Hick, Richardson S.

Born: 1829-01-20 Floyd, New York

Died: 1921-12-16 San Bernardino County, California

Flourished: 1852 to 1862 Livingston County, Illinois

Richardson S. Hick, attorney and public official, moved with his family to Mount Carmel, Illinois around 1837, and was educated at the Mount Carmel Academy. He subsequently relocated to Kendall County about 1848, before settling in Livingston County in 1852. Hick qualified at the bar two years later and practiced in Ancona, where he also served as a notary public and justice of the peace. Although Hick was an early member of the Republican Party, his political opponents alleged that he had previously been active in the American Party and that he had boasted of organizing numerous Know Nothing lodges in Kendall and Grundy counties. In 1854 Hick attended the first statewide Illinois Republican Convention in Springfield, and was elected in 1858 as a Republican to represent Livingston County for a single term in the Illinois House of Representatives. At the time of the 1860 census Hick owned real estate valued at $300 and personal property worth $120. A year later he pled poverty when he petitioned Abraham Lincoln to be appointed an Indian agent in Kansas Territory. Hick moved with his family to Kansas in 1862 and found employment in the quartermaster’s department of the U.S. Army, ultimately serving as clerk to the quartermaster at Fort Gibson through the end of the Civil War. After the war he settled in Pottawatomie County, Kansas, where he lived for most of the remainder of his life. Hick married Emeline F. Wright in 1852 and was survived by two children. He was a Freemason and an Odd Fellow.

A. T. Andreas, History of the State of Kansas (Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1883), 977; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Lisbon, Kendall County, IL, 270; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Kendall County, 21 November 1852, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; The Ottawa Free Trader (IL), 23 October 1858, 2:4; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 222; Olney Times (IL), 25 February 1859, 1:2; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ancona, Livingston County, IL, 22-23; Richardson S. Hick to Abraham Lincoln; California, U.S., Death Index, 1905-1939 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2013); The Topeka Daily Capital (KS), 19 December 1921, 1:4.