Joseph Hicks

HICKS, CROWELL

Posted By: Diane (email)
Date: 2/24/2002 at 21:16:27

The first permanent settler in the county was Joseph Hicks, who, in December, 1850, tediously made his way up the Shell Rock, and located near the present site of the town of Clarksville, erecting his little log cabin about one mile to the west. Robert T. Crowell came at this time to bring the family of Hicks, and then returned to Wisconsin. Hicks, during this winter, was obliged to personate a pack mule, and carry provisions on his back from Cedar Falls, then a small trading post. The nearest neighbor of Hicks’ was James Newell, who, a short time previous, had settled in the forks of the Cedar, about twenty miles to the southeast.
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Until spring Hicks spent most of his time in hunting, fishing and trapping, and then cultivated a small piece of ground which he planted to corn and vegetables. His wife was a true western heroine, and could “talk injun,” or shoot a rifle equal to “any other man;” it being a common belief that she could shoot a rifle ball between the lids of a deer’s eye on a run. They came from Rock county,
Wisconsin, and the grove in which they settled afterward took the name of Coon’s Grove. At this time the Shell Rock also went under the name of English river. When the latter name was dropped is unknown.
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In the spring of 1851, Joseph’s father, Henry Hicks, came on from Rock county, Wisconsin, and locating with his children, he erected a blacksmith shop where he hammered away and forged the first iron in the Shell Rock Valley, until he was called upon to pay the debt of mortality, in 1854.
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Source: History of Butler and Bremer Counties, Iowa
Union Publishing Co., Springfield, IL, 1883
Page: 235