Where Are You From?

I was standing in my front yard, taking a little rest from mowing with my push mower.  A young woman with a small child and an equally small dog on a leash stopped to chat.  Earlier, she had shouted to me, asking if I wanted to borrow her mower, meaning a gas-driven machine.  I called back, “No, I’m all right with this one.”  Some of my neighbors are concerned when they see me mowing with this push mower.  They think that the mowing process is too strenuous, too hard on my “getting-on-in-years” body.  

The young woman had continued her walk with her child and the dog into the little greenspace we have at the end of our street.  On her way back, she stopped to talk to me.  I explained to her that I had bought this mower instead of a gas-driven one a few years ago because I was tired of dealing with the gas-driven monsters.  I explained that the mower had a gear system that gave it much more power than it appeared to have.  I could push normally, but the gear system made my thrust much stronger.

We then exchanged personal information, like how long had she lived in the neighborhood.  (Two years)  How long had I lived in the neighborhood.  (Since 1989)  I had seen a couple of generations of children grow up in that time.  I was an old-timer now.  But I said that I was not a native Kentuckian.  That brought the inevitable question:  Where are you from?  I hesitated because it is complicated.  She smiled, noting that I might say something like, “All over.”  She was partially right.  I explained that I was born in California, but my family had moved to a farm in Missouri when I was 10.  So I grew up partly in California and partly in Missouri.  She asked, “Where in California?”  I replied that I was born in Long Beach, and that we had moved to Missouri from Compton, CA.  

She remarked, “That would have been a big change.”  I nodded that it was.

It is always hard for me to say where I am from.  I want to say, “Which decade are we talking about?”  I have lived in a lot of different places.  When someone says, I am from New Jersey, I might say that I lived in South Jersey for a couple of years.  I talk about Kansas City, MO although I never actually lived in that city, but lived in suburbs on the Kansas side.  I talk about Washington, DC--we lived in Reston, VA for a couple of years.  I lived in Lamoni, Iowa and Lawrence, Kansas while attending school.

A lot of people here in Kentucky learn that I am a Kansas Jayhawk’s fan because I have a degree from the University of Kansas, and they think that I am from Kansas.  Not true.  I attended KU as an out-of-state student because my family was living in Harrisonville, Missouri at that time.  I majored in Music Education.  I got married on Baccalaureate Sunday before my KU graduation, and my husband and I moved to the Kansas City area because he had a job there.  We lived in Kansas City, Kansas, Lenexa Kansas, and Overland Park, Kansas during the first 12 years of our marriage.  Then, my husband was transferred by his job to South Jersey in the Philadelphia, PA area.

I considered those years of living in the Kansas City suburbs as really living in Kansas City, MO, which was the major city of the Greater Kansas City Area.  Our newspaper, our radio and TV, all came from Kansas City, Missouri.  My husband’s job was in KC, MO.  On the few occasions that we went out “on the town” it was to restaurants or night spots in Kansas City, Missouri.

The State of Kansas was a dry state until they finally passed package liquor laws.  After that, you could buy liquor, wine and beer in the State-run packaged liquor stores.  But you could not have cocktails or wine with your dinner in a restaurant located in Kansas.  Consequently, there were no fine restaurants in Kansas; they were all in Missouri.   There were family-oriented restaurants where parents and children could have Sunday dinner after church.  But these were not the same as the fine-dining establishments that existed on the Missouri side.

I should clarify that I, personally, did not have alcoholic drinks with dinner because I was brought up in a teetotaler culture.  My husband, on the other hand, had no religious scruples against having a drink now and then.  My comment was meant to state that the liquor laws in Missouri and Kansas dictated that Kansas City, Missouri would develop as the cultural center of the area. 

I thought I would never leave Kansas City.  I had family nearby; some cousins who lived in Independence, MO and my parents who lived in Harrisonville, MO--about 45 miles south of Kansas City.  We lived in Johnson County, Kansas where the homes were nice and the schools were excellent.  I was busy as a housewife, mother, a young matron supposedly dedicated to home and family.  I was also active as an organist and children’s choir director in my church, part of a volunteer music staff.  I taught private piano lessons to children in my home.  

My husband came home from work one night in mid-1970 with the news that he was being transferred to the company headquarters in Camden, New Jersey.  He was a CPA and worked as the Treasurer of Citywide Mortgage Company, a small mortgage operation owned by Associated Mortgage Cos. which was based in Camden.  He would be an assistant to the Treasurer of that company.  His job in Kansas City was being eliminated as Associated Mortgage consolidated its management of small mortgage operations that they owned.  If he didn’t take the transfer, he would have to look for a job elsewhere.

