The Shells of Pigeon Creek Genealogy Web Site
The ancestors, descendants, and cousins of the Shells of Pigeon Creek, Alabama.
Notes for Joseph Maston Hickman
Resided Thomaston, Georgia in early part of life. Moved to Butler Co., Ala. about the year 1860 by wagon-train, brought five slaves.
Source of information (for descendants): (6) Joseph Maston Hickman Bible, in possession of (4) Pinkney Newell Huguley, Pigeon Creek, Alabama.
Eleanor Hickman Hughes. Hickman-Halso. 1965. (pp. 13 and 238).
During the Census of 1850 Joseph Maston Hickman was age 24, a farmer, and living in Sumter County, Georgia with his first wife Margaret Elizabeth Gufford (not Griffin or Waters as previously noted) from North Carolina. He has apparently done well for his years. His farm was valued at $2100, he was married within the previous year, and both he and his wife can read and write, remarkable for this period.
On February 14, 1852 Margaret Elizabeth (Aunt Betty O'Ferrell) was born in Sumter County, Georgia. There must have been complications with her birth because her mother, Margaret Elizabeth, died three days later on February 17, 1852. Joseph, now with a newborn baby and a boy just over two years, may have moved back to Thomaston where he could find help. He may have carried his children to his mother and returned to care for his farm. There is no record of what Joseph did after his first wife's death, but he must have spent some time back in Thomaston. It was there, less than a year after his first wife Margaret's death, that he married Sarah Antoinette Smith. She was the daughter of Leonard Smith who, according to the Memorial Record of Alabama, Personal Memoirs Coffee County, served with General Jackson in the war of 1812 and assisted in cutting the old Three-Notch Road, which passes through Bullock, Pike, Coffee, and other counties in Alabama.
In 1854, Joseph was the executor of his brother James Maston's estate who died Oct. 9, 1854, at age 24. He must have move back to Upson County prior to 1854, because in the 1854 Tax Digest he is listed as owning 96 acres, three slaves, and property valued at $1600.
According to Mr. D.B. Dickens (October 14, 1993), a member of the Upson County Historical Society, his review of the records indicates that Joseph had (by 1860) acquired a modest estate and had probably been married and working several years. Mr. Dickens also reports that Joseph disappears from Georgia records after 1860 when he paid taxes on 228 acres, five slaves, and claimed two children between 6 and 18 years old. The land records show he received about 145 acres from S.H. Barrett on January 5, 1855, and said he was from Upson County. He sold his land in Georgia on February 1, 1867 and reported in the deed that he was from Lowndes County Alabama.
In 1860, according to family history, Joseph moved to Alabama with his family and five slaves by wagon train. From D.B. Dicken's research, we know that Joseph lived in Lowndes County before moving to Pigeon Creek in Butler County. When they arrived in Butler County, they settled on a forty acre tract of land known as the Walters Field, owned later by Mrs. Bell Russell. He was a Mason in the Tobeka Lodge. When they moved to the Sardis Community he became Superintendent of the Sunday School at Sardis and held that office until his death. It was written that he was a handsome gentleman with a heavy suit of hair and a long beard and walked one mile to church every Sunday carrying a mahogany walking cane. The Memorial Record of Alabama says of Joseph Maston that "Mr. Hickman was a man of great energy and physical endurance and strength, and by his industry and economy he accumulated a fine property. He joined the Confederate War effort in 1862. He served in the 17th Alabama Infantry, Company F and was not wounded or captured."
John Wayne Hickman. Descendants of John Hickman.
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