HENRY M. BICKEL, farmer and stock-raiser, Sec. 8 P.O. Hill Grove; was born Jan. 2, 1831, in Montgomery County, Ohio and came with his parents to Darke County in April following; his father, Andrew Bickel, was born in Centre County, Penn., Sept. 2, 1805, and married Nancy Moyer, who was born in Virginia Aug 27, 1810; both hale and hearty are now living on the farm they bought in 1830, at that time in an unbroken wilderness, in Washington Township, though they experienced all the hardships and privations so well known to all the early settlers of this portion of Ohio, but now, instead of the wilderness, amid the most fertile and productive agricultural land of the State, Henry M., the subject of this sketch, has owned the farm (234 acres) where he lives twenty three years; this also has he redeemed from wilderness and swamps to bountiful productiveness, being among, if not the very first man to "blind tile" which is the making of the fine farms in Darke County; now he is surrounded by abundance and comfort; at 21 years he was not worth a dollar, and possesses to-day the first silver dollar that he earned, by cutting eight cords of hardwood. June 12, 1856, he married Mary Crumrine; she was born in Darke County, July 8, 1839; they have had six children, viz.: John C., Lucy C. (deceased), Mary A., Dora (deceased), Harrison C. and Henry I.