Edward Hicks was born in 1780 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. After his mother died when he  was an infant, Hicks was sent to live with family friends, the Twinings, who raised him with their four daughters in a Quaker household.

 Hicks joined the Quakers, or the Society of Friends, in his youth and devoted much of his life to the ministry. He was believed to have a special gift in his ability to share the "light" or "inner light" -- sharing aloud messages from the Lord acquired in moments of silent spiritual contemplation. He was a popular and prominent Quaker minister, traveling to Friends meetings from Canada to Virginia. Edward Hicks was closely associated  with his cousin, Elias Hicks, a famous Quaker leader who led his "Hicksite" sect  in a breakaway from the mainstream Quaker movement in 1827. This division  resulted in a bitter animosity between the two factions that was not resolved until 1955.

  In addition to his religious notoriety, Hicks earned a considerable reputation in his community as a painter. This career began in his  youth, when he was apprenticed to a coachbuilder in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, where Hicks developed his talent for decorative    painting. He eventually established a successful ornamental painting business, decorating objects such  as the aforementioned coaches, signboards, furniture, and household objects.  Hicks's business was so successful that he subsequently took apprentices, among  them his cousin Thomas  Hicks, and noted 19th-century American landscape painter Martin Johnson Heade.