DEATH OF ISSAC E. C. HICKOK, ESQ, Bellevue, Eaton County, Michigan Copyright © 1999 by USGenWeb. This copy contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives. ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/mi/mifiles.htm ************************************************ Report of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan Vol. 3, 1881 Lansing, Michigan Robert Smith Printing Co., State Printers and Binders 1903 Eaton County page 407 DEATH OF ISSAC E. C. HICKOK, ESQ. NOTES BY A BROTHER ATTORNEY On the morning of January 30, 1879, Isaac E. C. Hickok, Esq., died after a lingering illness, from disease of the brain. His death had been expected by his medical attendants for nearly two months. He had premonitions of his approaching fate several days before the stroke, which shivered one of the finest minds in the State. The son of James W. and Eliza (Wood) Hickok, he was born at Bellevue, in this county, September 7, 1836, the first white boy born in the county. He pursued the usual routine of farmer’s boy life until the age of seventeen when, being disabled for manual labor by a disease of the bone of his right arm, he commenced attending school, then hardly able to read and write. But his mental energy soon gave him a good position among his fellow students. He was close, thorough, and retentive. He spent five years at the Olivet institute, now Olivet College, and two years at the Ann Arbor university. He taught school for several years, and in 1863 was chosen principal of the Charlotte Union School, and taught in the old academy building, now used as the Peninsular house. In 1864 he was elected county clerk, and reelected three times, holding the office eight years to the entire satisfaction of all who were acquainted with the affairs of the office. While in this position he commenced the study of the law with the same conscientious thoroughness that always characterized him as a student. In 1869 he was admitted to the bar after a very creditable examination. For some years he would only take such cases as lay in the path of his studies. He avoided general practice, and still worked at laying deep and strong foundations for future professional success. Everything that tended to throw light upon the elementary legal principles he studied with avidity, making it a rule to follow every rule or maxim to its reason or origin. No one ever studied, compared, and annotated the thirty-seven volumes of Michigan Reports, and our State constitution and laws with more care. The neat, precise annotations on the margins of his books are a marvel of industry and the envy of lawyers. He had commenced training his memory so that he could not only give the volume where the authority was to be found, but the name and of the judge giving the opinion, and also the page. Often as points of law unexpectedly arose in court, he would at once quietly give a brother attorney a note of the book and page where the whole matter was settled. And yet with all this devotion to his mistress, the law, he avoided dryness. He fairly studied some of Scott’s and Dickens’ best works, and loved, with kindred minds, to spend whole evenings in the fields of literature. There is not space here to tell what ought to be told of him as a man of the purest integrity, and of his exalted estimate of professional honor. Every client who ever consulted him can bear testimony to this, and so can any attorney ever associated with him or engaged against him in a case. What he clearly saw to be for the interest of his clients led him to settle more cases than he tried. By his death our bar loses its most promising member. Much yet remains to be said by those who knew him. He is taken from us while on the threshold of the temple, and the general public had not yet so fully appreciated his legal ability and acquirements as it certainly would have done had he lived.