William “Bill” Jackson
1883-1956
On April 22, 1937, a 54-year-old Henderson man stood before a camera at the Henderson Police Department. His name: William Jackson, sometimes called Bill. The placard around his neck read: Police Dept. Henderson, Ky. – Date 4/22/37 – No. 418.
The photograph, later filed with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, captured a hard-lined face shaped by decades of work and worry. Born September 13, 1883, in Kentucky, Jackson had lived much of his life in Henderson. In 1937, newspapers reported that he, along with two younger men, had been arrested in connection with counterfeit half dollars and quarters circulating in the city. The trio was taken into custody after a federal investigation and held for hearing in Owensboro, each under $350 bond.
For Jackson, already in his mid-fifties, the arrest must have marked a difficult chapter. Yet his story did not end there.
More than a decade later, in June 1950, William “Bill” Jackson appears again in the pages of the Henderson Morning Gleaner, this time not as a defendant, but as a night watchman at George’s Place on East Second Street. When two young men attempted to break into the establishment around 3 a.m., Jackson confronted the situation. According to reports, he fired a shot that wounded one of the suspects. Police were summoned, and both youths were charged.
The newspaper account presents a different image of Jackson, not a man in custody, but a man on duty. By then, he was about 66 years old, working the late hours, guarding a local business while most of Henderson slept.
William Maurice Jackson spent his final years at 10 Winstead Avenue. He died there on December 29, 1956, at age 73. His death certificate lists the cause as carcinoma of the esophagus with metastasis. Funeral services were held at Tapp Funeral Home, and he was laid to rest in Fairmont Cemetery.
His life, like many from Henderson’s past, was not simple. It included federal charges in the 1930s and steady employment in the 1950s. It included trouble and responsibility, headlines and ordinary days.
Today, his 1937 booking photograph survives – a single frozen moment from a complicated life lived in Henderson, Kentucky.
