| | Notes for John David H. Horn:
The following letter from Larry Horn of Fayetteville, Arkansas, was written to Gwen B. Horne on 8 September, 2000 and forwarded to me by Gwen.As the letter indicates the author, Larry Horn is a grandchild of this John David Horn.
Dear Gwen,
I was thinking--have been for some time--that you might care to know
something about "my" Horns.So, hoping my assumption is not mistaken, here
goes!
The attached is a photo of the type the Victorians liked to call a "Family
Group."[See photograph in Scrapbook section of this family.]
It dates from l891, and its subject is my paternal grandparents John David
Horn and Olivia (Line) Horn and their children.Both of these grandparents
were born and died in Arkansas.John David's dates are 1849-1915; Olivia's
are l859-1924. They were married in l884.
(This is actually my grandfather's second family.His first wife and their
infant son died of typhus in l882.)
The children in this photo:the boy is my father, Cecil Leonidas Horn.(My
father did not marry until in his mid-30; he was considerably older than my
mother and was fifty when I was born.Whimsically, I have always attributed
any actual or alleged deficiencies of mine to my having been the product of
perhaps tired loins!)The girl standing is Virginia Lee.The girl sitting
on her mother's lap is named Arthur.Yes, that is correct, and therein lies
a tale.My grandmother Olivia was a strong-willed woman, accustomed to
having her way.She had lost in their twenties two wonderfully handsome
brothers to tuberculosis.Pregnant with what would prove to be her last
child, she had determined that it would be a son whom she would name Arthur
after her one surviving brother, never considering that fate might not prove
cooperative with her will.But when it did not, she rose undaunted and
unflinching to the occasion and declared she would name her girl child Arthur
anyway.(These, by the way, were wonderful aunts, educated, stylish,
bookish, with a great influence on the mental development of their nephews
and nieces, whom they adored, neither having any children of her own. On the
other hand, my father and mother were most fruitful and multiplied, producing
nine children, seven of whom survived into adulthood.)
My grandfather John David was the son of Josiah Martin Horn.Josiah Martin
and two of his brothers (ThomasHunter and Henry) came to Arkansas from
Montgomery County, Tennessee in l847.In Arkansas, they settled in
Independence County in an area part of which would later become attached to
Sharp County.They were the grandsons of the old Josiah Horn who migrated
from North Carolina to Montgomery County around l800.And it was these three
brothers who established one of our Horn lines in Arkansas (as well as
extending it into Texas and New Mexico and Utah, as eventually some of their
descendants migrated there.)
My grandfather John David's mother, wife of Josiah Martin, was Mary Jane Tyre.
Incidentally, Mary Jane's sister Tabitha Elizabeth was married to Josiah's
brother Thomas Hunter.They wed in Montgomery County, TN before coming to
Arkansas. These Tyre girls are supposed to have been,by way of their
mother,half-Shawnee Indian. And I have in my possession a copy of an
affidavit granted to one of my grandfather's brothers in l887 from the acting
chief of the Shawnee Nation asserting that that Horn family was "entitled to
full head rights in the Shawnee Nation."
When their daughters and Horn sons-in-law emigrated to Arkansas, the parents
of Mary Jane and Tabitha pulled up their stakes in Montgomery County and
emigrated as well, all these people settling near each other in Arkansas.
Their father, Michael Tyre,was a holder of considerable land and slaves,
and I have a letter of my paternal aunt Virginia Lee in which she reminisces
about how when youngthere were in her family articles of furniture made by
her great-grandfather Tyre's slaves.And I recall when I was small her
showing me fireplace implements which she said had come with the family from
Tennessee, forged by slaves there; but I don't recall which family, Horn or
Tyre, she said they had come with; nor do I know what ever became of those
implements.
My grandmother Olivia (Line) Horn descended maternallythrough the
multi-branched Pickens family of the South.Historically, the Pickens family
is in origin
Scotch Presbyterian-French Huguenot.In the seventeenth century, for
religious reasons, members of this family had settled in northern Ireland.
It was from there that the founder of the Pickens family of the South, one
William Pickens, migrated
with his family to the American colony of Pennsylvania in l719.After his
death, all his off-spring along with his widow migrated southward to
Virginia.After some years there, they all migrated still farther south, to
North Carolina and South Carolina.In time, from these states Pickens
descendants spread all across the South.Some of the Pickens lines have been
fairly distinguished.General Andrew Pickens was a Revolutionary War figure
of some renown,and counties are named for him in South Carolina and
Alabama.One of his homes is now property of Clemson Universtiy.
Others Pickens family members were governors and U.S. congressmen and one was
a U.S. senator.
The Pickens line that my grandmother Olivia Line descendend through was
humbler.
In the early l800s her great-grandfather, a man also named Andrew Pickens,
along with his family and a couple of his brothers went from South Carolina
to a Presbyterian mission, Charity Hall, on the Tombigbee River in
northeastern Mississippi.Charity Hall was a school for the education of
Chickasaw youth.
This Andrew Pickens and one of his daughters, Jane, taught there.In the
summer of l824 Andrew and Jane contracted inflammatory fever, and both died
of it.
Subsequently, Andrew's widow and children, along with those brothers of his
who had been also at Charity Hall, migrated a little way northward to Fayette
County, Tennessee.From there in l850 two of Andrew's children emigrated to
an area of Arkansas close to where the Horns had settled a little earlier.
In time this particular Arkansas Pickens line would produce a girl, Olivia,
who would marry John David Horn and become my grandmother.
It is awesome to contemplate--don't you agree?--all the parallel lines moving
in time that must, as if driven by inevitability, converge at some place,
some point in time in order for oneself to have existence.
I think often too with awe--and with boundless admiration--of those ancestors
propelled by an extraordinary courage and sense of adventure--and perhaps even
love of danger--to leave the security of their accustomed surroundings and
venture
for the sake of a new life into unknown, and often wild, frontiers.
Sincerely,
Larry Horn
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