Little is currently known about the following document, which seems to recount a mystical dream of the famed Mormon artist Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert, a daughter of Mary Ella Hickman through the third wife of William Adams Hickman, Minerva Wade Hickman.  Karen Bush found it among papers kept by her grandmother, Vivian Hickman.  It's a single page printed in typeset on both sides, apparently in the mid-1950s.  One of the big family mysteries was once the question, what was Edwin T. Hickman's middle name?  Minerva attempts to answer it (and gets it wrong), but this may have been one of the opening moves that began to set the Hickman family back on its feet after many decades of unbearable shame.

Minerva painted this mural

in  the  World Room of the

Manti LDS temple in 1947

  COMPILED BY MINERVA K. TEICHERT

(SOURCES: "OVER THE MOUNTAIN BOYS" BY ANNE MURRELL;

AND KING WILLIAM COUNTY, VIRGINIA RECORDS)

  There are many rooms in this castle, each with its own family name, so we will name this "The House of Edwin Thorn Hickman".   In ancient times the castles held nobility.   Those were dangerous times in the days of the Robber Barons.   I had traced my noble Von Rosen Family to 900 A. D. in Prague, and the Abe' family through Germany to 1450 A. D. in Switzerland and Czekhoslovakia.  Then "the Bear" seized the "three ribs between his teeth."  Russia, "the Bear," had grabbed Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, shutting us out of Eastern Europe.

  My American mother came to me one night and begged me to go to her castle and help her clean it up.  The debris and dust of 300 years must be removed.   I followed her up a hill through a forest.  It seemed that beautiful carved heavy doors had been swinging open and shut, and deer and wild animals had been running through it for 300 years.  The sun shone through once glorious but now dilapidated windows.  One could get a glimpse of firs and vines outside.  The furniture, stacked around a large, excellent oak table was fabulous, but we had to do a lot of work carrying out rubbish to see them well.

  Other kindred kept coming in to help us.  Sticks and boughs of trees, and baskets of rubbish were removed.  Some carried water and started scrubbing.  Some started filling the newly washed table with pewter and silverware.  Many guests could sit at that grand table.

  I said, "Mother, are we really to entertain Royalty here?   "Yes", she answered, "the noblest of the land".   "Then", I said, "don't you think we should get this old medieval stove out of here and put something modern in?"   She answered, "I think it's very useful", and she showed me how the steel oven let down.   I said, "But the top and left corner look as though milk had spilled on it and been burned on for years."   She said, "We'll get some knives and scrape it off."   We pulled out a drawer and got out some long steel knives and started scraping.   I called, "Mother, it's chrome underneath."   "No", she answered, "That's silver, genuine silver, three layers deep."

  I woke up saying, "three layers deep."  Soon as I got up I got out my pedigree.  My mother, "Ella Hickman, her father, William Adams Hickman, my great-grandfather, Edwin Thorn Hickman.  Why that's exactly where we're stuck."

  I went to Relief Society that day. I was talking to Mrs. James Johnson afterward, and said, "I'd better get home.  I've been called to work on American genealogy."  She said, "Have you seen your latest Geographic?  It's great!  It gives you all the information you want."

  Soon as I got home and saw the mail laying on the table I searched it.--- "The Great Ancestor Hunt." I immediately engaged a genealogist at the Congressional Library, Washington, D. C., and sent her twenty five dollars to hold her.  She asked, "how far in Virginia shall I go?"   I answered, "Into every county and parish of Virginia.  I want to know who I am."

  As we went along I found that some members of our family had tried to use the name of Reverend William Hickman, the Baptist minister of  Kentucky, and others had brought in little Lettice Hickman's husband, Benjamin Isbell, as our direct ancestor.  That's impossible.  I had learned in European ancestry you have to choose a line like "Hickman", and stay with it.  My genealogist, A. Bohner Rudd, insisted that I pay her $25 for a copy of the "Edwin Hickman's Will."   I did and sat down and laughed at it for several years after.

  Next I got a genealogist, Stella Thompson, from Columbia, Missouri.  She found great-grandfather's family there; two old aunties, LeRona and Aunt Sally had a visit, since they would probably not meet again on Earth. They really fixed up the Histories.  They copied the family letters and suited themselves on the way they did it, substituting often.

  They agreed no man would name his son, Thorn.  That was either Thomas or Temple. They'd seen that name in Virginia Records (not ours).

  I was mad when I got my copy back.  We had visited Bishop Thorn's family on Rock Creek many times because he was our KINSMAN.  The other records my Aunties had worked over were chiefly the slaves, etc.  I remembered back almost to my babyhood when Aunt Vildy Dixon came to North Ogden to visit with mother and grandma, Minerva Wade Hickman.   I loved Aunt Vildy and sat on her lap while they repeated the family slave stories.   I was probably sleepy before they broke it up but I still remember "Mutiller died," and all the little Hickman children went to the funeral.   After that they had a new game--"funeral."

  They had noticed the swinging of their bodies and the mourning with both hands up as they sang: "Oh, My Lawd," down there in the cane brakes.  Soon after I got my family letters back, I also got out the Edwin Hickman will, 1658.   I wanted to know who Mutiller was given to.  There it was--to "William."   William, who married Ann Pennington.  I had spent years getting to this point, but I knew that Edwin Hickman had done well by his children, giving each one several hundred acres of land, a slave, and a feather bed.  He had five sons--all named Hickman.  He was not the kind of man who would have chosen little Lettice Isbell to carry the Hickman name or honors.  I next noticed that William's wife was Martha Talliaferro (pronounced Tolliver).  Her only daughter was named Mary Pennington Hickman, who married William Talliaferro.

