Brennetta (Burckhardt or Burckhartt) Hickman
8 Aug, 1810 -- 27 Dec, 1885
Bill Hickman said that Brennetta was the prettiest little black eyed girl that he had ever met! Brennetta was the daughter of George Burckhardt and Ruth Dorsey. George was the "Randolph County" legislative representative in Huntsville, Missouri in the 1830's. Bill had been sent to live with the Burckhardt family, when he was 15 years old, to study law. While he was there he fell madly in love with Brennetta who was almost three years his senior.
The following is an excerpt from the book: Wild Bill Hickman and the Mormon Frontier by Hope A. Hilton
The book is wonderful! You will want to own a copy!
"Despite their age difference nineteen-year-old Brennetta fell in love with sixteen-year-old Bill. undissuaded by his abrasive surface. Apparently she saw qualities in Bill that earned her life-long loyalty over fifty years. In spite of hardships and poverty, not to mention Mormon polygamy, obstacles that might have lessened the ardor of a less dedicated woman, Brennetta remained by Bill until his death. She dismissed the sheltered life she might have had as unimportant.
Both the Hickman and Burckhardt families disapproved of the budding romance; the Hickmans because of their desire to see their oldest son get and education, and the Burckhardts because Bill seemed below their social standing, and his age and lack of education were less than impressive. Although later Bill wrote, "Our parents consented" to the marriage, a Burckhardt relative still living in Missouri in 1965 gave a different account of the circumstances surrounding Bill's and Brennetta's marriage.
According to Burckhardt family history, a midnight elopement was planned by the teenage lovers. They wisely waited until Bill's seventeenth birthday in April 1832. To implement their escape a string was tied to Brennetta's big toe. The string hung out from her upstairs bedroom window to where Bill could reach it on horseback. Brennetta could not sleep; the anticaped pull on her toe had driven sleep from her mind. Finally Bill came. He helped Brennetta to climb down to his horse and together they rode all night to another town where they were married the next day by a justice of the peace.
Anxious parents awaited their return. Fortunately, the new couple was welcomed back after their marriage."
Copyright © 1988 Signature Books, Inc., Salt Lake City, Utah, All Rights Reserved