The news completely upset my world.  Jim half-heartedly looked around for another job, but there didn’t seem to be one readily available.  An older friend, a sort-of mentor to Jim, advised him to take the transfer and then look for another job if he didn’t like his new situation.  He said that it was better to look for a job from a position of strength (I have a job but am looking for something better) than of weakness (I was laid off and am now desperate).  This same man called me at 7:00 am one morning and talked to me about the church environment in the Philadelphia area, reassuring me that we would be all right if we moved to New Jersey.  The man was a member of my church. and knew that this was important to me.

So, Jim took the transfer and we moved.  The whole process was difficult as we had to sell a house and buy one.  The company helped us out by paying for a couple of trips to New Jersey for both of us so we could look for a house to buy.  It is difficult to figure out where you want to live when you know nothing about the area.  We bought a four-bedroom house in Ramblewood, a subdivision in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, Burlington County. 

This move wrenched me away from the familiar place I had created for myself through my KU music degree, my marriage, and my church affiliations.  It led to a couple of other moves for the family that ended when we moved to Lexington, Kentucky--a totally alien culture to me.  I speak now of my “other” life which occurred before we came to Lexington, and of my life since coming here.  My Lexington life led me into new directions that I probably would not have followed if I had stayed in the Kansas City area.  I had to search deep within myself for the spiritual strength to deal with the challenges of this new life.

Now, 40 years later, I am standing in my yard talking to a young woman who has moved  with her husband to Lexington from Seattle, Washington.  She is beginning her life here.  I am closer to the end of mine.  I have no clear path out of Lexington, and I seem to keep busy here.  But I am lonely with no family nearby.  I am not sure what comes next, but it might be interesting.  (“Interesting” is my newest word for things that might actually be shocking or gut-wrenching or game-changing, but I don’t want to reveal how unsettled I really am.)

My Grandpa Knew Where They Lived

My grandfather knew where everyone lived.  That is, he knew where his siblings, his aunts and uncles, and other assorted relatives, lived.  The rest of us didn’t.  We didn’t even know that there were relatives out there that we should know about.  We didn’t know who we didn’t know.

It was as if my father and his brothers and sisters sprang into life in some unattached void of the past.  My cousins and I knew each other; we each knew our parents and our uncles and aunts.  We knew Grandpa and faintly remembered Grandma.  At least I faintly remembered her.  She died when I was five.  My older cousins might have had a better recollection of her.

But Grandpa knew about mysterious “others” who existed out there, somewhere, in the ether.  Once in awhile, he would talk about “them.”  In so doing, he increased the mystery.   He would say, “There are some rich Hackers down in Texas.  If you went down there and proved you were related, maybe you could get some of their money.”  Yeah, right, Grandpa.  Like they would just ‘give” us some of their money.  

Nobody would respond when he said this.  Nobody asked, “Where in Texas?”  Nobody asked the names of these rich relatives.  No one planned an exploratory trip to check them out.  My father and his brothers and sisters were too busy living their own lives.  The men were working, supporting families.  They were slowing climbing the ladder of financial stability they had created for themselves, and didn’t have time to take exploratory trips to Texas.

Grandpa had another favorite saying similar to the first one quoted above.  He would say, “There is a Hacker fortune in Germany.  If you went there, and could prove your lineage, you might get some of it.”  Did you hear that?  Did you notice a theme developing?  Somewhere, there is a fortune waiting to be claimed by its rightful owner--one of Grandpa’s children.  We don’t really have to work so hard.  We just need to go to that place and claim some of the money.

For some reason, none of Grandpa’s sons checked out Grandpa’s stories.  I wonder why?  He was their father, and he had never gone after these fortunes.  Instead, he sent his sons out to work in the Eastern Colorado farming community in which they lived.  They were all working for other farmers by the time they were eight.  And Grandpa took some of their earnings to support the family.  As a consequence, all of them but one became good, hard workers.  Their “fortune” was found through that hard work.  The one that didn’t was Uncle Bill.  Maybe I’ll write about him someday.

