Charles Edward Hicks appeared on the census of 1880 in the household of
John Pendleton Hicks I and
Leah Rosella Hicks in Plain View, Phillips County, Kansas, which lists John P. Hicks, 43, born in Kentuck, both parents born in Virginiay; his wife Leah R., 29, also born in Kentucky, both parents also born in Kentucky; and their four sons, Ulyses [sic] S., 11, Joseph T., 9, Charles E., 7, and George E., 5, all born in Missouri; and Leah's sister Mattie E. Foudray [mis-indexed as Fondray], 21, born in Indiana, both parents born in Kentucky.
3 Charles Edward Hicks appeared on the census of 1885 in the household of John Pendleton Hicks I and Leah Rosella Hicks in Plain View, Phillips County, Kansas.
4 Charles Edward Hicks and
Jessie Adella Hicks appeared on the census of 1900 in Arlington, Gilliam County, Oregon.
5 He and Jessie Adella Miller appeared on the census of 1930 in Salem, Marion County, Oregon, which listed Charles E. Hicks, 58, born in Missouri, and both parents born in Kentucky; his wife Jessie A., 58, born in Oregon, her father born in Illinois and her mother born in Missouri; and Charles' mother Leah R. Hicks, 79, born in Kentucky, and both parents also born in Kentucky.
6 He was a newspaper printer.
The Charles and Jessie Hicks Story, and Charlotte's Childhood By Miriam Nesbit
(Revised November 23, 2001)
My grandfather, Charles Edward Hicks, was born on a farm near Herndon, Saline County, Missouri, on January 10, I872, to John Pendleton Hicks and Leah Rosella Foudray Hicks. Several states away, in Benton County, Oregon, north of Corvallis, on November 1, 1879, Joseph Henry Miller and Mary Jane Stewart Miller welcomed their new baby daughter, my grandmother, Jessie Adella Miller.
Sometime during her growing-up years, Jessie Adella Miller with her family left the Willamette Valley to live in the Battleground/Brush Prairie area of Washington, north of Vancouver, Washington. After leaving school, she lived for a time at Willow Creek, Oregon, then moved to Arlington, Oregon, to work in her brother's, George Miller, store. (It isn't clear whether the store was in Blalock or Arlington) .
At the time of their meeting, Charlie Hicks was a soldier stationed at Fort Vancouver, and Jessie Miller was back at her parents' home near Battleground, Washington. Charlie had a certain charm and wooed and soon won the heart of the young lady. They were married in the Old Methodist Church on Main Street in Arlington, Oregon, on September 14, I898. She was eighteen, he, twenty-six.
Charlie was a musician at heart. In those days, there were few opportunities to earn a living in the music field, so he was a printer by trade. He was also a dreamer with visions of riches and fame that were always beyond his grasp. Jessie was practical and industrious, so they got by, but were usually very poor.
Shortly after their marriage, Charlie accepted a job with a newspaper in Pendleton, Oregon. My mother, Charlotte Eloise Hicks, was born there on January 17, 1900.
When he learned that a gold claim was available in California, Charlie quit the newspaper, and the new little family moved to Henley, California, just south of the Oregon border, so he could pursue that whim. The house they lived in was little more than a shack, with newspapers for wallpaper. The facilities were primitive. Grandpa Charlie was a vain man and meticulous in his grooming. It is hard to visualize him in a gold-panning, gold-grubbing role. It almost certainly was not the exciting scenario that he had imagined. And for Jessie, it was a lonely life.
A second daughter, Dorothy Leah Hicks, was born in Henley, California, on July 20, 1902. By this time, the glamour of the gold venture had been replaced by hard, cold reality. The claim was not going to support a family of four.
They moved back to Oregon, this time to Antelope, Oregon, where Charlie once more worked at printing. They lived in a hotel, where Charlotte became the favored child of the Chinese cook, who gave the red-haired tot special treats. It was one of her earliest memories.
On July 22, 1904, John Pendleton Hicks II was born in Antelope, Oregon. With a boy in the family, Charlie again began to dream of better things. He could see a farm, he and his son working side by side when the child grew older. So he took up a homestead in Gilliam County, Oregon, near Ajax, Oregon. It was near enough to Jessie's brother George Miller's home in Blalock, Oregon, that they could visit occasionally. Now Jessie didn't feel so alone.
Uncle George Miller obviously enjoyed children and liked to kid them. Charlotte remembered that when she was about five he would tell her that if she could catch his old turkey, the big bird would spread his feathers and make a splendid seat for her to ride on. Although she chased the creature endlessly, she was never able to catch him. She did enjoy the game.
For a time, the family seemed to prosper. They even had a horse and buggy. Charlie worked at improving the land and traveled the area, selling nursery stock. Now, another daughter joined them. Georgia Mary Hicks made her entry on August 22, 1906, at nearby Condon, Oregon, which was probably where the nearest midwife lived.
They stayed in Gilliam County, Oregon, the required two years to prove up the homestead. A few months short of Charlotte's eighth birthday, in the fall of 1907, they all moved to Portland, Oregon, so that the children could attend school. There had not been a school close enough to their farm. Although Charlotte had no formal education at that time, she had been learning the basics at home, so she was immediately placed in second grade.
