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."
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