Hugh Hicks Biography

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Hugh H. HICKS was born in Hickman County, Tenn,, forty miles from Nashville, in 1816. His father, William HICKS, who was born in Virginia in 1771, was a farmer and a carpenter, and was married to a Miss BEESLEY, of Tennessee, who died in Hickman County, Tenn., in 1819. She bore him nine children, of whom Hugh H. was the youngest. After her death the children were soon scattered among the neighbors, and Hugh H. had practically no education. He grew up accustomed to farm labor, and earned his own living from the time he was seven years old. He had for a time a good home with a kind old couple, whom he left to go to his father again in Weakley County, Tenn. There his father had a farm, and when Hugh H. was sixteen years of age he ran this farm one year alone. His father died in Henry County, Tenn., aged seventy-two years.

Hugh H. HICKS was married in Weakley County, Tenn., when in his eighteenth year, to Miss Elizabeth PIRTLE, a native of Stewart County, Tenn. born in May, 1812. He lived for some ten years on a claim of two hundred acres, when, on account of sickness and the deatli of his children, he sold his improvements for $400, and removed to Williamson County, Ill., near his present home, arriving March 15, 1846. He drove through all the way with two yoke of oxen and four horses, the latter following and being led. The family then living consisted of one little son. He bought an improved farm for $300, and some deeded land, which, at the end of seven years, he sold for $468 at auction, when he removed to Arkansas, remaining there one year. Then returning to Illinois he bought one hundred acres of land, and after a time bought one hundred and seven acres more.

On this land he lived until 1866, when he sold out and went to Kansas, remaining there, in Saline County, for fifteen days, after which he returned to Johnson County, Ill., to a farm of one hundred and sixty acres in Goreville Township. He now has one hundred and twenty-one acres, which he bought in 1886.

Our subject and his estimable wife have had three sons and four daughters, all of whom died except one son, Hugh H. Two died in infancy, and the others at different ages. James F. was a volunteer in the Thirty-first Illinois Infantry in 1863, under Capt. ROBINSON, and died soon afterward of measles, in his twenty-second year, leaving a wife and one son. The surviving son, Hugh H., carries on his own little farm,and is also in company with his father. He married Elizabeth BARRINGER, and they have buried three infant sons, and have three daughters, viz: Ella, wife of George NEELY, a farmer of Williamson County; Ollie, a young lady at home who has taught school; and Nola, a young lady of seventeen, at home. Mr. HICKS is a Republican in politics, but was formerly a Whig, having cast his first Presidential vote for Henry CLAY. He has been a very healthy and rugged man, and has done a vast amount of hard work, and is still strong and hearty and is working every day. He has no recollection of ever having been sick or ailing in any way, showing that his manner of life has been as nearly in accordance with nature's laws as it is possible for a man to live.

transcribed by Nan Starjak

Source:
The Biographical Review of Johnson, Massac, Pope and Hardin Counties
Chicago
Biographical Publishing Co., 1893

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