John Rankin Alford was born in Tennessee in 1834 and arrived in Hamilton County, Texas, in 1860 with his wife, Martha Ann (Malone). They settled on Honey Creek, where he sold goods brought by wagon and also entered the cattle business. As the small settlement on the mail route between Meridian and Brownwood grew, a post office was established there; Alford chose the name Hico after his childhood home of Hico, Calloway County, Kentucky, and served as the young town's first postmaster. After serving in the Second Frontier Regiment of Texas State Troops during the Civil War and surviving the Battle of Dove Creek, he became a physician in 1875 by appearing before an Examining Board of Physicians in Meridian, and he remained a doctor in good standing for the rest of his life, practicing into his eighties. After the death of his first wife, he married Lerona King in 1877 and fathered fourteen children. He was a charter member of the Hico Masonic Lodge and a founding member of the Hico Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In 1880, when the railroad reached Hamilton County and the citizens of Hico moved the town to the rail line, Alford relocated as well and opened a drug store at the new townsite. He lived in Hico for the rest of his life, died at his home on April 1, 1928, and was buried in the Hico Cemetery surrounded by his family.