Two Beginnings
Hicksville had its first start in the latter 1830s. Anyone who stood at the depot in those days and looked around would have seen a couple of railroad sheds, some appurtenant storage buildings, a cluster of structures erected by people from Jericho, and a hotel. This was the nucleus around which a thriving village might have grown - except that one day a fire burned everything but the hotel to the ground. It was a significant setback.
In 1849, settlement got its first real thrust. A man named Frederick Heyne purchased 1,000 acres of land, hoping that he could persuade a number of his fellow German immigrants to come to Hicksville, and start developing it into a prosperous village - and that's just what he did. Within a year, the first of them were planting their roots. One of those who arrived in 1850 was Johann Heitz, an unassuming watchmaker.
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