The Hicks Family

Crawford H. Hicks was born on March 15, 1880, in Wrightstown, Georgia — the youngest son of Cornelius and Mary Hicks. His father was a railroad worker, listed as a "crosstie getter" in the 1880 census, while his mother and older siblings worked as farm laborers. The family likely participated in sharecropping, a common form of employment for African Americans in rural Georgia in the 1880s.

By age 20, Crawford was listed as a farm laborer — a man who could read and write, with one year of schooling. He married Ethel Mosley around 1900–1902, and the young family soon began the migration that would define their lives. They left Georgia first for Alabama, then made their way to Los Angeles — a common circuit for African Americans seeking opportunity in that era — before eventually arriving in Colorado.

By 1910, the Hicks family was living in Denver, where Crawford worked as a janitor and later as a porter at Fish & Company. When his friend O.T. Jackson began organizing the Dearfield Colony, Crawford was among the very first to act. On September 3, 1910, newspapers reported that Crawford Hicks had filed on 160 acres of government land in Weld County. He built the house himself from a mail-order kit and moved his family to the property — beginning a homesteading adventure that would last for decades.

Crawford received full title to the 160-acre property on June 23, 1917. He was prominently featured in promotional materials for the Dearfield settlement and had a street named after him in the townsite. Crawford Hicks died on February 19, 1926, bringing the initial phase of Hicks family homesteading to a close — but the family's connection to the land he built would endure for another century.

Believed to be Crawford and Ethel Hicks in the homestead garden — Ethel's garden was celebrated as producing an extraordinary variety of vegetables and produce

Ethel Mosley was born in 1882 in Early County, Georgia, likely the youngest child of Nancy and John Mosley, who were listed as farmhands in the 1880 census. She married Crawford Hicks around 1902. Their journey westward — through Alabama, California, and finally to Colorado — reflected a migration pattern common to many African American families seeking a freer life beyond the Deep South.

Ethel was far more than a homesteader's wife. She was the driving force behind the homestead's productivity and social life. Her garden — described by daughter Carrie as "the most beautiful garden in the world" — grew staples like squash, beans, and potatoes, as well as a wide variety of vegetables that fed the family and generated income. She raised wild and domesticated turkeys, supplying much of Weld County with Thanksgiving birds each year. She sold cream, eggs, and produce to John Thompson's Grocery Store in Denver.

Ethel's influence extended far beyond the farm. She was a central figure in the social networks linking Dearfield to Denver's African American community. She hosted the Taka Art and Literary Club — an African American women's organization affiliated with the Denver Federation of Colored Women — at the homestead in 1918. She was an early and committed supporter of the NAACP, listed among nine contributors to a 1927 Denver NAACP defense fund. She was a leading member of Denver's Shorter AME Church, and both she and daughter Esther remained active with the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority into the 1940s.

After Crawford's death in 1926, Ethel retained ownership of the 240-acre farm and continued to cultivate the land and maintain the family's ties to it. On November 5, 1941, she deeded the original 160-acre homestead to her son-in-law, Walter Wood, while retaining the portion homesteaded by Carrie Jackson. The descendants of Ethel Hicks credit her above all others with the continuity and preservation of the family's land legacy.

Crawford and Ethel had four children. Three daughters and a son were born across their years of migration and settlement:

Carrie Hicks married Walter E. Wood, and together they became the homestead's most enduring stewards. In the 1930s, Walter guided hunting and fishing excursions on the property, tapping into its natural bounty — a reminder that the land's value extended far beyond farming. By 1941, Ethel Hicks had deeded the original 160-acre parcel to Walter. He and Carrie maintained a primary residence in Denver but returned to the homestead regularly.

Walter was the last full-time resident of the Hicks Homestead. He died in 1973, ending 63 years of continuous Hicks family presence on the land. His death marks the close of what historians designate as the homestead's period of significance — though the family's connection to the property has never ended.

Carrie and Walter's daughter, Ethel Alice Wood, later married Eugene Potts. Through this union, the fourth generation of the Hicks family took shape: Jeannie Potts Dixon, Tony Potts, and David Potts.

The fifth generation of the Hicks family — those directly involved with the Weld County property — includes:

The sixth and youngest generation of the Hicks family currently numbers 12 children — a living embodiment of the legacy Crawford and Ethel Hicks began when they stepped off the train at Masters, Colorado, with a mail-order home in pieces and a vision of something better.

"The human value — not economic value — associated with land ownership is placed in the continued development of the land."

— Jeannie Potts Dixon, Hicks family descendant, November 15, 2024