For a short interval, Charlie worked for the Oregonian newspaper as a printer. This gave him time to contemplate the next move. At last he had something of value with which to barter. He made a lucky choice; he traded the land they had homesteaded, near Ajax, Oregon, for a weekly newspaper in Independence, Oregon. Jessie learned to run the Linotype and worked beside Charlie. Grandma Mary Jane Stewart Miller took care of the children and the house. Things were definitely improving for the family.
At this time, Charlie also found time to play the violin at schools and at meetings of ladies' societies. For these events, he wore a frock coat to enhance his image. He played well and, although he was mostly self-taught, was an excellent musician. He also had the gift of perfect pitch. He had always put on airs, passing himself off as an intellectual and pretending to be quite prosperous. Jessie even tailored a suit for him when he couldn't afford one that met his tastes. He was somewhat arrogant.
But he was the same old Charlie; he got tired of running the newspaper, and after four years in Independence, Oregon, he traded the business to finance the purchase of an apartment house. The apartment house was probably in Forest Grove, Oregon, as that is next in the sequence of moves they made.
For a time, Jessie stayed put and managed the apartment house. Charlie returned to Portland to work, again for the Oregonian -- and to watch for a new opportunity.
This time, he traded the apartment house equity for a car and moved Jessie and the children back to Portland. He started a venture taking sight-seeing customers to Mt. Hood. As could be expected, business fell off when the weather changed in the fall.
Did this stop Charlie? Not at all! He learned of a newspaper across the river in Vancouver, Washington which had gone bankrupt. So he traded the car for the printing equipment and tried to revive the paper. By this time, Charlotte was twelve years old and was expected to help her parents. Her job was to distribute the used type back into the trays. For this, Jessie made black dresses for her, so the printing ink would not show. The child was in an awkward position; she couldn't escape when other employees would complain to her about not getting paid. She worried about it a lot.
Jessie could not devote much time to the business, as she was pregnant again. Charlotte was very naive. She wondered why her mother wore such ugly dresses. One day she came into the room when Jessie and a group of ladies from the church were all hemming dish towels. The girl turned this over in her mind; why so many dish towels? The funny dresses, so many dish towels; suddenly she knew. Diapers! Right after her own 13th birthday, her youngest sibling, Jessie Elizabeth Hicks, arrived. The date was January 30, 1913.
The Vancouver, Washington, paper could not be revived, so Charlie moved the printing equipment to a newspaper in Raymond, Washington. The backers there were looking for a Democrat to run it. So Charlie switched political parties in order to be sure of being accepted. Again, Charlotte had to pitch in and help. In addition to her prior duties, she had to go out and collect for ads that had been placed, then not paid for.
The Raymond, Washington, newspaper was not a success either. Charlie had to file for bankruptcy. About this time, a minister came by their house asking for contributions for meat and butter for the poor. The Hicks family themselves had not had either meat or butter for a long time, so the minister's church provided them with some of each. Charlotte was mortified that anyone should find out how poor they were. Perhaps it recalled to her a time when the family had to move out of a house in the middle of the night because Charlie couldn't find any way to pay the rent.
Charlotte and her mother both were intensely proud and hated the very thought of not paying one's way. But in those days the man of the house was considered the head of the family, and his decisions were not to be questioned. It's likely that the set of circumstances at the time gave him no other choice .
In spite of their troubles, Charlotte had some happy memories of the time spent in Raymond, Washington. She sometimes accompanied a school chum home to North Cove where the girl's father was in the Coast Guard. It was there that Charlotte saw her first lighthouse and had her first glimpse of the ocean and there that she learned to swim.
Her friend took her to visit an aunt and uncle who had cranberry bogs. A year or two before her death, Mother wrote, in a letter to me, "Cranberries always remind me of those happy, wonderful Norwegian people, and the excitement of getting to see a part of the world I had never seen. "
From Raymond, Washington, the family moved back to Portland, Oregon, for a time. Here, the path becomes murky. Most of the notes I took were done in the four years before Mother's death in 1998. She tired easily, and sometimes the effort to recall was just too strenuous, so we didn't get around to discussing the mid-teen stage of her life. I will try to recall. anything I can about this next phase.
Somehow they arrived in Hillyard, Washington, a railroad community that is now a part of Spokane, Washington. Through Charlie's job as a printer there, the kids were given free theater passes. Now, they were living much as the other kids with whom they associated. One railroad family, the Caseys, became very special, life-long friends. Always an outstanding student, Charlotte graduated from Hillyard High School on June 1, 1917, as valedictorian of her class.
Charlie was not one to stay put for long. They moved about fifty miles southwest of Spokane, to the little town of Endicott, Washington. Charlotte gained employment as a bookkeeper at the local bank, helping her parents financially, and setting aside money for college. With most of her first paycheck, she bought a wide gold wedding band for her mother. Charlie had never seen fit to buy one for Jessie, even when the money was available. I'm sure that Jessie wore Charlotte's ring with pride. After Jessie's death, when my own original wedding band seemed to have shrunk to little finger size, Mother (Charlotte) gave me that ring. Because of its special place in family history, I wear it to this day.
