Hickman, Benjamin F.

Born: 1810-03-08 Frankfort, Kentucky

Died: 1871-02-06 Saint Louis, Missouri

Benjamin F. Hickman was a deputy clerk, attorney, state representative, newspaper editor, and federal court clerk. He attended school in Frankfort as a boy. At age twenty he became a deputy clerk in the local court, then undertook the study of law. He was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1831 or 1832, then began practicing law in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. In 1832 he volunteered for service in the Black Hawk War, becoming an aid to Illinois Governor John Reynolds . While in Lawrenceburg voters elected Hickman to the Kentucky General Assembly twice. In 1834, he married Arianna Cunningham. Shortly after the marriage, however, she was killed and he was seriously injured in a buggy accident. He eventually married again, to Mary E. Moore, with whom he had at least three children. In 1841, he moved to St. Louis and continued practicing law. After two years he relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, where he continued practicing law and also became editor of The Metropolitan. In 1848, Judge Robert W. Wells appointed him clerk of the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Missouri, prompting Hickman to move back to St. Louis. Soon after, Judge Samuel Treat appointed him clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Hickman served as clerk of both courts until his death.

W. V. N. Bay, Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri (St. Louis: F. H. Thomas, 1878), 432-34; Isaac H. Elliott, Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), xx, 11, Kentucky, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1783-1965, 25 September 1834, Mercer County (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2016); David N. Camp, ed., The American Year-Book and Register for 1869 (Hartford, O. D. Case, 1869), 1:391; St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, MO), 6 May 1895, 7:2; Gravestone, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, MO.