Hicklin Hearthstone

About this property

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. Per a 1912 article written at the time of Young Hicklin's death, the family hired a carpenter from Virginia who lived on the property for three years. Construction of the home began in 1836 and the home was completed five (5) years later, in 1841. The Hicklin home is a well-preserved combination of stylistic influences – the Greek Revival style and traditional vernacular form, an antebellum Southern plantation home. The house was one of many elegant mansions that were to be built along the Dover Road during the 1830s – 1850s, as hemp plantations were established to meet the growing need for rope. Not only was this house one of the earliest, but also one of the finest. To this day, it remains one of the most interesting and impressive antebellum country houses in Western Missouri, as well as suspected breeding plantation. One of the most striking features of the original portico were two great porch pillars, one of solid walnut and one of a white oak. They were cut from two great trees and smoothed with drawn knife and broad-axe.

Location

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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