The John Hacker family, or why does Dick look like Ralph?

 Ralph Hacker                                                    Richard “Dick” Hacker

When we first moved to Lexington, Kentucky in 1974, I quickly learned that there were other Hackers in Kentucky.  There were other Herrons here, also, but that is another story.  On my first morning in Lexington, I turned on the TV and saw the telecast of a local talk show hosted by an attractive middle-aged woman whose name I have forgotten.  Her “second banana” was a fellow named Ralph Hacker.  He was reasonably tall, blonde and very pleasant. 

“Ralph Hacker,” I said to myself.  “He looks a lot like my cousin Dick Hacker (son of Uncle Dick Hacker to differentiate him from my other cousin Dick Hacker fka ‘Richie’).”  That was the first time that I had paid attention to Hackers that were listed in the phone book of any city in which I had lived.

I encountered other Hackers from time to time.  Larry and Marilyn Hacker were students at The Lexington School where I taught music for one year when we first came here.  In a short exchange with Larry Hacker (4th grader at the time) I learned about “Big John” Hacker and a frontier book.  I sure wanted to see that frontier book, but knew there was not much chance of that.

Joe Hacker is a Lexington developer who appeared many times before the Urban County Planning Commission where I took the minutes of its public hearings.  A long time ago, I went to a Hacker family gathering and was among my Hacker cousins for a couple of days.  I flew back to Lexington and, the very next day, took the minutes of a Planning Commission meeting where Joe Hacker attempted to persuade the Commission that they should not extend a street from a subdivision he was developing across a creek; that would have forced him to build an expensive bridge. 

Joe Hacker was in fine form.  He never mentioned the bridge.  Instead, he gave a lecture on all of the good planning reasons why this road should not be extended.  It went through residential neighborhoods (that he had developed); houses with little children fronted on this road.  If it were extended, it would become a “collector” type of street, and would attract traffic through this neighborhood, endangering the lives of the children who might be playing in the street.  Because we all know, of course, that parents now permit their children to use the street they live on as a playground--especially if it is a busy collector-type street that helps grown-ups get out of the neighborhood to go to their jobs or to the mall, or whatever.  He went on and on in that vein.  He “preached” to the Planning Commission about planning principles that would benefit his subdivision, and the people who had bought houses from him.  He ignored the benefit to the community of having a collector street that would provide connectivity between two major arterials, and dispersal of traffic so that it did not all end up on the major arterials, clogging them for miles every morning and evening.

As I watched and listened to him, I was struck by how much he looked like, and sounded like, some of my male cousins.  His personality--he was somewhat of a maverick--was like my cousins.  If they were to meet, they would probably sit down with each other and talk, and kid around, and feel entirely comfortable, like they had known each other forever.  Some of them “preached” like he did about issues that were important to them.  Joe Hacker, developer and former planner for the Urban County Government, was called “The Preacher” by my Planning colleagues who knew him very well.  I decided that we must be related, no matter how remote the relationship was.  It would be many years, however, before I finally did the research to find out how we were related.

I tell this story to illustrate one result of the movement and dispersal of the four Hacker brothers, beginning about 1798 and onward.   In 1798, Julius Hacker sold his land in Sullivan County and bought land on the Clinch River near Knoxville, Tennessee.  The area later became Roane County.  His two sons, John and Julius Jr. and his daughters, may have moved with him. 

I’ll talk about John Hacker, first.  He was the second son of Julius and Martha Beeler Hacker, born about 1768.  He married Massie (Manessa) Spread Percifield about 1796, possibly in Virginia.  That was the year that Tennessee became a state, and Sullivan County, Virginia became Sullivan County, Tennessee.  Most people have John’s wife’s  name as simply “Massie Spread.”:  But no one has found records of a “Spread” family.  There is, however, a Percifield family that lived in the Sullivan County area, and later moved to Kentucky.  I learned of a possible connection to that family from a Hacker file in the Kentucky Historical Society. 

The marriage date of 1796 is an estimate based upon the birth year of their oldest child, Samuel Hacker, who was born in 1797.  These are the children of John and Massie Spread Percifield Hacker:

•   Samuel Hacker, b. 1797, Hawkins Co., Tennessee

•   Valentine Hacker, b. 1800, Grainger Co., Tennessee

•   John Hacker, b. 1801

•   Daniel Hacker, b. 1802, Hawkins Co., Tennessee

•   Julius S. “Ulysses” Hacker, b. 1804, Grainger Co., Tennessee

•   Claiborne Hacker, b. 1805, Grainger Co., Tennessee

•   John Hacker, b. 1806, Kentucky  (2nd John Hacker, don’t know the explanation for 2 Johns.  Also, John Hacker didn’t move to Kentucky until about 1816, so this son, John was probably born in Tennessee.

