, a national concert, picnics, family gatherings, and sporting events such as the running of the Indianapolis 500.  The Veterans of Foreign Wars sell paper poppies to promote remembrance; John McCrae’s poem, In Flanders Fields, forever ties the image of the poppy to Memorial Day.

But do we remember our warriors’ sacrifices at any other time?  Do we stop during the course of our busy days and mentally thank them for our freedoms.  Do we care how our warriors are treated and cared for when they return, whether dead or alive?  Do we attend our local government meetings to see how, and if,  they are protecting and advancing those freedoms our warriors paid for with their blood and sweat and tears?  Do we do that simplest of all tasks of thankfulness – voting?

Remember

It is the soldier and the sailor, not the reporter

who has given us the freedom of the press,

It is the soldier and the sailor, not the poet

Who has given us freedom of speech,

It is the soldier and the sailor, not the campus organizer,

Who has given us freedom to demonstrate,

It is the soldier and the sailor,

who salutes the flag

Who serves beneath the flag

Who’s coffin is draped by the flag

Who allows the protester to burn our flag.

-Father Denis Edward O’Brien, USMC

Most of us value our nation and the wonderful life it provides and the freedoms it protects to allow us to do and say pretty much exactly what we want.   Most of us are good citizens.  We decorate our cars and our T-shirts with catchy slogans like “Home of the Free, Because of the Brave”.  But sometimes even with the slogans and even amid all the activity of the various Memorial Day festivities, we forget that our warriors willingly placed, and continue to place, themselves in positions of danger to keep our United States of America strong and safe and solvent and free.

We sleep here in obedience to law,

When duty called, we came

When country called, we died.

-Engraved on the state of Georgia’s statue

to its Confederate Dead, Antietam Battlefield

In gratitude, this Memorial Day 2010, we remember -

Fulton County was created on January , 1845, the 99th, out of Hickman County.  It was fittingly named for the famous steamboat inventor, Robert Fulton, “the engineer who helped usher in the era of the paddle wheelers and turned the river into an even more important artery of commerce”.  (Paducah Sun article, September 6, 1966, by Bruce Gardner)

Containing 184 square miles, its creation was the result of efforts to keep the town of Moscow from becoming the county seat of then Hickman County.  Moscow was a thriving trade center strategically located near the center of the County.  Those wanting to keep Clinton as county seat teamed with resident in the town of Hickman and surrounding areas to get their State Representative to introduce a bill establishing Fulton County.  The bill was enacted with the interesting and unusual provision that the town of Hickman should be the county seat upon condition that the sum of $4,000 should be pledged and secured on or before the month of August following enactment for the purpose of erecting a courthouse. (Hickman County Kentucky Pictorial Book)  The courthouse was raised in 1847.

Fulton County contains the “thumb” (called Madrid Bend) that sticks out into the Mississippi (dividing the county into two parts) and runs eastward until it ends at the Graves County boundary.  Its southern boundary is the Tennessee state line and its northern boundary is part of the Mississippi River and  Hickman County.

Operating continuously (more or less as it closed for a short period 1991-199) since 1840, a ferry service connects Hickman (Fulton County), Kentucky to Dorena, Missouri.  This 12 car capacity ferry operates from April 1 to December 24 yearly and is located at River Mile Marker 922 (from New Orleans) approximately halfway between St. Louis and Memphis.

The largest city in the county is the City of Fulton.  Incorporated in 1872, the city grew and in the 1890s, the Illinois Central consolidated the rail line serving Fulton linking it to the rest of the nation.  The city became the system’s primary banana refrigeration stop in the early 20th century and was once called the Banana Capital of the World.   The International Banana Festival began in 1963 but has since been discontinued.

Hickman County is probably most noted for the Columbus-Belmont State Park located on the bluffs above the Mississippi River.  The park contains  the anchor and and a portion of the  chain with which the Confederate Army tried to block the river and keep the Union Army from controlling it.

Born in Hickman County on December 29, 1954, Robert Burns Smith went on to become the third governor of Montana (1897-1901).  Smith was educated in Kentucky, studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1877.  He began his legal career in Mayfield, Kentucky and continued it in Helena, Montana.  As member of the 1884 Montana State Constitutional Convention, he served as U.S. District Attorney, City Attorney of Helena and was elected governor in 1896.   Education was a major part of his tenure as he supported the state’s agricultural school in Bozeman, the state university in Missoula and the school of mines in Butte.  Smith died on November 16, 1908 and is buried in the Conrad Memorial Cemetery in Kalispell, Montana.