Aside from the fortune-hunting stories, Grandpa also knew where lost cousins lived.  He would say, “There’s some Hackers in Montainey, if you knew where to find ‘em.”  (I spelled “Montana” the way he pronounced it.)  His sons just looked at each other and shook their heads.  No one bought train or plane tickets for Montana to look for the cousins. 

Grandpa never told us the names of these relatives.  He just told us where they were.  Now, I have done a lot of genealogical research, and I know where several lines of our Hacker family live, and I know that he missed some.

I have learned about the family of Daniel Hacker who moved his family to Texas after the Civil War.  Daniel became fairly prosperous, and I suppose his children and grandchildren were also fairly prosperous.  I am acquainted with a few of them through my genealogy research, and through Facebook.  We have shared information.  But I don’t know if they are really rich.

Actually, Uncle Bud, one of my father’s brothers, moved to a farm in Texas about 1947. He and Aunt Nellie lived near their daughter, Eula who was married to Ernie.  Ernie went to college and became a geologist who worked on the oil rigs in the Gulf, and also in the North Sea.  He became quite well off.  Eula’s brother Jack also worked in the oil industry and, so far as I know, is financially comfortable.  

Their brother Bob lived with his family in Texas for awhile, but he moved to Albuquerque, NM.  He was a traveling salesman for a number of years. He and his wife Juanita had five children and, as they became teenagers, she had her hands full managing their sons.  She finally told Bob that he would have to get a job close to home and help her with their budding juvenile delinquents.  When Bob told his boss that he would have to quit his job, the boss made him a surprising offer.  The boss wanted to retire, so he made Bob the manager of his company.  Bob might have had the title, “President,” but I’m not totally sure of that.  Anyway, Bob stayed home and made good money as a manager of this company.  

Bob and Juanita bought some land out in the country near the Sandia Mountains.  It had a house on it, but they decided they wanted something a little nicer.  They began building.  I really don’t know the whole story of how the house evolved, but when I saw it a number of years later, I was astounded at how beautiful and spacious it was.  It had a lovely view of the Sandia Mountains.  

Juanita liked to collect fine silver objects and silver and turquoise jewelry made by the Indians.  She had a vault full of this stuff.  All-in-all, I think Bob made his own wealth, and didn’t have to chase after it.  He probably never met the “rich” Hackers in Texas.

Grandpa never told us about the Hacker family that lived in Northern California near Sacramento.  They moved there around the time of the gold rush, although this family did not become gold miners.  Instead, Eli Hacker, the head of the family dealt in real estate.

Grandpa did not mention his uncle John M. Hacker, his father’s oldest brother.  John M. also went to California in 1849 and he was seeking gold.  He has an interesting story which I finally pieced together with the help of a couple of Hacker researchers.  

Finally, Grandpa knew nothing about the huge Hacker family that lives in Kentucky where I now live.  They are descended from John Hacker, brother of our ggg Grandfather Joseph Hacker.  Yes, we are related.

Grandpa did know about some cousins that lived near Sedalia, Missouri.  When he visited us on our farm near Warrensburg, Missouri, he contacted them, and they invited us all over for Sunday dinner.  That is a story for another day.

The Story of John M. Hacker

ABOUT JOHN M. HACKER

My first post probably doesn't make much sense to anyone reading it.  It was an email that I had sent to Pat Hacker, a fellow Hacker researcher, to explain some information I had sent her earlier.  I have been researching John M. Hacker, a gg uncle of mine for quite some time.  Pat had supplied me with more information, and this has been an exciting discovery to me, at least.  Below, I have typed in a portion of a story that I wrote and posted on Ancestry.com about John Marion Hacker.
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I have called him John, the "Unknown," because for a long time he was "Unknown" Hacker in my family tree records.  He is also listed as "Unknown" Hacker in other family trees that I have looked at.  Ken Smith, a Hacker genealogist, told one of my cousins that his name was John.

He was the son of Julius and Elizabeth Beeler Hacker.  The 1830 and 1840 Federal census records for Claiborne and Grainger Counties, Tennessee list the Julius Hacker household with marks across the page to indicate the age range of other members of the household.  These marks indicate that the oldest child was a boy.  The 1850 Federal census was the first to list by name all members of a given household.  The oldest son was missing and the oldest child in the family was now Margaret, who was 18 that year.