•   Margaret Hacker, b. 1809, Tennessee

•   Ann Hacker, b. 1812, Tennessee

•   Elizabeth Hacker, b. ?

•   Granville Hacker, b. 1813, Tennessee

According to Ken Smith, a major Hacker family researcher, John Hacker fathered an out-of-wedlock child with Lydia Harrell Combs in 1808.  The child was named Letta Hacker Combs.  Combs family records show Lydia Harrell married to George Combs until his death in 1827.  Letta Combs is listed in that family as George Combs’ daughter.  But Ken Smith is convinced of his story. 

Lydia Combs is shown on an 1830 Fed. Census for Perry County, KY as head-of-household with children of the right age to be George Combs’ off-spring.  One male, age 50-59, is living in the household.  This male could have been John Hacker who was estranged from his wife, Massie, by then.  Massie Hacker was living in Clay County on the Hacker farm.  For you non-Kentuckians, Clay County and Perry County are adjacent to each other, and are located in the Southeastern part of the Commonwealth.  Perry County is quite mountainous.

John and Massie were divorced in 1838, and Massie moved to Rock Creek, Bartholemew County, Indiana with her daughter, Elizabeth, and two of her adult sons.  In 1840, the Perry County Fed. Census showed John Hacker as head-of-household with a woman, age 60-69, two young children, and a woman, age 30-39, in the household.  I have estimated that John and Lydia may have married after John’s divorce was finalized.  If not, they were living together, nevertheless.  The 1850 Perry County Fed. Census shows them living as man and wife in the same household. 

We can conclude that John Hacker had a relationship with Lydia Harrell Combs while she was married to George Combs.  However, George seems to have accepted the child Letty as his.  Soon after he died, John and Lydia might have been living together with her children in Perry County.  By 1840, they might have been married, and certainly were married by 1850.

In the John and Massie Hacker divorce papers, John accused Massie of having left him to live with another man by whom she had several children, in addition to the several children she had by John.  I don’t know how the woman survived having so many children.  If this is true, John may have had good reason to seek love elsewhere than his wife’s bed.  However, Massie could have just as easily made similar claims about him and Lydia Harrell Combs.

If you think that story is a little racy, you should read the extensive records of the rest of the Combs family when they lived in Perry County, KY in the early 1800’s.  First cousins married first cousins and had children.  Some cousins had children together without benefit of marriage.  One guy had children by two of his cousins—to whom he was not married—and also by his wife.  And it is all documented!  I guess they believed in “kissing” cousins in that part of Kentucky.  

Before any of the above happened, however, John Hacker and a couple of his sons moved to Clay County, Kentucky--about 1816 according to land records found in the Hacker file at the Kentucky Historical Society.  From then on, the Hacker family centered around Clay County with some of them later joining their father in Perry County.  Valentine Hacker--John’s second son--took his family to Monroe, Indiana.  A group of his descendants formed a little Hacker colony in that area.

Another colony of Hackers descended from John formed in Bartholomew County, Indiana around Massie Hacker—their mother and John’s ex-wife.  It appears that these Hackers liked living near other family members with whom they felt compatible.  The rest of them stayed in Kentucky, and have moved all over the State.  They still look to Clay County as their root home.

As to our relationship to all of these Kentucky Hackers, it is thus:  Their ancestor John Hacker is the brother of my ggg Grandfather, Joseph Hacker.  My children and nieces and nephew can add one “g” to Grandfather Joseph’s designation.  Joe Hacker is, indeed, related because he is descended from John Hacker, and claims Clay County as the place where his family originated.  But the relationship is very distant, as you can see.  Ralph Hacker might also be related; I am not sure of his lineage.  But he was born and raised in Kentucky, and grew up in Richmond, which is located in Madison County just south of Lexington.  There is a good chance he is from the same family.  I don’t know why he looks like my cousin Dick.  Apparently, Dick has been asked if he is related to Ralph Hacker, and Dick does not know who Ralph is, which probably puzzles his Kentucky colleagues in view of Ralph Hacker's fame as part of the Kentucky Football and Basketball radio team.

Addendum:  John Hacker was acquainted with William Combs, the patriarch of this Combs family in Tennessee before they all moved to Kentucky.  That is probably how he met Lydia Harrell Combs and had a relationship with her.
l accept the story of John's and Lydia's love-child because census records seem to show that John and Lydia were living together soon after George Combs's death.  In addition, John and Lydia eventually did get married and lived out their lives together in Perry County, KY.
Combs family researchers, who posted their extensive family history online, knew very little about John Hacker.  They acknowledge that he might have been Lydia's second husband, but that's about it. 
The Combs family is a large old Kentucky family that has produced at least one governor for Kentucky.  Several members of the Combs family are still prominent and active in Kentucky politics, serving in various capacities.

