JOSEPH HACKER and DESCENDANTS PT. 2

I want to devote this essay to one of the sons of Joseph Hacker, other than our direct ancestor, Julius C. Hacker. I have mentioned before that Joseph and Priscilla had two sons between the dates of the two marriage bonds. The proof that these two sons existed became known when a law suit relating to the settlement of Joseph Hacker’s modest estate was found. I will discuss that law suit in my next installment. 

The sons were John Hacker b. 1806 and Julius C. Hacker b. 1808. The two brothers married sisters, Cyntha and Elizabeth Beeler, daughters of Daniel Beeler of Claiborne County.  They were grand-daughters of Jacob Beelar of Sullivan County. The marriages probably took place in Claiborne County, but there is no surviving record of them. The two couples left a trail of records, however, of the children born to them and the places where they lived. So we know that the marriages did take place.

Both John and Julius are listed as head of households on the 1830 Federal Census for Claiborne County, Tennessee. John’s household contained, besides himself, a male 15-19, a female under 5, and a female between 20 and 29. He was also between 20 and 29.  The teenage male might have been one of his younger brothers, or a young man hired as a farm hand. John did not own any slaves. The young female would have been daughter Malinda. (I learned about her from a biograph that was written years later for John M. Hacker, a son.) His wife, Cyntha, was the female who was between 20 and 29.

How do we know Cyntha’s name? She is named on the 1850 Federal Census for Jefferson County, Missouri where she is living as a widow with her’s and John’s children. How do we know she was a Beeler? They named one of their sons Conrad Beeler Hacker. Cyntha and Elizabeth had a maternal grandfather and a brother named Conrad, and the Beeler part came from her maiden name. Her given name was spelled (and misspelled) Cynthia, Sinthia, Syntha, along with Cyntha. Her headstone says Cyntha so I have assumed that this was the actual spelling. 

John Hacker is listed four names from the bottom of p. 123 of the 1830 Claiborne Co. census book.  Julius Hacker’s household is found at the bottom of the page, on a line where two households are squeezed onto one line because the top line of the page was used for carrying forward totals for each column from the previous page. This was true of every page in that census book.

Daniel Beeler’s household is found at the top of p. 124 of the 1830 Fed. Census for Claiborne County. It is a large household with his wife and children of several ages living in the home.  He is the father of Cyntha and her sister Elizabeth. Presumably, they were all living in close proximity to one another in Claiborne County when this census was taken. Finding Daniel Beeler’s household close to John’s and Julius’s households helped to corroborate the fact that they had a relationship to each other—through Daniel’s daughters.

John and Cyntha left Claiborne County later in 1830 and moved to Indiana. How do we know this?  The main source of information was the 1850 Federal Census for Jefferson County, Missouri. As I said, Cyntha (now named Cynthia) Hacker, 43, was listed as a widow with several children living with her. Her age suggests that she was born in 1807. There is no Malinda, so she must have married, or died, by then.  Joseph D. is 20, born in Indiana. That would make him b. 1830. So we know that his parents had moved to Indiana some time after the 1830 census was taken in Claiborne County. Indiana was a common destination for many Tennessee families who were seeking cheap land and a new life. We can use the 1850 census to trace the movement of the John Hacker family because the children’s ages and birthplaces were listed. They are as follows:

• ·      Joseph D. – b. 1830 in Indiana
• ·      John M. – b. 1833 in Indiana
• ·      Margaret A.  – b. 1835 in Indiana
• ·      George – b. 1838 in Illinois
• ·      Mary E. – b. 1841 in Illinois
• ·      Conrad B. – b. 1843 in Missouri
• ·      James K. – b. 1846 in Missouri

There were two children named Theodore and Frederic Loney living in the home, but I do not know who they were.

I could not find a death record for John Hacker, but the family story is that he died in 1848.  The family was living on a farm in Jefferson County.