Ken Smith discussed this John Hacker b. 1830 and another John M. Hacker b. 1833 in an email.  The second John Hacker was the son of John and Cyntha Beeler Hacker who were brother and sister of Julius and Elizabeth Beeler Hacker.  The two Johns were about 3 years apart in age.  Elizabeth and Cyntha were daughters of Daniel Beeler and were born in Sullivan County, Tennessee.  John and Julius Hacker were sons of Joseph and Priscilla Haggerty Hacker.  The couples were married about 1827, probably in Claiborne County, Tennessee.
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My story goes on to tell how these two young men both went to California because of the gold rush.  Both were named John M., and sorting out who was who has been a puzzle.  Ken Smith, the researcher, told me of certain records he had discovered and studied.  He concluded that the John M. who enlisted in the Union Army in September 1863 at Marysville, CA was Julius and Elizabeth's son.  He mentioned an enlistment record and a pension application 1890. John and Cyntha's son, John M. Hacker, had returned to Missouri by 1860 and was living in his mother's home in Franklin County, MO that year.

I continued the search and found an 1860 Federal census record for Amador County, California that listed John Hacker, age 30, born in Tennessee.  His occupation was as a miner.  The other record that I felt sure about was an 1880 Federal census record in Humboldt County, California that listed John M. Hacker, age 49, born in Tennessee.  He had evidently told the census taker that his mother was born in Virginia and his father was born in Tennessee.

This record requires some interpretation.  An age of 49 would imply a birth year of 1831.  However, the census might have been taken before his birthday.  The census was taken June 15, 1880 that year.  His mother's birth in Virginia was close to the truth and might have been what he was told as a child.  She was born in an area that originally was part of North Carolina Colony; Washington County was organized about 1775.  In 1779 a large area was carved out of Washington County to form Sullivan County.  North Carolina relinquished control of the area in the mid-1780s and it became part of Virginia.  In 1796 the two counties--Washington and Sullivan--became part of the new state of Tennessee.

With this interpretation in mind, I decided that the 1880 census record belonged to my gg uncle John M. Hacker.  This man was widowed and had two sons living with him.  They were part Indian.  He had apparently married an Indian woman and had these sons.  He named them William and Joseph.

The final piece that Pat Hacker supplied were pages scanned from a book written by a Reverend Jones about Siskiyou County, California.  Siskiyou County is way up north next to the Oregon border.  Rev. Jones told of a man named John M. Hacker, a Confederate veteran, who had come with a wife and young daughter to Siskiyou County late in 1894.  They had arrived on the Southern Pacific train from Missouri.  John M. Hacker was a shoemaker.

Pat Hacker posted this little story on a Hacker forum a few years ago.  I was intrigued, and contacted her saying that it might be my gg uncle.  She said at the time that she would study her materials and get back to me.  But she never did.  Recently, however, someone with an email ID called "hackerpm" added a comment to my story about John Hacker, the "Unknown."  This note consisted of land records that the person had found of land being transferred to John M. Hacker by Eli  Hacker in Yula County, CA about 1869.  Eli Hacker was a first cousin of John M.'s father, Julius Hacker.  Eli had moved his family from Tennessee to Northern California around 1860.  It is likely that John M. had become acquainted with this relative, and this is why a John M. Hacker had enlisted in the Union Army in Marysville (which is in Yula Co. near where Eli and his family lived).

I replied to "hackerpm" (thinking that this was a man), and we corresponded.  "hackerpm" then told me "he" had a story from a book about John M. Hacker, the Confederate Army veteran who had come to Siskiyou County from Missouri in 1894 with a wife and stepdaughter.  Eventually, "he" decided to send me the scanned pages of the whole story.  He also told me that John M.'s wife was Sarah Brummett.

So, the story gets bigger and bigger because I knew that there was a Hacker/Brummett connection.  Margaret Hacker, John M.'s sister, had married Hugh Brummett in Tennessee.  They had moved to Warrenburg, Missouri by 1880.  (My family moved to a farm near Warrensburg, MO in 1946, so this information was a surprise.)  Eventually various Brummetts who were children of Hugh and Margaret would end up living on farms in Longwood Township, Pettis County, Missouri.  In addition, Calvin Brummett whose wife was Anna Beeler, younger sister of Elizabeth and Cyntha Beeler who married the Hacker brothers in 1827, moved to Missouri from Tennessee sometime in the 1880s.

Calvin and Anna's son Lewis Brummett married Sarah Ayres, and they lived in Longwood Township. Lewis died, however, and Sarah was a widow with young children still in the home.

