Michael Hickey was born in Dublin, Ontario in 1893 and died
in 1970. Theresa (Maughan) Hickey was also born in Dublin in
1885, and passed away in 1978. Michael, called Mike, came
west to Manitoba and Alberta, on a harvest help program in
1908. He developed a love for the area in and around Lethbridge.
In 1911, Mike went to Buffalo, New York to learn barbering.
He did not care for this line of work, so in 1912 he came back
to Alberta to where he loved to be.

In 1913, Mike went back to Ontario and married Theresa
Maughan. The Maughan family had moved to San Francisco
in 1903. Grandma Maughan (Honora) did not like it there.
She thought it was too wild a place to raise her family, so
she and her husband William moved back to Ontario in 1906.

Theresa (Tess, as she was to many), worked for a doctor in
Dublin for years until she married Mike. Mike and Theresa
came west again in 1913 to Sunburst, Montana. There Mike
managed a hotel, and Tess ran a restaurant. In 1914 a
daughter was born, but died shortly after birth. She is
buried in Shelby.

Mike took a homestead near Kevin, Montana, but had no
money to develop it. He let it go, when he was offered
a good job in Alberta in 1915, driving the line men for the
telephone in southern Alberta, and for surveying the same
area.

In the spring of 1916 Mike was run over with a team of horses.
The wagon caught his clothes, and he was dragged several
blocks. His right leg and knee were smashed, and it left
him with a stiff leg.

With Mike in the hospital, Tess rented a big house south of
the post office. She offered room and board and also
meals as the post office was still under construction. In
1916, a son Norman was born. He died in 1918 with
pneumonia. Gerard, the only surviving child, was born
in Lethbridge in 1919.

In 1917, Mike bought a car and had a taxi business. The
love of the land drew him, so in 1919 he rented an irrigated
farm southwest of Coaldale. Mike found the mud was too
much for his leg, so in 1921 he rented a farm at Wilson
Siding, just east and south of the elevators. In the fall of
1923 Mike and Tess had a chance to buy the north half of
16-7-20, and it is still in the Hickey family.

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