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)