My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM HICKS, a general agriculturist and leading citizen of Benton Township, Berrien County, is the descendant of a long line of energetic ancestry, who, industriously devoting themselves to the culture of the soil, steadily won their way up to positions of honored usefulness and influence. The worthy parents of Mr. Hicks were of English nativity, and were reared and educated in the Queen’s dominions. Soon after crossing the broad Atlantic to the land of promise, America, William Hicks and Mary Hallock were married and made their home at first in New York, settling in Ontario County, where, in 1849, their eldest child, our subject, named in honor of his father, was born. William Hicks was but a lad when his parents emigrated from the Empire State to the farther West. Journeying to Michigan, they remained in Hillsdale County, locating upon a farm. The father, yet surviving and the owner of a valuable homestead in Hillsdale County, is numbered among the early settlers of that part of the State, and now in the evening of his age enjoys the high regard of his old friends and neighbors. The prosperous home of the parents was blessed with the presence of six children, two daughters and four sons.

William was the first-born in the parental family; Emiline is the wife of Spencer Calkins, of Oregon; David is a prominent farmer of Hillsdale County; Thomas, also a successful agriculturist, resides in Hillsdale County; George is a well-known tiller of the soil in Berrien County; and Libbie is the wife of Thomas Benge, of Hillsdale County. Growing up amid the associations of their youth, the brothers and sisters have all become frugal, self-reliant and industrious citizens, and not one in the family ever indulges in the use of liquor or tobacco.

Our subject was from his early childhood trained in the daily round of farming duties and readily acquired a thorough and practical knowledge of agriculture. During his boyhood he assisted his father upon the old homestead and also received instruction in the district schools, but, a man of quick discernment and keen observation, has since added largely to his stock of knowledge and is mainly self-educated. When only nineteen years of age he ambitiously began life for himself, and worked out by the month steadily for nine years. At the expiration of this time Mr. Hicks had, by hard work and self-denial, gradually accumulated a modest capital for future careful investment.

When about twenty-eight years of age Mr. Hicks was united in marriage with Miss Hattie Crippen, a native of Washtenaw County, Mich., a lady of pleasing presence and superior ability. The estimable wife of our subject has proved a true helpmate and possesses the esteem of a wide circle of acquaintances. Mr. and Mrs. Hicks at first settled on rented land, which Mr. Hicks cultivated profitably for two years, and then decided to remove to Berrien County, the permanent home of the family since 1879. In 1881, our subject purchased a half-interest in the fine farm of three hundred and fifteen acres, to which he has from that period given his entire time and close attention, with most excellent and gratifying results. The broad acreage, brought up to a high state of cultivation annually, yields a bounteous harvest of golden grain, and the extensive homestead, with its convenient and attractive residence, commodious barns and other improvements, is one of the most valuable pieces of farming property in Berrien County. The happy home has been brightened with the presence of a promising son, an only child. Ray W. Hicks, now eleven years old, a manly and intelligent little lad, is the pride of his parents.

Mr. Hicks is politically no partisan, but with impartiality casts his vote for the man he deems best fitted to perform the duties of office. He is ever interested in all matters of local and national welfare and, a liberal-spirited citizen, having enterprisingly made his own way in life, ably assists in the progressive advancement of his locality and is numbered among the reliable and substantial men of Berrien County.