Author Archives: Clint

A.M. Smallwood (1888-1958) was a career law enforcement officer who, during his fifty-one-year career, served as deputy sheriff, sheriff of Lawrence County, Federal prohibition officer, and chief of police of the city of Lawrenceburg. Perhaps no law enforcement career in … Continue reading →

Constable Dan Smith was a young man of 27 with a wife and three children in 1925. He had developed a reputation in the southern end of Lawrence County as a prolific finder and destroyer of moonshine stills. The illegal … Continue reading →

More than sixty years after the guns went silent and the flags were furled at the end of the Civil War, Lawrence County’s aging Confederate veterans continued to gather as often as they could to relive the military exploits of … Continue reading →

The city of Ethridge may be a quiet place today, but more than eighty years ago this month, it saw one of the most exciting peacetime gunfights in Lawrence County’s history. It all began with an armed robbery, in broad … Continue reading →

Before he was executed by firing squad, one Lawrence County man took a last long drink of water–from his own grave. William Carroll Rowland was a simple man who lived a relatively quiet life. Illiterate and poor even by the … Continue reading →

Cancelling classes due to widespread illness is nothing new to Lawrence County. In fact, almost a century ago, the county government ordered a lot more than the schools to close their doors in order to help combat a deadly epidemic. … Continue reading →

Less than a day after a local woman called down fire from God upon him, a cold-blooded bandit king took his last drink from a clear spring in Lawrence County, leaving his name behind as his only memorial. In southwestern … Continue reading →

The quarrel between George Anthony and his brother-in-law Charles Nunnelly finally boiled out of control on a cool winter’s afternoon in the outskirts of Lawrenceburg. It began some years before over a disputed tract of land, and, for reasons that … Continue reading →

Has the government ever conducted a mass-confiscation of guns in Tennessee? You might be surprised to learn that the answer is yes. But what might surprise you even more is that the government responsible for this mass-confiscation was not the … Continue reading →

This photograph of Lawrenceburg from 1920 shows the north end of the Public Square, focusing on the old First National Bank building and the Gibbs-Belew building. Notice the large number of frame residential buildings in the background. Until the mid-20th … Continue reading →