Sometime after the census was taken, Joseph D. and John M. Hacker traveled to California to join the Gold Rush that began in 1849 when gold was discovered near Sutter’s Mill. They lived in El Dorado County. This story was told in a biograph written about John M. Hacker published in the Goodspeed’s  Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas which I learned about from Ken Smith, a Hacker researcher. The biograph provides a great deal of information about John M. Hacker, including who his parents and siblings were, his story about the gold rush, his marriage, and his life as a fruit farmer in Eastern Arkansas. He must have come back from California with some profits from the gold mining, because he was able to buy a farm in Franklin County, Missouri, and also developed three fruit farms in Arkansas.

John M. Hacker was living in his mother’s household in 1850 and in 1860, and I would not have known about the gold rush years without the biograph. His brother, Joseph D. is listed on the 1860 Federal Census for El Dorado County, along with Nancy Hacker (wife) and five-month-old Joseph Hacker (possible son). But John M. probably lived in California from 1853 to 1858, so was listed in his mother’s household in 1850 and 1860.

Cyntha Beeler Hacker also made changes during that decade. In March, 1851 she married Isaac Loller. The marriage record actually spells his surname “Lawler” and his given name was transcribed as “Jesse.” His given name is hard to read and could be Isaac, which would agree with Beeler family published pedigrees. David Cosper, a Beeler researcher, recently re-examined a microfilm of the original and determined that it was “Isaac” instead of “Jesse.” I could find no other information about this person, although searches turned up several men named “Isaac Loller or Lollar.” He apparently died about 1859—about the time that John M. Hacker returned from California.

Cyntha Beeler Hacker Loller also moved to Franklin County, Missouri during that decade, and operated a hotel in a town called “Pacific” in Franklin Co., Missouri. I found the story of Cyntha and her hotel business in the Pacific section of a multi-county history. She ran the hotel for at least 10 years; eventually her son, Conrad Beeler Hacker (C. B. Hacker) joined her in the business. C. B. held positions in several Pacific civic organizations. John M. Hacker, by then the owner of a large farm in Franklin County, was also listed as a member of a civic organization. John M. married Martha F. Johnson in 1862, and they had one daughter.

According to the biograph, John M. also owned three large farms in Eastern Arkansas on which he grew fruit. He was active in his church and other organizations in Arkansas. The biograph implied that he and his family lived primarily in Arkansas, but he was listed on the Franklin County, Missouri 1880 Federal Census, and was never listed on an Arkansas census record that I could find.

Cyntha Beeler Hacker Loller opened the American Hotel in Pacific in 1855. She ran it herself until 1861 when her son, C. B. Hacker, became her partner. She and C. B. ran the hotel until May 1881 when it burned to the ground. The property was purchased by George Curry who rebuilt the hotel and called it the New American. C. B. Hacker purchased another local hotel a few years later and ran it for several years.

Cyntha died in 1888 and is buried in the Pacific, Missouri cemetery.  C. B. Hacker died in 1896 and is buried under a large monument in the Pacific, Missouri cemetery.  His wife and one of his daughters are buried nearby.  His mother’s grave is a little behind his.  George Curry, the fellow hotelier, is buried under a similar monument that is behind, and to the right, of C. B.’s monument. He is clearly situated to be part of the Hacker grouping so must have been a friend.  John M. Hacker died in 1893 and is also buried there, probably beside the George Curry monument. His headstone information is carved on the side of the Curry monument. 

John and Cyntha Beeler Hacker, and their family, fascinated me because their lives were so much different than the lives of Julius and Elizabeth Beeler Hacker—their sister and brother. I do not know if Cyntha maintained contact with her sister, Elizabeth. They both had sons named John M. Hacker, and both young men went to California during the gold rush.  I do not know if the two John M.s knew each other in California. They did not live in the same place. 

In my next installment, I will talk about George Washington Hacker, and the two sisters—Margaret and Elizabeth—who remained in their father’s house until he died.