JOHN HOCKINGS - Biography

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This biography appears on page 643 in History of Racine and Kenosha Counties, Wisconsin...
published by the Western Historical Co.: 1879.

JOHN HOCKINGS, the father of William; a blacksmith by trade; was one, of
the pioneers of the "teetotal " movement in Great Britain; his gifts as
a wit, a singer and story-teller, together with all the characteristics
of a genuine, jolly fellow, led him to indulge in the "flowing bowl" to
an extent, that could have but one result; he was still young, however,
when the lamented Joseph Sturges started a society in Birmingham, whose
members pledged themselves to "teetotally abstain" from all intoxicants.
John Hockings became one of the first members of this Society (probably
in the year 1834), and soon developed into a powerful speaker, becoming
the most celebrated temperance lecturer in all England; immense crowds
rushed to hear him, and he was no less popular than his only successor,
John B. Gough; he spoke in the great town-hall, Manchester, England,
thirty-six consecutive nights, as late as the year 1843; how long the
meetings would have continued, no one knows, but they were brought to a
close by the giving-way of a crowded gallery, a panic, the killing of
several, and the serious injury of many others. His command over the
feelings of his audiences was perfectly wonderful, and the number of
people who signed the pledge under his influence was equaled only by the
success of the celebrated Father Mathew. As early as 1841, the writer of
this sketch heard him express the wish that he could rest from his
labors, and go to live on a farm in America; his imagination was fired
with the accounts he had heard of the Great West; he believed in the
republican form of government as the only form that mankind should
permit he came directly to Wisconsin in 1844, buying a farm near that of
James Tinker, one of his old coadjutors; he lectured but little after
coming to Wisconsin, and many of his neighbors were unaware, until after
his death, of his early celebrity as "THE BIRMINGHAM BLACKSMITH," by
which sobriquet he was more generally known throughout the British Isles
than by, his own Christian and family name.