Hicklin Hearthstone - Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Hicklin Hearthstone - Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Hicklin Hearthstone is a historic home located near Lexington, Lafayette County, Missouri. It was built about 1838, and is a two-story, central passage plan, Greek Revival style brick I-house. It has a two-story rear ell and features a one bay wide two story pedimented portico. Also on the property are the contributing five unit dependencies, a two-cell Overseer's cabin (the black overseer was named Levasy), a chicken coop, a smoke house, and a carriage house,. The large transverse barn, situated in front of the house, a brick root cellar house, and an out house no longer exist. The brick dependencies include a Store House, a Carpenter's quarters, a Wash House, a Servant's quarters and a large summer kitchen. The frame slave quarters housed the field hands. These quarters were numerous and scattered on the property, and no longer exist. James Hicklin, one of Lexington's earliest settlers (his uncle was Gilead Rupe), was a surveyor of roads and plats, settling Lexington with his parents in 1819. He was a skilled farmer as well a skilled entrepreneur. Per the NRHP, There is strong evidenced that he amassed his fortune through slave trading, the index of that is the decline of his fortune post the Civil War. Per Ancestry and the 1850 and 1860 Slave Schedules, Hicklin owned 33 slaves in 1850 and 19 slaves in 1860, their ages ranging from 1-50. Several of the enslaved workers stayed after they were freed in January, 1865, and took the name Hicklin as their own. This was not the case for all of the people enslaved by James Hicklin. Per NRHP, One of his workers was branded a fugitive, while another fractured Hicklin's skull in 1853, which would imply reason to doubt any supposed charity or benevolent nature of James Hicklin (slave owner). He passed in 1875. Read more on Wikipedia
Source: en.wikipedia.org