Herbert Hickman is editor and owner of The Florence Bulletin, and had proved himself a very diligent and enterprising young newspaper man, coming up from the ranks of an apprenticeship as a printer.
He was born in Las Animas, Colorado, December 6, 1893, a son of George W. and Maggie H. (Brown) Hickman, both of whom died when he was a small boy. His father was a native of Missouri and his mother of West Virginia. Herbert had a twin brother, Harvey Cecil, who died at the age of five years, and the youngest child, Warren Milton, was born in 1895 and died in 1902. After the death of his parents Herbert Hickman lived with his maternal grandparents at Colony, Kansas. His mother’s father was Rufus M. Brown, one of the early settlers at Colony. He served in the Union army as a member of Company G, First Regiment, Ohio Heavy Artillery Volunteers, and was long active in Grand Army circles in Kansas, His death occurred in Colony in 1911.
In the home of his grandparents Herbert Hickman had good advantages, attending the public schools and spending three years working in the printing office of the Frce Press at Colony. He also continued his apprenticeship one year in Ottawa, Kansas. On March 2, 1914, he came to Florence as foreman of The Bulletin, and on May 1, 1917, bought that paper and the plant. The Bulletin is the only paper published at Florence, is a republican paper and was established in 1887 by J. B. Crooch. It is now in its thirty-first year.
Mr. Hickman married at Colony September 25, 1912, Miss Florence Waddel, who was born at Walnut, Kansas, November 25, 1893, a daughter of W. A. Waddel. Mr. Hickman is afflliated with the Aneient Order of United Workmen.