KING HICKMAN

     King Hickman, b ca 1840 in Little Rock, Arkansas - was the slave of a Mr. Hickman, who married Rebecca Sims, b ca 1845. King and Rebecca had a daughter, Lucinda Hickman, b March 5, 1865 in Arkansas.

     As the Civil War ended, King decided to move his family to Texas, and in April of 1865, the family traveled by oxen and a two-wheel rig -- settling at Wooten Wells, near Bremond, Robertson County, Texas, where King farmed. He also had a weaving machine, working at night, until it burned.

     The family had increased to five sons and four daughters when King moved his family to North Marlin, Falls County, Texas, and settled in the wooded part of town where the present day First Baptist Church now stands.

     Lucinda Hickman, the eldest daughter of King and Rebecca (Sims) Hickman, had to plow as a child. She married Reverend Walter Long, and they lived in what had been a smoke house on Coleman Street in Marlin. They were the parents of ten boys and two girls. Besides their twelve children, Lucinda adopted five children of Robert McCreub, and in 1922, she took two of her niece's children, Odis and Katherine Norris, and also reared them.

     Lucinda worked and cooked in various Marlin hotels, and was active in Missionary work. Her was open for many people. She related how a man rode into Marlin with sore feet - before the hot mineral water was exploited by Marlin physicians. The man bathed his feet in the little spring which had the bubbling hot mineral water, and was healed. Subsequently, while drilling for drinking water, the hot mineral water was found, and the rest became history when Marlin's hot mineral water began to be advertised. Lucinda also re- called how the black families cleared the land in North Marlin, and later were moved further away, as the white families began settling in that area of the town.

     One of the daughters of Lucinda (Hickman) and Reverend Walter Long was Rebecca Long - who married first to Major Hays, and married second to a Mr. Drake, of Lott, Texas. Another daughter, Mary Long, married Solomon Armstead, and they had two children.  

Copyright Permission granted to Theresa Carhart for printing the biographies of these Falls County Families to this Web page.
"Families of Falls County", Compiled and Edited by the Falls County Historical Commission, page 226 column 2.  
Member of Falls County Historical Commission.