Finding Your Path

We have an ancestor named Jesse Lee Hickman (father of Pleasant Hickman) who was a Baptist minister. But he didn’t start out that way. Based on an account of his life written by J.H. Spencer in his book A History of Kentucky Baptists 1769-1885, we learn that the Rev. Hickman had quite a few challenges in his life, not unlike all of us.

Jesse Lee was born in 1786 in Rowan County, North Carolina, in the town of Salisbury. As for most people from this era, we know little of their childhood experiences, but Jesse Lee would have grown up on a farm, and received the standard education for a first-born son – he was able to “read, write, and cipher a little.” (Spencer) He was also a follower of Thomas Paine – of course, who wasn’t in post-Revolution America? Specifically, though, he shared Paine’s disdain for organized religion, and subscribed to the notion that the only church is one’s own mind. For this, he was described as “the infidel Hickman” by Spencer. Although he was 20 years old at this point, he appears to have still followed his family west when his father, John Lewis Hickman (more about him in a future post), decided to move the family to Bourbon County, Kentucky, in 1807. Sometime between 1810 and 1820, his father moved the family again to Logan County, Kentucky (near the town of Russelville). This brought them to within a couple hundred miles of the Mississippi River, and even closer to Jesse Lee’s destiny.

For on December 16, 1811, the first in a series of violent tremors shook the region in what is now called the New Madrid earthquakes. Two more would follow in Jan and Feb 1812. But the spiritual aftershocks were just as significant, as the book describes:

Many people regarded the fearful phenomena as the threatenings of divine vengeance against them, for their great wickedness. Among these was the infidel Hickman, who was so deeply convicted of his sins, that some of his friends feared he would die of remorse.

Jesse Lee suddenly found himself in awe of the Creator’s power, and like Saul on the road to Damascus, was longing to be converted. A short time later he was baptized into the faith, and within a year he was ordained to the ministry. He became the leader of flocks in neighboring Allen and Warren Counties, at the churches of Trammel Fork and Rocky Spring (both still in existence), among others, and spent the next 25 years as a Baptist minister.

His walk with Christ, like everyone’s, was not without challenges. He eventually found himself tempted into the sin of adultery with a member of his congregation. When he was confronted with his deed, he is quoted as saying that he “could not add to this crime the sin of lying before God.” (Spencer) But this marked the end of his time as a minister, and although he eventually was restored as a member of the church, his remorse and shame followed him until his death in March of 1850. And while his story lacks the Hollywood appeal of a happy ending, his flaws make him all the more relatable as a fellow human being.