Ralph Hacker teamed with Cawood Ledford, the “Voice” of Kentucky football and basketball for 20 years.  Ralph provided the color to Ledford’s play-by-play.  When Ledford retired, Hacker became the “Voice” of Kentucky basketball, and also called Kentucky football games for five years. In addition,  Hacker was the host of the Kentucky coach’s programs and other call-in shows.  He was active in management of WVLK radio and, later, WLAP radio.   (Information from the Official site of the Kentucky Wildcats)

How Did We Get Here from There - Part 1

America was settled by immigrants from Great Britain and Europe.  That statement is only true if you discount the fact that the land was occupied by red and brown-skinned people labeled “Indians” because Christopher Columbus mistakenly thought he had reached India.  Actually, many parts of America were already settled before the white immigrants got here.  But that is another story for another time.  I am here to tell the story of the migration of three or four families as they moved incrementally across the country.

The Hackers

Julius Hacker is the founding father of our Hacker line, but no one has been able to discover who his father was or when he came to this country.  The family story is that he was a German immigrant born about 1720.  Like most Germans in the 18th Century he probably entered the the country through the port of Philadelphia.  In course of time, he met and married Martha Beeler, presumed daughter of Ulrich and Maria Elizabetha Buehler.

We should touch briefly on the Beeler family because our line is descended from them in a couple of ways.  Ulrich Buehler was German-Swiss who came to this continent on a ship called “Hope,” arriving in September, 1734.  He settled in Pennsylvania, married and had several children.  Four of his children were baptized in Lutheran churches in York County, Pennsylvania, and we know who they are.  

John Valentine Beeler b. February 21, 1737

Maria Elizabeth Beeler b. August 6, 1738

Susannah Beeler b. February 27, 1741

Joseph Beeler b. bef August 1744

Notice the change of name.  The name went through several spelling changes from Buehler to Buler, to Bealor or Bealer, to Beeler or Beelar.  

Four children are presumed to be children of Ulrich and Maria Elizabeth but are not documented.  These are:
  Martha Beeler.  I think she was born about 1745.

George Beeler, b. abt 1747

Jacob Beeler b. October 10, 1750

Ulrich Beeler b. 1755.

A great deal could be written about how these last four came to be considered as children of Ulrich and Maria Elizabeth Buehler, but that is a Beeler story, not a Hacker story.  Martha is the only one of these that concerns us because Julius Hacker married her about 1764.  The family story is that they moved to Chesterfield County, Virginia Colony, but--again--no one has found documentation of them living there.

I found a large Beeler family tree on a site called Roots Web (a site that allows people to upload family trees for free).  There is no guarantee of the accuracy of the data there, but one can find much information from looking at these family trees.  Martha was listed on the Beeler tree as married to Julius Hacker, but no children were listed.  The Beeler researcher knew nothing about the Hacker family.

Our Hacker story is that Julius married Martha about 1764 and they had e following children:

  Jacob Hacker b. 1765

  John Hacker b. 1768

  Julius Hacker Jr. b. 1769

  Elizabeth Hacker b. 1773

  Joseph Hacker b. 1775

  Susan Hacker b. 1780

  Catherine Hacker b. 1781-1783

The first four children were born in Chesterfield County, Virginia Colony.  Joseph, Susan and Catherine were probably born in Washington County, North Carolina.

The first move made by the Julius Hacker family may have been from Chesterfield County to an area called Washington County, North Carolina.  I estimate that this move took place about 1775.  (This date is based on the 1850 census record of Joseph Hacker which states that he was 75 in 1850 making his birth year 1775, and that he was born in North Carolina.)  We find the first documentation of the Julius Hacker family in 1780, when the family was named among those taking refuge in Shelby’s Fort during a time when most men of the area were away fighting the Battle of King’s Mountain.  In those days, many of the Cherokee Indians were hostile to the white settlers, so families took refuge in a fort for protection.

You’ve never heard of the Battle of King’s Mountain, you say?  It is important to the history of this particular area, and was also important in the Revolutionary War.  It was the next to the last battle of that war; a battle where the “Overmountain Men” (as they were called) took their muskets and marched across the mountains to fight British and Loyalists forces commanded by Col. Patrick Ferguson.  They won the battle, and it turned the tide of war against the British, who surrendered soon after.

Julius Hacker was too old to fight in the Revolutionary War and his sons were too young.  Two of his sons fought in the War of 1812.  One of them was Joseph, the ancestor of our branch of the Hacker family.

