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 “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.
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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]
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