John HIX

Male 1778 - 1866  (88 years)


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  • Name John HIX 
    Born 31 Aug 1778  Cumberland Co, VA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender Male 
    Died 4 Sep 1866  New Richmond, WV Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Person ID I5410  adkinshorton
    Last Modified 2 Jan 2013 

    Family Love Kaylor,   b. 30 Aug 1781, VA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Married 20 Aug 1787  VA Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F25052  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Notes 
    • The records for this work have been submitted by Carol Benjamin, E-mail address: , February, 1 999.

      ftp://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/wv/summers/history/hicks.txt

      History of Summers County, West Virginia
      James H. Miller, published 1907

      Kaylor and Hix [Hicks]
      Pages 639-641
      Footnotes added by Carol Benjamin (1993)

      Susan and Love Kaylor were twin daughters of Michael Kaylor, and were born August 20, 1781. Love Kaylor4 married John Hix, and was the grandmother of Robert Hix, the present overseer of the poor of Green Sulphur District.

      John Hix, the original Hix ancestor of the honorable family of that name, was a native of Monroe County, Virginia, now West Virginia, and settled at Green Sulphur Springs. He was killed by a bull in 1807, near the residence of the Hon. M. Gwinn. John Hix, Jr. son the John Hix above referred to, was born August 31, 1778, in Cumberland County, Virginia, and died on the farm on which Robert Hix now resides, near New Richmond. William and Andrew Hix were twin sons of John Hix, Jr. born July 27, 1823, Andrew died in 1900. He was a brave Confederate soldier under McCausland. William is still living, and is the father of Robert Hix. William Hix is one, if not the oldest, of the citizens now living in Green Sulphur District.

      He has a wonderful recollection of things which are apparently ancient to the younger generation. He remembers distinctly seeing Indians, in his boyhood days from his father's farm, on their way to Washington City. He was then about fourteen years old and it was about the year 1837. The three brothers, John, William and Andrew, each lived to be very old men. They were Democrats in politics before the war, and continued their affiliations with that party during their entire lives. William resides with his only son, Robert, who is one of the leading citizens of Green Sulphur District, one of the leaders of the Democratic party, member of the Executive Committee, and a very loyal citizen, but not an office-seeker, never having been a candidate for any office, although he permitted the use of his name as deputy for Mr. O. T. Kesler, in his last race for the shrievalty.

      In religious affairs, Mr. Hix and all of the family are identified with the Missionary Baptist Church6. Robert married a Miss Lusher, daughter of Thomas D. Lusher. John Hix, Jr., left the following family: Elizabeth, born October 13, 1804; Catherine, born November 27, 1806; Michael8, born January 4, 1809; John, born December 5, 1811; Adeline, born July 18, 1816, who married John Duncan who lives at Green Sulphur Springs. William and Andrew were twins, born July 27, 1823. William Hix married Jane Kincaid, September 17, 1845, and the following children were born to them; Martha, born July 7, 1850, now deceased; Robert, born January 1, 1852; Susan, who married Mr. Edwards, born October 3, 1853; John L., born November 20, 1856, now deceased; Virginia, who married Robert Gwinn, born March 3, 1861; Minerva Ella married Charles Withrow, and was born August 3, 1853. The wife of William Hix died9 December 29, 1828. Michael Hix, living on the Hump Mountain, a son of Michael, who died during the war10, is also of this family. He was a brave Confederate soldier and a good citizen, as was also Andrew Hix, his uncle, who was severely wounded during the war11.

      One of his daughters married George W. Ayres12. John Hix lived on the Swell Mountain at a very high point, where, at one time, the lightning struck his barn, killing one son and severely wounding another, Marion, who now lives near Hinton. John Hix was a president of the Board of Education of Green Sulphur District, as was also his son, James M. Hix, who now lives on Lick Creek-another of the soldiers of the Confederacy.

      No one by the name of Hix was ever known to vote any ticket except the Democratic. Michael Hix, Sr., married Jeriah Duncan13, who lived to be a very old lady, near Lick Creek, adjoining the S. F. Taylor place.
      ******************

      West Virginia was Good
      Clee Woods
      Pages 6-9

      One of the old men in the community we boys heartily despised. He had hired a substitute to go the war for him. The man he hired to take his place in the Civil War draft was Andy Hicks, who lived just above us on Hicks' Branch, a tributary to Laurel Creek. Mr. Hicks was a little above the draft age in 1861, so that he might have stayed out of military service. But for a horse and saddle and $100 cash, he rode off on the horse and joined a Confederate cavalry unit. He got home three years later, unharmed. I served in the same outfit in World War I with a grandson of this old man Hicks, named Benny Bryant.

