William Adams Hickman is probably the most interesting, flamboyant and colorful ancestor I have.

Bill Hickman and Porter Rockwell were both body guards for the Mormon profits Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Most documentaries and histories of the time mention Porter Rockwell, and for what ever reason, leave out gg-great grandpa William Adams Hickman. Bill Hickman's daughter Lerona Minerva Hickman was my grandma Betsy Grace (Vanderhoof) Shaw's mother.

"Wild Bill" Hickman's grave in the mountains west of Lander, Wyoming, was kept a secret from all but his first wife, Bernetta, and three of his grown children and their spouses. Other Hickman descendants were never told. Evidently, the end of their progenitor's life did not match his promising beginnings. Hickman's life has never been recounted before except by Bill Hickman himself, and even then the story was incomplete. (Hope A. Hilton 1988) excerpt form "Wild Bill" Hickman and the Mormon frontier.

Preface from Hope Hiltons book: A "Mormon mountain man" is in many ways a contradiction in terms. Free-spirited explorers like Jim Bridger, William. Ashley, Jedediah Smith, and others were often un-churched, single, buckskin-clad pioneers. Although William Adams Hickman was a trusted member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), husband to ten plural wives, including an Indian squaw, father to thirty-five children, and one of Utah territory's earliest lawmen, he was also an independent, rough, undisciplined mountain man and outlaw. As much at home in his trading post near Fort Bridger as in his more comfortable house in the Salt Lake Valley, and responsible for more deaths than lives saved, Hickman led an enigmatic eventful life.

There was never a time during Bill Hickman's western experience that stories often exaggerated of his usually "notorious" exploits were not related in homes throughout the Salt Lake valley and elsewhere. His sixty-eight years took him from Mormonism's beginnings to its periods of isolation and adjustment during the 1850's and 1870's. He died in 1883 a non-Mormon because of an excommunication he considered unwarranted. Hickman's loyalty to the Mormon church and its leaders continued until 1863, thirteen years after his arrival in the Great Salt Lake Valley, when he accepted employment with the United States government. Earlier, he had served his church as one of the most valuable, effective Mormon guerrillas harassing federal troops during the 1856-58 Utah War. But after he took a position as a federal Indian guide, Mormon church leaders viewed him as a renegade church "spy," no longer worthy of their support and friendship. Read more about
- - > Wild Bill Hickman.

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Family History

My grandma's mother's mother was one of William Adams Hickman's nine wives.

Her name was Minerva Wade.

September 1829 to 23 December 1918. They married 1 May 1849; she was 19. Their 8 children were born William Adams, Jr. 14 Feb 1850; Sarah Maria 15 Sep 1851 (she married William Frances); Moses Edward 8 Aug 1853; Lerona Minerva 12 Jan 1856 (she married Jesse Giles Vanderhoof); Margaret Wade 13 Mar 1858; Survivor 22 May 1860; Warren Wade 31 Aug 1862; Mary Ella 28 Sep 1865 (she married Frederick Kohlhepp).