The next record Ancestry found for me was a marriage license for J. M. Hacker and Sarah Brummett, October 1893.  The license stated that they both lived in Longwood Township.  They were married in Sedalia, Missouri--the county seat of Pettis County.  Now, this J. M. Hacker was the John M. Hacker who came to Siskiyou County from Missouri with his wife, Sarah Brummett Hacker and her daughter, Lena Brummett, as told in the book by Rev. Jones.

We had now come full circle.  Why was John M. Hacker in Longwood Township, Missouri?  He had probably come back to visit his sister, Margaret Hacker Brummett who was living there with her husband Hugh Brummett by that time.  Some of their children also lived in Longwood Township.  John M. came back to Missouri some time after 1890.  While there, he met the widow Sarah Brummett who was married to his first cousin, Lewis Brummett.   His sister died in January, 1894--a few months after John M. and Sarah were married.  John M. and his wife and stepdaughter took a train out to Northern California later that year.

I was very excited when this all came together.  I sent a copy of the marriage license to "hackerpm" along with my explanation of how it all fit together.  I was sure that John M. Hacker of Siskiyou County was my gg uncle.  But, my gg uncle had not enlisted in the Confederate Army, and I sent proof of this to "hackerpm." (By now, I had learned that "hackerpm" was female, and was the Pat Hacker who had not sent me the story material a few years earlier.)  In fact, searches of the Confederate Army online index revealed that (a) there was no John M. Hacker enlisted in the Missouri Confederate Army, and (b) there were only two men named John Hacker who had enlisted anywhere else in the Confederate Army; neither of them could have been my gg uncle.  A search of the combined Civil War Veteran index revealed that there were many men named John Hacker enlisted in the Union Army, but only one was named John M. Hacker.  And that was the one who enlisted in Marysville, CA in September 1863.

That is the story.  I now know that John M. Hacker did come back to visit his sister, at least, and had married again, then returned to a place farther north than before.  He died in 1898, but his wife lived on in Siskiyou County for several years before she died.  She is buried there.  Lena, the stepdaughter, made a nice life for herself in California.  She attended a Normal school (a college of sorts that mainly trained people to be teachers).  I think she became a teacher for awhile.  She also married.

Lena was a Brummett.  Through her grandmother, Anna Beeler Brummett, she was descended from Jacob Beeler of Sullivan County, Tennessee.  Jacob was a son of Ulrich Beeler who was a Swiss-German from Switzerland, who sailed across the Atlantic on a ship called "Hope."

Message 05/12/14

Thank you so much for all of the documents and pages from the book that you sent me.  It was very interesting reading.  It gives me more of a sense of how this family lived back then.  Nice to hear more about Lena, as well.   Through her grandmother, Anna Beeler Brummett, she is descended from Daniel Beeler, his father Jacob Beeler, and ultimately from Ulrich Beeler, the founding father of the Beeler family with which we are intermarried.

Now I have something for you.  I found the marriage license and certificate for the marriage of John M. Hacker and Sarah Brummett--through Ancestry.com  The document is a scanned photograph of a double page from a marriage regestry for Petti County, Missouri.  The information is handwritten onto the forms. There are several marriages recorded on the two pages.  The Hacker/Brummett marriage is recorded at the bottom of the leftl-hand page. It shows the following information:  Groom’s name:  J. M. Hacker; Bride’s name:  Sarah Brumett.  It is faded and hard to read but it can be read.  It also says that J. M. Hacker and Sarah Brumett both lived in Longwood, Pettis County, MO.  The marriage ceremony took place on October 24, 1893 in Sedalia, MO.  Sedalia is the county seat for Pettis County.

So, we know that this is the John M. Hacker that was described in the book you have about Siskiyou County, California.  This also strongly suggests to me that this is my gg uncle, John M. Hacker.  Why do I believe that?  Because he is living in Longwood among all of the Brummetts that are living there.

Longwood is not a place where a single man with no connections to its inhabitants would go to live.  Such a man would more likely settle in Sedalia where there were more opportunities for work.  There were no Hacker families living in Longwood.  I have been there.  A couple of years ago when I was visiting family in Independence, MO, I drove East down US Hwy 50 rather than taking I-70.  Hwy 50 goes through Warrensburg, where I grew up, and Sedalia.  I had looked Longwood up on Google maps.  Following the directions, I left US Hwy 65 that goes north from Sedalia to I-70 and beyond, and drove on county road BB, a narrow road that had, at one time been paved, but now was a bumpy mess..  The road went up and down the Missouri hills and finally reached a “T” intersection with another road.  I looked around, saw a few houses, and then saw the church off to the right  I drove over there and found the cemetery.  It was a typical country cemetery, not anything fancy. 