      As a neighbor boy I attended the funeral of Mr. Hicks. But the funeral was not conducted at the time of burial. The old man was buried on a bad winter day. As was done not infrequently in those days, his funeral was delayed until about the next August. Then to me at least, it seemed quiet a gala occasion when the funeral was "preached" out in the big orchard of the Hicks farm when apples were just getting at their best. Quite a crowd attended from nearby farms. They sat on chairs, boxes, logs and rocks. The preacher, Rev. Rhodes, was a venerable man who had the habit of sucking at his little mustache about every tenth word. He wore a long swallow-tailed coat that was faded to a dim brown that might have been black twenty years earlier. He shed tears as he talked, although I saw nobody else crying.

      In our community it was an accepted practice for a group of neighbors and friends to sit up all night with a dead body prior to burial. There was no such thing as an undertaker or mortuary. Neighbors came in after a death, and "laid out" the body--prepared it for the coffin. Nearly every family, as did ours, has keepsake coins that had been laid over the eyelids of a departed member to hold them shut until rigor mortis made weights no longer necessary. More often than not the coffin was made by someone in the community, of whatever boards might be at hand.

      People gathered for the wake at nightfall. Many brought food. The wake proper began with the reading of a passage from the Bible, than a prayer might run out to some length. After that, the singing of hymns was begun by someone as king to hear a certain song. Hymn after hymn was sung, with short pauses between. Perhaps every two hours or so a man would read from the Bible and pray again.

      This went on all night. People would pause to eat, drink coffee and visit in subdued voices. Nearly everybody would get hoarse. Some licked salt to overcome hoarseness. A few would go home after midnight. Replacements arrived, but in limited numbers. By morning perhaps only half a dozen of the most faithful would be there to sing the last song and read the last verse of Scripture.

      Even as late as 1920, I was present all night at the wake of a coal miner who had been electrocuted accidentally in the mine. I was there more or less as the informal representative of the coal company in whose store I worked and in whose mine this man had been killed. I found myself forced to take charge, with few helpers. No more than a dozen persons showed up, and this number diminished to three or four by daylight. Not all of those present could sing. It was a squalid little company house, three rooms and an outside toilet. Each end of the cheap gray coffin rested on a chair with the back of the chair turned away. Nobody brought even a pie for the midnight snack. I think I was the only one present who knew even the rudiments of procedure on such an occasion. That night remains a stark memory with me.

      In contrast, the funeral of the aged Andy Hicks in mid-summer of 1899, after he had been buried six or eight months, lingers with me as a rather pleasant something to have experienced. A good crowd, lots of kids there, an orchard with ripe apples and in me, six years old, no sense of loss of an old man who when young had gone to war in the place of a shirker, at a price of $100. a horse and saddle.

      Our interest often centered on the Hicks' farm. Ann Hicks, daughter of the veteran Andy Hicks, had married Ben Bryant, an individual of greater intelligence and sophistication than the common run of men thereabouts,. He was a conductor on the C&O Railroad. He came home only occasionally for a brief stay with his wife and five children. About the year 1900 he brought in carpenters, stonemasons and painters for the building of what in that community amounted to a magnificent framed house with two stone chimneys.

      The stonemasons were four Negro men from Alderson. On Laurel Creek black people seldom ever were seen, but at Lewisburg and Alderson, neither more that thirty miles away, about a third of the people were black, having no place to live on the Hicks farm, the four Negro masons rented our smoke house for the summer, with some arrangements for their building a chimney for my father after they had finished at the Bryant home. Dad was building a new house*, not much smaller that the new Bryant house, but he was doing most of the carpenter work himself, even to making the roof shingles . He had to build by stages, as he could afford nails and boards. And when he could take time from cropping and clearing land.

      *This house accidentally burned after we'd been gone from it twenty years.
      1 Now Sandstone, at the fall of New River, about a mile from Laurel Creek.2


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