[3][4] Allied with Tennessee by trade and culture, white Fulton County residents were largely pro-Confederate during the American Civil War.

[5] Because of imprecise early surveying of Kentucky's southern border, Fulton County is divided into two non-contiguous parts.

An exclave on the peninsula in the Kentucky Bend of the Mississippi River can be reached only by road through Tennessee.

Area farmers had ties to Tennessee planters, and shipped produce down the Mississippi River, which formed the county's western border.

[6] Five men were lynched from 1883 to 1917, for alleged rape, assault, barn burning, and robbery and murder.

A notably egregious lynching was that on October 3, 1908, in Hickman of David Walker and his entire family by 50 Night Riders.

This may have been part of anarchic violence that was directed at blacks arising from the "Reelfoot Lake Uprising", but it also appeared that whites coveted Walker's land.

Walker and his wife, an infant in arms, and three children were shot multiple times; the eldest son burned to death in their farmhouse; seven in total were killed on the night of October 3, 1908, in Hickman.

[8] On December 16, 1918, Private Charles Lewis, a veteran of World War I, was lynched at Tyler Station.

Travelers going there have to pass into Tennessee by road (there is no bridge from Missouri) and then go north to reach the Kentucky Bend exclave.