Not long after the Civil War ended, a young man was murdered on the Central Turnpike on the approach to the then-abandoned village of Summertown. What followed was a forgotten, sad–and bizarre–chapter in local history.

In those days, wild men roamed the Turnpike, terrorizing outsiders who dared hunt or fish in the region and then disappearing into the unbroken forest. One of the most noteworthy acts of violence committed in Lawrence County occurred on the Turnpike about half a mile from Summertown Spring. As the Columbia Herald published in an 1870 article, “about half a mile beyond Summertown, in the county of Lawrence, there are five trees on the roadside with crosses made of oak lathes, nailed on them, marking a circle in which the noble John Bicknell was murdered.”  

John Bicknell, a Confederate veteran and founding member of Columbia’s Pale Faces–a Klan-adjacent white supremacist organization–traveled to Lawrenceburg in February 1868 to sell some “Southern books.” Bicknell was the agent for Maury and surrounding counties to sell copies of the popular book Lee and His Generals by William Parker Snow, a Lost Cause hagiography of various Confederate generals and their exploits during the Civil War. According to fellow klansman William J. Andrews, writing in 1897, Bicknell told a potential customer named Walker that he would be returning home to Columbia via the Turnpike. Andrews said that Walker “took his seat on a log on the roadside, a few miles west of Summertown, and awaited the arrival of young Bicknell.” When Bicknell arrived, Walker killed him in cold blood and stole “his boots and pocketbook and, mounting the horse, rode on to Mt. Pleasant.” 

The sheriff of Maury County captured Walker and brought him back to Columbia while Bicknell’s remains were interred in what can best be described as a bizarre Klan funeral, complete with ridiculous costumes and vows of revenge. According to an 1868 article in the Pulaski Citizen, “at the hour of 10 o’clock on Monday night, a party of about twenty horsemen, well mounted and completely disguised in the Kuklux mask and mantle, rode into Columbia, and proceeded directly to the County Jail.” After bickering with the jailer about wanting Walker, one of the klansmen said, “We are the law, and this (presenting a [pistol] at the head of the Jailer) is our order.” 

The jailer handed Walker over to the night riders, who, after losing him and then regaining custody of him, summarily hanged him over the grave of Bicknell. By 1870, the spot where Bicknell had been killed at Summertown was apparently a landmark of sorts, and was noted in more than one newspaper description of the place in the years following the murder.