Hickman was the 71st county formed, in 1822, and was named for Captain Paschal Hickman of the 1st Rifle Regiment, Kentucky Militia who was killed by Indians in the Massacre of the River Raisin during the War of 1812.  Columbus was the original county seat but in 1830 it was moved to Clinton.  According to the 2000 Census, Hickman is the least densely populated county in the state.

(Information for this posting was taken from the National Governors Association website at www.nga.org and Wikipedia website at http://en.wikipedia.org)

Carlisle County is located in the northwest portion of the Jackson Purchase, bounded by Ballard, Graves, and Hickman counties, and the Mississippi River, having an area of 1910 square miles. It was the 119th in order of formation and the last formed in the Jackson Purchase and second youngest in the state.  Its county seat is Bardwell, incorporated in 1879.

Carlisle County was created out of Ballard County on May 3, 1886.  However, the Ballard County citizens south of Mayfield Creek had wanted a separate county at the time Ballard was created but were denied.  Beginning with the very first selection of Ballard County officials in 1842, a dispute concerning “an equal division of justices” arose and remained a spirited contest between the two areas at election times and whenever county business was to be decided.  After a 44 year “feud” Carlisle County was formed with the Mayfield Creek as the official northern boundary.

The county was named for John G. Carlisle (1835-1910), who was a U.S. Congressman, Senator, Secretary of the Treasury under President Grover Cleveland, and Lt. Governor under Governor Preston H. Leslie (1871-1875).

The Ballard-Carlisle Historical-Genealogical Society meets on the fourth Monday of each month at 6:00 p.m. in the Ballard-Carlisle-Livingston Library at 134 North 4th Street, Wickliffe, KY; mailing address Box 279, Wickliffe, KY 42087.  Dues are $10.00 per year.  “The Roots Digger,” the Society’s newsletter is published twice a year.  The Society has many publications for sale and also maintains an historical/genealogical collection at the Ballard-Carlisle-Livingston Library.

(This posting was compiled with information from The Kentucky Encyclopedia (by John E. Kleber, Thomas D. Clark, Lowell H. Harrison, James C. Klotter), the Internet at www.carlislecounty.org, and adapted from articles in the Jackson Purchase Sesquicentennial Publication prepared by the Jackson Purchase Historical Society, 1969.)

One hundred thirty-three years ago, Willie Alben Barkley was born in Wheel, Graves County, Kentucky, in a log cabin. When old enough, he reversed his name to Alben William because “just imagine the tribulations I would have had, a robust, active boy, going through a Kentucky childhood with the name of “Willie” and later trying to get into politics!” he explained in later years. Always a Democrat, his political ambitions took him from the House to the Senate to the position, at age 70,  of Vice President of the United States (1949-1953, under President Harry S. Truman).  And a grandson gave him his most famous moniker, “Veep”, which historically has remained Barkley’s alone.

Barkley attended Marvin College (a Methodist school) in Clinton, KY, Emory College, the University of Virginia law school and “read” law in a Paducah law office before beginning his own practice.   He married in 1903 and eventually had two sons and a daughter.  He ran for prosecuting attorney of McCracken County in 1905, then county judge in 1912, then a seat in the U.S. House which began a national political career that ran 42 years.

He denied the stories that he conducted parts of his first campaign from the back of a mule.  “This story is a base canard, and, here and now, I wish to spike it for all time,” he said in his memoirs, “it was not a mule – it was a horse!”

Although he retired in 1953, in 1954 he campaigned and won a Kentucky Senate seat. In 1956 he was invited to deliver the keynote speech at Washington and Lee University students’ mock convention. After uttering the words, “…I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty,” and amid the applause of the crowd, he collapsed and died of a massive heart attack. He is buried in Mt. Kenton Cemetery, Paducah, KY.

His legacy was that of a vice president who tried to be an activist, determined to reverse the trend of “a four year period of silence.” He accepted hundreds of invitations to speak at meetings, conventions, banquets and other partisan and nonpartisan programs. Barkley retained throughout his long political career the public’s confidence and affection.

You can read more about Alben Barkley in his memoirs, That Reminds Me.

(Information for this posting taken from websites at www.newspaper.archive.com,  www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Alben_Barkley, and www.nndb.com/people)

-This History Tidbit was suggested by Cecelia Edwards.  Do you have any suggestions for future postings?  Just email them to the address above!