Longwood is not really a town; it is a township.  It is a large area out in the country, north of Sedalia--which is now a small city and in 1893 was a substantial town.  Its residents lived on farms out in the country.  There may have been a little general store there, and maybe a few other businesses.  Now, why was he in Longwood?  The only member of any Hacker family living in Longwood was Margaret Hacker Brummett, wife of Hugh Brummett.  Margaret was John M.’s sister, and she was close to him in age.  They would have grown up together when they were children.   If I am correct in believing that the 1880 Fed. Census record for Humboldt County, CA was for my gg uncle, we can assume that he had spent many years in California; first as a miner and then as a farmer.  He had married an Indian woman and had two sons.  His wife had died.  

The rural parts of Missouri were divided into these townships so that farmers who lived in them would have some kind of jurisdictional organization.  Longwood is way off the main road, even the main road that probably existed in 1893.   It is not very big.  There was a church and a graveyard.  They are still there.  I tramped around and finally found several Brummett graves, took some photos and left.  

I can tell you that there is no other record of any kind for this John M. Hacker in the State of Missouri.  That is because he never lived there.  He left his father’s home in Tennessee before they moved to Missouri.  A male child of his age was indicated on the 1830 and 1840 Federal Census for Tennessee, but this male child was not listed on the 1850 Tenn. Census.  Gold was discovered in California in 1848.  ‘Nuff said.  Both he and the other John M. Hacker from Franklin County, MO went to California to seek the riches of gold.

My gg uncle John M. never came back from California.  If he had, we would all have known about him.  But he didn’t, and my uncles and cousins did not know about him.  That is why there are no census records, no land records, no nothing about him in Missouri.  But then he appears in Longwood, MO and gets married.  Subsequently, he persuades his new wife to go with him to California; not to someplace exciting like San Francisco or Sacramento.  No, they go way up north to Siskiyou County which, I personally had never heard of until I found the voter registration record for John Marion Hacker a a few years ago.  He is in his sixties when all of this happens.

  

Finally, he was getting older.  By the 1880s, he knew that his parents had died.  His brother Josephus was killed in the Civil War, his brother Daniel had moved his family to Texas.  His other brother, William Houston, moved around quite a bit and he was not sure where he was.  But he might have wanted to reconnect with his family.  He decided to come back and visit his sister.  

Another scenario might be built around the fact that she was old, perhaps not in good health.  He wanted to see her before he or she died.  At any rate, he came back to Longwood, MO where his sister lived.  He did not go back to St. Clair County down south where his parents and other siblings had lived for many years.  

While he was in Longwood, he met Sarah Brummett who was the widow of his first cousin, Lewis Brummett.  I am guessing that he did not know Lewis  But he probably knew his Aunt Anna Beeler Brummitt, Lewis’s mother.  When he was a child, his family had lived in Claiborne County, Tenn., on a farm that was adjacent to his grandfather Daniel Beeler’s place.  Anna was a young girl, much younger than his mother.  She probably seemed more like a fellow cousin than an aunt.  Now everyone was living in Missouri. 

That is why I believe that my gg uncle was in Longwood, MO.  It is true that he, Sarah and little Lena traveled to California on the Southern Pacific railroad, arriving in Siskiyou County in October 1894.  His sister, Margaret had died in January 1894.  He may have felt that with her gone, he had no reason to stay in Missouri any longer.

The implication in the book is that he was a longtime Missouri resident, a Confederate veteran, who decided to move to Northern California in his sixties.  But I really think that he was actually returning to California after spending a couple of years with his sister’s family.  It is possible that he had two sons back in California, though they are not mentioned in the book.  Apparently, they did not live near him in Siskiyou County if they existed at all.  

I traced those two young men using census records.  William Hacker went up into Oregon to live, and is listed as being a “laborer.”  Joseph lived in the Sacramento area, and I think he married.

May 11, 2014 - First post

This is the first posting.  David and Maggie were helping me set this blog up.  Maggie told me to type this in to test whether or not it would be posted.

This blog is a beginning.  I will have to think about how I use it.  For now, I might just post interesting stories I have learned about my family through my genealogy work.  I will probably create another blog for another purpose I have in mind.