  When Mrs. Pennington died in Idaho my mother said, "I should have had little Mary and they gave her to Dr. and Mrs. North.   She's our kin."    I said, "Mother, do you mean we're related to the Penningtons on Raft River?"   She answered, "Yes, and to the Talliaferros, too."

  It meant to me a problem solved.  Also I got a letter from the Thorns in West Virginia.  Edwin Thorn Hickman's mother was Margaret Thorn.  We cannot at present find the last letter of Elisabeth Adams Hickman, wife of Edwin Thorn Hickman, but the children of our family read it many times.  "We're not doing too well, son. We're getting old. The slaves are too, and wouldn't bring very much on the block but--we'd hate to part with them that way, we've had them so long."

  All our family who have tried to relate us to the Baptist minister's family must know that.   I, too, tried to relate them but it's not truth.  We must be proud to be WHO WE ARE .   Future generations will be judged by us.   Three of Edwin Thorn's sons came West.   Their children are now in every western state.

  My grandfather was William Adams Hickman.   My son, John Teichert, is a geologist.   When getting his master's degree at the University of Utah, he chose to write his thesis on the Stansbury Range in Tooele County, Utah.   So he spent two summers on horseback in that rough country called, "Bill Hickman's Hideout."   It was there in its boom-town mining age that my Eastern, cultured father met Bill Hickman's daughter, fell in love with her, and married her.  True, a New York writer wrote a wild story called "His Confessions," but anyone who ever tried to read this book would know no Westerner ever wrote it.   The West likes stories that sparkle--that was dumb.  What my grandfather did do was use that range for little Indian cayouse ponies.  When they were fat he traded them to California gold-seekers for their big, jaded Kentucky horses.   The old VI brand spread out over many states.   Some fine horses still carry the brand and horse stories are still full of the exploits of "Old Loose," "Tin Kettle," and "Bob Riddledy."

  Colonel John Hickman, who served in the French and Indian Wars, 1755 to 1763, and was awarded 2,000 acres of land in Kentucky, also headed a company of volunteers in the Revolution, enlisting July 4, 1776.   The Government had no money to pay its soldiers, so he was granted 5,000 additional acres in Kentucky.  These sons, finally long after the Colonel's death, asked for the land grants. Kentucky was born June 1, 1792.   Then the Hickmans were living in Randolph County, Virginia which is West Virginia now.  What did Hickmans want with coal and minerals?   All they wanted was blue grass and good horses.   So, after much pleading and nearly futile efforts, they finally had their 7,000 acres of land-grants up on the Elk and Ganley Rivers exchanged for grasslands in Warren County, Kentucky.   There Great-Grandfather Edwin Thorn Hickman grew up, married Elisabeth Adams, and was later invited into Missouri.   The Northerners did their own work and the Missourians wanted Missouri to come into the Union as a slave state.   That's why they drove the Mormons out.   However, the Lord raised up Abraham Lincoln to settle their "statehood."

  I'm anxious to get us into a "going" Historical Society.   There are still many families to find histories on as Bledsoe, Thorn, the Virginia Adams and Edwin Thorn's children, who stayed in Missouri, later they went South and West.  They had large families in those days.

  I have only the one son for John Hickman Jr. and one for William Hickman.   I'm hoping that the family of George Washington Hickman will join us here.   They are grand people.   The ones I've known best are Cousin Josiah's family, and we'd be glad to have you join in our story until it becomes necessary to prove the fine noblemen's line that extends to 1200 A. D. in England.  Thank you.

Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert

Cokeville, Wyoming

LAND GRANTS - BY W. D. WINTZ

  In 1790 Randolph County took up one quarter of the present area of West Virginia and included the most remote mountainous section of the state.   Probably due to its inaccessibility, only 245 names were listed.   No records were kept until 1853.

  Next I went to the state auditor's office and looked up the original land grants for Randolph County.   There I found seven warrants of 1,000 acres each made out to the heirs of John Hickman, all dated 21 October, 1783. The warrant stated that all of these tracts were on the head waters of the Elk and Ganley Rivers.   This area is included in what is now Webster and Nicholas County, which was taken from Randolph County after 1818.   According to county histories, there have been families by the name of Hickman living there, but they give no family data.

  Therefore, the conclusions I have come to are that the family of William Hickman settled in this remote section of what is now West Virginia, coming from Abermarle County originally, remained there until after 1792 when son, Edwin Thorn Hickman, was born.   Then at least part of the family moved to Warren County, Kentucky.   Ref. W. Va. Land Grants, Randolph County, Book No. 1, Page 11.

  "Know ye that by virtue and in consideration of a Land Office Treasury Warrant No. 20,139, issued the 21st day of October, 1783, there is granted by the said commonwealth unto Mary P. Hickman, Jno. Hickman, Robert Hickman and Thomas Hickman, the surviving children and heirs of Col. John Hickman, deed. assignee of Henry Banks. assignee of Wm. M. Lovely, who was assignee of James Monroe (President of the U. S.) a certain tract of land containing 7,000 A. by survey bearing the date of July, 1787 (the metes and bounds are then given--there were seven of these warrants of 1.000 acres each, identically worded except for location of the tracts.  Va. Mag. of History and Biography, Vol. 34, 1926, p. 216).

If you know anything additional about this leaflet, email me.

To learn about Josiah E. Hickman, click here.

To learn about Minerva K. Teichert, click here.

To learn about her mother, Mary Ella, click here.

To learn about Hope Hilton, click here.

To learn more about Hickmans in the Middle Ages, click here.

To learn more about Edwin Temple Hickman, click here.

To return to the Hickman Family index page, click here.