Davidson County TN Archives Biographies.....Hickman, John Pryor 1846 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@gmail.com October 26, 2005, 11:54 pm

Author: Will T. Hale

   JOHN PRYOR HICKMAN. A soldier of the South during the Confederacy, a lawyer

who has had distinction in his profession during the last half century, and a

citizen who has been prominent in the public service of the state in many

capacities, John Pryor Hickman is one of the notable Tenesseeans of the past

half century.



   Of Scotch-Irish stock, he was born in the city of Nashville on the 25th of

September, 1846, a son of Edwin Weakley and Penelope J. (Brunson) Hickman. His

paternal grandparents were John P. and Narcissa (Weakley) Hickman, and his

maternal grandparents were Col. Robert and Jane (Locke) Weakley.



   Statistics prove that the greater proportion of the armies of both North and

South in the great Civil war was made up of boys under twenty-one. Fifteen

years, however, was almost the extreme of youthfulness even in the South. It was

at that age that young Hickman entered the army, having barely finished his

common school studies when the first battles of that great conflict were fought.

Early in 1862 he enlisted in Company C of the Seventh Battalion of Tennessee

Cavalry, Most of his service was behind the dashing cavalryman Gen. Joe Wheeler,

and he was in the big battles at Murfreesboro, Chickamauga and numerous

skirmishes. But the part of his military career which is of most interest to

history is the story of his imprisonment for more than a year in two of the

noted military prisons of the North. His experiences as a prisoner of war at

Camp Morton and Port Delaware have recently been written out by Mr. Hickman and

published. As a graphic and detailed description of what southern soldiers

endured in the prison camps and barracks of the North it is a valuable

contribution to the literature of the great war, and serves to counterbalance

some of the grewsome tales told by Northern survivors of Libby and

Andersonville. As the latter have been more widely circulated through the

nation, it seems appropriate that the narratives such as Mr. Hickman's should

receive particular notice from conscientious students in order to justify a

somewhat distorted perceptive of history. The limits of this brief sketch

prevent any quotation of this remarkable account, which should be read entire to

be appreciated. In October of 1863, during Wheeler's raid through Tennessee, in

a skirmish at Farmington, Mr. Hickman was captured by the enemy. Up to June,

1864, he was confined at Camp Morton, Indianapolis, where he and the other

prisoners, though not without sufferings, had reasonably fair treatment and

conditions. He was then removed to Fort Delaware on an island in Delaware bay,

where he spent all the remaining months of the war, where he was exposed to the

intense cold, to the pestilence of smallpox and scurvy, to abominable food, and

to a varied brutality of treatment which in many particulars seems a rehearsing

of the fiction of the Chateau d'If. He was finally released on the 28th of May,

1865, and returned to his home in the South. He is now major-general, commanding

the Tennessee Division, United Confederate Veterans.



   In addition to a successful practice in the law Mr. Hickman has for nearly

forty years been identified with official responsibilities. He was deputy

register of Davidson county from 1874 to 1880; was warden of the Tennessee state

prison two years; was elected sergeant at arms of Tennessee in 1876-78-80; has

been secretary of the Tennessee division of Confederate soldiers since 1876; has

been adjutant of the Tennessee Division of the United Confederate Veterans since

1891; has been secretary of the Confederate Soldiers' Home since 1889; and

secretary of the board of pension examiners since 1891. Mr. Hickman is a member

of the Episcopal church. His wife, whom he married October 15, 1874, was Miss

Kate Litton. He has one child, a son, Hon. Litton Hickman, a lawyer at the

Nashville bar, and who represented Davidson county, in the 54th, 56th, and 57th

General Assemblies of Tennessee.



Additional Comments:
From:



A history of Tennessee and Tennesseans : the leaders and representative men in

commerce, industry and modern activities

by Will T. Hale

Chicago:  Lewis Pub. Co.,  1913



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