Page 164 - some-stuff-i-wrote-and-some-stuff-i-didn't-(2011)-h-morris-williams

Some Stuff I Wrote and Some Stuff I Didn't (2011) H. Morris Williams

PIONEERING DICKS FAMJLYHFLPED SETTLE COUNTY

By Lenvil Dicks

* *(A partial history of the Columbia County Dicks family, one of the original

pioneering families) * *

William Dicks was probably very proud to have been an English soldier who

fought and helped defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.

He never knew that he very well might have accomplished something else that

would be of considerable note, which is the fact that since that date, a little less
than 200 years ago, his direct descendants probably number close to 400

people-most all of who reside in the North Central Florida area, and chiefly in

Columbia County.

William Dicks was discharged from the English army after that battle, having

sustained a wound which years later would ultimately cause his death.

He sired four children near Liverpool, England: three girls and one son.

That son was Joseph Dicks, bom in December of 1819, who later came to
America and started the generations of the Dicks’ family.

In the days of Joseph Dicks’ boyhood, there were no public schools, and a

family would send a son to be apprenticed to learn at whatever trade might he
considered to be a means of making a decent living.

Joseph Dicks was apprenticed to a brash maker to learn how to make brushes.

The brushes in that day were made from the bristles of boar-hogs, and the

extraction of the bristles from the hide such hogs was an extremely smelly,
nasty and unrewarding job. Joseph hated it.

At the age of 14, in 1833, he made a decision that he was not going to pursue

the trade of brash making, and his only alternative was to somehow get to
America.

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