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.
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.
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 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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment