Church records reveal Hickey family history

 

[March 25, 2019] 

LINCOLN 

Growing up, Pat Hickey Freese did not have a clue as to the long history of her family in Logan County. The Logan County Genealogical and Historical Society presented Pat’s story of her awakening to her family’s long and distinguished life in Lincoln and Logan County at their monthly meeting Monday evening.

“Growing up, my family never talked about our family history, and I really don’t know why,” said Pat Hickey Freese. Pat and her husband Gary set out to rectify that omission after hearing a lecture by Paul Beaver on the Scully family.

Beaver mentioned that John Hickey had the first Scully lease in Logan County.

Scully came from Ireland and settled in the area after devising a way to drain and farm the wetlands. Pat shared a last name with John Hickey and set about discovering if they were related. It turns out they are related and what’s more, the Hickey family has a huge presence in the area.

Pat Hickey Freese went to Holy Cross cemetery in Lincoln to see if she could find her grandmother’s resting place. What she found amounted to a Hickey family history lesson taken from all of the tombstones with the name Hickey on them, many tombstones.

To find out how she fit into this family history, she next went to Holy Family church to search the records. What she found was a treasure trove of Hickey family records from the predecessor church of Holy Family, St. Patrick’s church. St. Patrick’s was the Irish Catholic church in Lincoln.

Pat Freese holds an Irish knitted sweater that identifies a specific clan in Ireland because of the weave, much like a kilt colors identifies a clan in Scotland.

Pat’s relatives came from southern Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century. They had met Lord Scully in Ireland. “John and William Hickey saved Lord Scully from a beating in a bar fight in Ireland,” she said.

When her relatives came to America to escape the potato famine in the 1840’s they gravitated to central Illinois where Scully had started farming. Thus began the long history of the Hickey family in Logan County and Lincoln.

The church history that Pat studied included many of the descendants from the first Hickey’s in the area, and their children. “The church records were very detailed and helped me understand where I stood in the family history, a true family tree,” she said.

Pat and Gary Freese brought the history of the Hickey family to the LCGHS for the monthly meeting Monday.

Originally, the Catholics on Scully land brought a priest from Lincoln to the farms to hold services. Next, a Catholic church was founded in Lincoln, catering to the Irish and German families in town. The Irish members of the congregation decided to form their own church, and St. Patrick’s was founded in the late 19th century. Nuns were brought from Iowa to teach in the parochial school. Pat’s family was part of this new congregation. When the current St. Patrick’s Church was built, the lovely stained glass windows were donated by John and Ellen Hickey.

“I was baptized at St. Patrick’s church, had my first communion there, was confirmed in the church, and married Gary there,” said Pat Hickey Freese. “All of my records and family history are contained in the church records. These records were instrumental in finding my roots and Hickey family history in Logan County,” she added.

The Illinois Prairie Pioneer Certificate presented to Pat Freese.


The LCGHS Pioneer Certificate presented to Pat Freese honoring her family’s long history in Logan County.

The Logan County Genealogical and Historical Society has a monthly meeting on the third Monday of the month at 6:30 p.m. There is always an interesting speaker and the public is always welcome. The April meeting will feature Logan County historian Bill Donath. His topic will be the Spanish flu in Logan County.

[Curtis Fox]