William W. Wick

William Watson Wick (February 23, 1796 – May 19, 1868) was a U.S. representative from Indiana and Secretary of State of Indiana. He was a lawyer and over his career he was a judge for 15 years. President Franklin Pierce appointed him Postmaster of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Wick proposed an amendment to extend the Missouri Compromise line west to the Pacific coast with the Wilmot Proviso (1846). The provision that would make slave states of the American southwest was passed in the House, but defeated in the Senate. Wick supported the colonization of blacks to Liberia. He campaigned for Stephen A. Douglas in 1860.

Early life and education William Watson Wick was born on February 23, 1796, in Canonsburg, Washington County, Pennsylvania. (Most mentions of Wick's parents describe a high level biography (father a Presbyterian minister who was an early settler in Connecticut Western Reserve from Washington County, Pennsylvania, etc), but not their names.) Woollen states that William's father is Rev. William Wick, for the purpose of missionary work in the region; his father became the first minister to settle in the Western Reserve.

William completed preparatory studies, and after his father's death in 1815, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he taught school and studied medicine until 1818. He then studied law and was admitted to the bar at Franklin, Indiana, in 1819. He moved to Indianapolis in 1822. He was the Quartermaster General in 1826.

He was then Indiana's Secretary of State until 1829. He returned to the Fifth Judicial Circuit, first as a Prosecutor until 1831, and, from 1834 to 1837, he was again a President Judge.

In 1838, Wick was elected to the Twenty-sixth Congress as a Democrat, and began his first term on March 4, 1839. Having failed in his bid for reelection, he resumed his private law practice in Indianapolis. He served as Secretary of the Indiana Colonization Society (affiliated with the American Colonization Society), which helped to establish Liberia as a homeland for free blacks.

He sat as a judge of the Circuit Court for a third time from 1850 to 1853. In 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed him Postmaster of Indianapolis, in which capacity he served until April 6, 1857. They had two sons and a daughter. His wife died in 1832. Isabella was the daughter of Alice Bickerton Winston and Thomas Barbee. The Wicks had a daughter, Alice Barbee Wick.

Around 1860, Wick moved to Franklin, Indiana, to live with his daughter, Laura W. Overstreet (Mrs. William H. Overstreet He died at his daughter's house in Franklin on May 19, 1868. He was interred in Greenlawn Cemetery. Isabella, his second wife, lived until 1875.