BIOGRAPHIES:  Samuel B. HICKS, Pepin, Pepin Co., WI

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Submitted by Nance Sampson, Pepin Co. Archives File Manager on 19 November 2004
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**Posted for informational purposes only - submitter is not related to the
subject of this biography and has no further information.

Samuel B. Hicks, retired farmer, Pepin, was born near Enniskillen,
Fermanagh, Ireland, March 23, 1808, a son of Robert and Frances
(Armstrong) Hicks.  In 1823 the family removed to Montreal, and thence
to Toronto, Canada.  Later they removed to Warsaw, Ill., where Robert
Hicks died.  Samuel B. was reared on a farm, where he received little
or no education.  He was married at Warsaw, December 31, 1842, to Mary
Blasdel.  They had nine children:  Helen (Mrs. D. Goss), Eliza, William
G., Manda (Mrs. Wm. Robson), Frances F., Alice (Mrs. Wm. Burke), Peter
Scott, Edith (Mrs. J. Tuttle), Eugenia (Mrs. H. Yeomans).  A few years
after his marriage Mr. Hicks removed to St. Louis and worked on a
steamboat plying between St. Louis and Ft. Snelling.  In the summer of
1848 he landed at or near Pepin, and, looking over the country, was
attracted by the springs and books abounding with trout, and determined
to make this place his home.

In November, 1848, he came up the river accompanied by his family,
mother and three brothers, John A. (and family), Robert F. and William
A. B.  On account of the lake having begun to freeze, they were landed
about three miles above Read's Landing, Minn.  They crossed on a flat-
boat and stopped at John McCain's cabin.  Mr. Hicks made a claim on
section eight, township twenty-three, range fourteen, and, although the
weather was bitter cold, built a log house on the site of his present
residence, whither he removed his family a few days after their
arrival.  Another house had been built near by for John A. Hicks and
family, and here their daughter, Lydia M. Hicks, was born December 11,
1848.  She was probably the first white child born in the county.  For
many years Mr. Hicks kept a tavern here, his guests being chiefly
lumbermen bound up or down the Chippewa Valley.  He sometimes
accommodated sixty or more men at a time.  About 1851 he started a
private school at his residence.  This was merged in a public school a
year or two later.  Mrs. Hicks died October 18, 1885, since which event
Mr. Hicks has relinquished the management of the farm to his son Scott,
who was married July 2, 1884, to Miss Manalia M. Saxe.  They have one
child, Earl L., born May 27, 1885.

-Transcribed from the "Historical & Biographical Album of the Chippewa
Valley Wisconsin, 1891-2," pages 672-673.


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