John Hickman
Mayor of Oxford 1827/8
John Hickman (1765–1831) was a glazier.
On 2 March 1794 Hickman married Elizabeth Ann Taylor at St Peter-in-the-East Church, and on 23 June 1794 he was admitted free for 20 guineas and the usual fees.
Hickman and his family lived and worked at 85 High Street (left) until the 1850s. He and his wife baptised twelve children at St Peter-in-the-East Church: Elizabeth (1795), Mary (1796), John (1797), Jane (1798), Frances (1799) Mary (1800), Elizabeth Anne (1802), Charles Randall (1804), a second Frances (1806), Harriet (1807), Henry (1808) and John again (1810).
Seven of these children died in infancy: Mary in 1796; the first John, Elizabeth and the first Frances in 1799; Mary in 1801; the second Frances in 1807; and Henry in 1809.
Hickman came on to the Common Council on 30 September 1796, and was appointed a Viewer of Nuisances in 1799. In 1800 he was named Mayor’s Chamberlain, and was made Bailiff in 1804. He served as Mayor for the year 1827/8.
Hickman died at 85 High Street at the age of 66 and was buried at St Peter-in-the-East Church on 11 July 1831. His wife Elizabeth Ann died here three years later at the age of 64 and was buried with him on 22 February 1834.
The children who survived their parents were Jane, Elizabeth Anne (who married John Sessions of Appleton in 1824), Charles Randall (who married Martha Simmons at St Mary Magdalen Church in 1827 and died in 1849); Harriet (who married Francis Arther of Birmingham in 1832); and John who married Elizabeth Seary at St Mary Magdalen in 1830).
Charles Randall Hickman took over his father’s business and was in the house alone at the time of the 1841 census. By 1851 the business had been taken over by Mrs Lucy Hickman, presumably his widow: she was born in Worcester, and is listed in the census as a widow of 47.
See also:
- PCC Will PROB 11/1789 (Will of John Hickman of Oxford, proved 25 August 1831)
- Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 9 July 1831: Announcement of Hickman’s death
- Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 22 February 1834: Announcement of Hickman’s widow’s death