In the summer of 1919, Charlotte moved to Pullman, Washington, to start her new job at the First National Bank, where she would work part time while attending Washington State College.
Charlie and Jessie and the other children continued to move about. The two both belonged to the printers union and worked for awhile on a newspaper in Sandpoint, Idaho. From there, they moved to Marshfield, Oregon (before its name was changed to Coos Bay) .
Later on, they lived in Salem, Oregon, then around 1930 they returned to Portland, where they operated a dry cleaning outlet. Jessie did alterations and ironing and pressing. She was a talented seamstress, who had also taken millinery classes and learned to make hats. These abilities helped to make ends meet, but she had never stayed in one place long enough to build up a clientele.
Charlie wasn't well, so even with all but the last child grown and on their own, life was still a struggle. He died of cancer, in Portland, on October 9, 1931, and was buried in the GAR cemetery, there. He was 59 .
After his death, Jessie moved around, from one daughter's home to another. She lived with us for several months, in the mid-1930s. Eventually she made a more or less permanent home with her youngest daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Ed Anderson, in San Francisco. But she yearned for a home of her own. So her children got together, each contributing toward living expenses, and she was able to rent a tiny house near the home of her second daughter, Dorothy Dyer, in Los Angeles. She was happy there, raising a few flowers, sewing, and visiting with the ladies in her church.
After a few years, it was decided that the house was too much for her to keep up, so she moved in with Dorothy and her husband. Glen soon resented the intrusion, and the merger didn't work out. Shortly after my father, Bill Druffel died in 1962, Jessie went to Colton, Washington, to live with her oldest daughter, my mother Charlotte. About a year later, in 1963 the two ladies moved to Portland, to be near my brother Gordon and his wife, Inga.
Grandma had small strokes (TIA's) and required a lot of care, but Charlotte managed. Jessie died in Portland, of pneumonia, on September 8, 1967, at the age of 87.
Charlotte recalled, during the family's most difficult years, often hearing her parents arguing at night about money, and her mother Jessie crying and pleading with Charlie to be more practical, because they had so many children, so many mouths to feed. Although she blocked out many of the recollections of her childhood, that memory left a lasting feeling of guilt, because she was one of the children who had to be fed and clothed. It seemed to leave her with the feeling that there was something wrong with being a child.
Perhaps that is why she didn't like to be around small children. Unlike most of us, Charlotte took little delight in having grandchildren. One's purpose in life, in her mind, was to grow up to be a responsible adult -- and if possible, to live in a world where no one was younger than 14.
Although Charlotte loved, and in some ways even admired, her father, she was very aware of his weaknesses. Certainly, her life was deeply affected by them. On the other hand, she had unending admiration for her mother, Jessie, who was able to hold the family together under almost insurmountable odds. Jessie strove to be happy. She loved to sing and, whenever possible, sang in church choirs. Mother often said, if given even half the chance, Jessie would have been a real lady. Although she lacked the finer things in life, I believe she already deserved that distinction.
How did the five children fare in later life?
Sophisticated and gregarious Elizabeth, divorced from the first two of her three husbands, held responsible office jobs in San Francisco. She and Ed Anderson had one son, Stewart Anderson. Elizabeth died of ovarian cancer on August 14, 1995, in Napa, California.
Very glamorous, extremely vain, but charming Georgia, who was married four times, was employed by the federal government for several years in Stockton and the Bay Area. She remained childless. A stroke ended her life on March 17, 1990, in San Mateo, California.
John inherited his father's musical talent and, following years of study in that field, became head arranger for, and close friend of Meredith Wilson of "Music Man" fame. John also composed and arranged music for several movies and the West Coast Ice Capades. He and his first wife, Julia, who died in 1962, had one daughter, Rosalie. He and his second wife, Betty, traveled widely. John passed away unexpectedly on May 24, 2001, a few days after undergoing surgery for a strangulated abdominal hernia.
After her only child, a daughter, Audrey, was grown, Dorothy Hicks Dyer completed her own education and opened a marriage counseling service in Palo Alto, California. A charmer, possessed of a special, clever wit, she commented once, that if she could afford her rates, she would take advantage of that counseling herself. She and Glen were divorced sometime during that decade. Dorothy died of leukemia on April 27, 1976, in Mountain View, California.
Charlotte died of the infirmities of age, in Portland, April 24, 1998, at the age of 98. Her full story will begin in the next chapter.
Addendum to The Charlie and Jessie Hicks Story By Audrey Dyer Harper McDonald
My mother (Dorothy Hicks Dyer) adored her father Charlie Hicks and did not criticize him much. However, she would admit that he wasn't a good provider. I got the impression that their marriage was not a good match at all.
Mother felt that the music provided by her father Charlie made up for his faults. The fact that he bought a Victrola and records and instruments for his children (perhaps instead of clothes or food) made more of an impression on her.
She told me that when the family played music together that the neighbors would gather to listen.
Her brother John made his living as a musician and did well at it, probably because of his early training and his father Charlie's love of music.