Who doesn’t love a good, old-fashioned barbecue?

In Lawrence County’s earliest years, public barbecues were held to celebrate important days. There was a public barbecue to celebrate the railroad coming to Lawrenceburg in 1883, to celebrate the city’s first observance of David Crockett’s birthday in 1890, and to commemorate the first reunion of Confederate veterans in Lawrence County in 1891.

But, much earlier than that–particularly in Lawrence County’s antebellum years–public barbecues were held to celebrate a certain politician or to allow civic leaders the opportunity to give speeches or have debates near elections. One such massive rally and barbecue was held at Lawrenceburg in honor of presidential candidate James K. Polk on October 25, 1844, just a few days before that year’s presidential election.

Local man John McMasters was thirteen years old when he attended the barbecue, and he reminisced about the event to the ‘Lawrence News’ at the age of 91. Mr. McMasters’s account of the event is told here in his own words:

“The crowd gathered on the square and the first thing they did they rolled out a barrel of whisky, set it up and knocked the head out and drove nails all around and hung cups on them and told everybody to help themselves.

“The barbecue was south [of the Square], near the old college and when we started to dinner there were twenty-six young women riding gray horses and bell to all their girths. They rode two by two, and a man in front of them. When they got there a Miss Tarkinton made a public speech.

“We had plenty of bread and meat and I don’t think I saw but one man drunk, that is down drunk.”