Information from his findagrave site:
Husband of Elizabeth Durham Hicks. Son of William and Edith Hicks.
They had a least 11 Children born to this Union: *date born
1. 1st Dau: Anna, *April 28, 1801- March 1, 1848 at 46 she married circa 1822,
William Cleary
2. 1st Son: Durham, *Feb 28, 1803, married Margaret Young.
3. 2nd Son: Hazzael, *1805, married Elizabeth Martin
4. 3rd Son: John Martin, *1806, married Elizabeth Dobbins.
5. 4th Son: Drury D. *April 13, 1809, married Elizabeth Hines.
6. 5th Son: Berry Allison, *April 13, 1809, twin of Drury D.
7. 6th Son: Charles A. "Green" *May 13, 1811 - April 5, 1879
8. 2nd Dau: Artimency, *Jan 6, 1813, married Abraham Lovelace.
9. 7th Son: Richard Henry, *Oct. 27, 1815 - Jan. 29, 1863, married Myra Lewis
Simmons.
10 3rd Dau: Didamie Emiline, *Jan. 31, 1819, married George Adam Fike.
11 8th Son: Joseph Martin, *Fev. 2, 1822 - Dec. 24, 1892 died at 70 years old
... Elder Berryman Hicks was born in Spartanburg County (now Cherokee County)
July 1, 1778. He "intermarried" with Elizabeth Durham in 1799 and
"reared a large and interesting family." He joined the State Line
Church in 1800 and was soon licensed to preach. "He was a great revivalist
and went far and near with his great co-worker, Elder Drury Dobbins....
Hicks possessed poetical talent and composed numerous hymns and spiritual songs
-- adapted to revival occasions, which found wide use at that period...
George Pullen Jackson, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands, New York, NY,
1965, p. 204.
Quotes from John R. Logan, Sketches of the Broad River and King's Mountain
Baptist Associations, Shelby, NC, 1887, pp. 400 ff.
According to Jackson, the lyrics first appeared on page 19 of William Walker's
Southern Harmony, 1835, with the note,
The song [poem] was composed by the Rev. B. Hicks, a Baptist minister of South
Carolina, and sent to his wife while he was confined in Tennessee by a fever of
which he afterwards recovered.1
ibid., p. 203.
According to George Pullen Jackson (p. 205), Hicks died at Little Buck Creek,
Spartanburg County, SC, on Jun 11, 1839.
http://www.oocities.org/nashville/3448/hicks.html
... Elder Berryman Hicks was born in Spartanburg County
(now Cherokee County) July 1, 1778. He "intermarried" with Elizabeth
Durham in 1799 and "reared a large and interesting family." He joined
the State Line Church in 1800 and was soon licensed to preach. "He was a
great revivalist and went far and near with his great co-worker, Elder Drury
Dobbins....
Hicks possessed poetical talent and composed numerous hymns and spiritual songs
-- adapted to revival occasions, which found wide use at that period...
http://www.genealogytrails.com/scar/spartanburg/church_sketches.htm
the
church appears destitute until 1832 when Elder Berryman Hicks was chosen, who
continued until 1839, or to the time of his death which took place that year.
Elder
B. Hicks was afterwards engaged in 1839 and continued in the pastorate until
'42,
STATE
LINE CHURCH
The
original State Line church was constituted in 1796, and was one of the
constituent members of the Broad River Association when organized in 1800 this
old church first of the Bethel Association and the nursing mother of Drury
Dobbins and Berryman Hicks had been disbanded sometime previous to 1824, and in
that year a reconstruction or remodeling of the church took place a short
distance from where the original church was located, and at the session of the
Broad River Association in that year at Head of First Broad River.