Washington County, NC was on the frontier, separated from the main part of that North Carolina by two mountain ranges.  Therefore, citizens of North Carolina had not moved there.  It was occupied mostly by Cherokee Indians who were the most “civilized” of the Indian tribes.  They lived in villages, built cabins to live in, cultivated crops to provide food, and also hunted and fished.  They had retreated from coastal areas into an area that now comprises Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas.  The fertile land provided extensive hunting grounds for them to pursue their way of life.  The British government had negotiated a treaty with the Indians under which their lands were protected from intrusion by white settlers.  They also were prohibited from selling any of their land to white men.

Unfortunately, neither side really kept the treaty.  White men began to move in as squatters on Indian lands.  And some Indians sold land to a few white families, hoping that they would be satisfied and leave the Indians alone.  But the land was attractive to people who lived in Virginia, and they were the ones who began to move in.  Much of the land in Virginia was owned by companies or wealthy individuals to whom The King of England had given large land grants of thousands of acres.  Virginia citizens could obtain land under lease agreements paying a yearly rent to the owner, but they could not buy the land outright.  So, this Indian land that seemed “empty” looked attractive to the Virginians who wanted to own their own farms.

While this was going on, the Revolutionary War broke out (1775).  It was two-pronged.  In the coastal areas, militias and armies were formed to fight the British soldiers.  The British also recruited Loyalists from the American population to fill their ranks.  On the frontier, however, militias fought Indians who objected to the white man's encroachment on their territory.  The British supplied the Indians with food, guns and ammunition so that they could fight the white men, and keep them occupied.  This discouraged these Overmountain Men from joining the coastal armies that were fighting the British.

The five sons of Ulrich Buehler began moving into this area, which initially did not have a name, around 1771.  The area also had no governing authority.  There was no protection from hostile Indians, and no one from whom they could purchase land.  During the decade of the 1770s, these problems were tackled and “solved” from the white man’s perspective.  But the Indians began to have many problems as they were pushed further and further west by encroaching white folks.

It is my belief that Julius and Martha moved to this area, which came to be called Washington County, North Carolina, because they wanted to rejoin Martha’s family.  They probably squatted on some land and built a cabin to live in.  They, and the Beelers, all settled north of the Holston River along Beaver Creek.  By 1780, North Carolina had created a system by which that state could process land grants for the settlers.  Many of these were “bounty” land grants awarded to soldiers that had fought in the Revolutionary War.  Others were grants to people who had established themselves on a parcel of land.  The granted land was purchased at a rate of 50 shillings per 100 acres.

Julius Hacker was given a 640 acre land grant by North Carolina in 1784.  He purchased the land and his family lived on it, his sons helping him farm it.  I recently found a transcription of the Julius Hacker land grant, complete with legal description of the 640-acre parcel.  It was exciting to see evidence of where this family had actually lived.  I also have an electronic copy of the actual handwritten deed for this property. 

In the meantime, part of Washington County was broken off to form Sullivan County in 1779.  By 1790, North Carolina had relinquished control of this land, and it had become part of Virginia.  In 1796, Washington and Sullivan Counties were included in land that became part of the new state of Tennessee.

Julius Hacker was listed on the 1796 Tax Lists for Sullivan County, Tennessee--the first tax list for the new state.  He was taxed on his 640-acre farm.  His sons, John and Julius Jr. were also listed on the Tax List and were charged a “white poll,” (which enabled them to vote) but they did not pay taxes on land, indicating that they did not own any.  They probably still lived with their parents, helping their father farm the land.
 

Jacob Hacker was not on that Sullivan County tax list, however.  He had married by then, and is found on the tax lists of Greene County, Tennessee--a new county that had just been formed.  Joseph Hacker had also gone off on his own.  A Hacker researcher has found evidence in court records that Joseph was in Carter County, Virginia near where his youngest sister, Catherine, lived with her new husband, Jacob Peters.  

By the 1790s, records begin to appear for the Hacker family members; marriage records, court records, records of service in a militia, land records, and tax records.  The undocumented Hacker family had become documented, and we can trace where they go, who they marry, who their children are.

Addendum:  Since first writing this essay, I learned that a researcher named David R. Cosper has found a record indicating that Julius Hacker received a land warrant in Fredericks Co., Virginia in 1768.  He had the land surveyed about 1770, and then sold the warrant in 1772.  The land was located in the same general area where Ulrich Buehler and John Valentine Beeler occupied large farms under a lease agreement with Lord Fairfax.  Julius would have occupied his land under a similar agreement.  David Cosper believed that Julius Hacker and Ulrich Buehler were good friends, hence the marriage between Julius and Martha, Ulrich's daughter.

If this is true, it suggests a different story on where Julius and Martha might have lived and where their first four sons were born.