Author Archives: Clint

Lawrence Countian Greg O’Rear was a legendary Tennessee lawman who is remembered almost as much for his extraordinary stature as he is for his extraordinary career. O’Rear served in the Tennessee Highway Patrol in many capacities in the mid- and … Continue reading →

If the cold weather has got you down, just remember that it could be worse! Lawrenceburg’s single-day snowfall record was set on January 1, 1964, when a new year’s blizzard dumped 16 inches of snow on the area. On another … Continue reading →

Happy 200th birthday, Lawrence County! On this day 200 years ago, the General Assembly of Tennessee voted to create Lawrence County from lands newly acquired from the Chickasaw Indians, and from portions of surrounding counties. A wild and rugged place, … Continue reading →

In our last post, we explored the exceptional nature of Lawrenceburg’s statue of David Crockett compared to the counties around us. Today, in order to provide some local historical context to the ongoing debate about Confederate statues, I would like … Continue reading →

With everything in the press about statues and monuments lately, you may have caught yourself wondering, “Why doesn’t Lawrenceburg have a statue of a Confederate soldier on the courthouse square like most of the other counties in Tennessee?” The answer … Continue reading →

Thanks to The Lawrenceburg Community Theatre for sharing this early image of the 1905 Courthouse in Lawrenceburg. The fact that so many of the courthouse windows are open and so many folks are crammed under the shade of the nearby … Continue reading →

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 →