My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM HORNBACK, farmer and stock-raiser, section 28, post-office Carthage. The subject of this sketch first saw the light on the famous Tippecanoe battle ground, Ind., May 9, 1834, his father having settled in Indiana at a very early day, and owned the land upon which Gen. Taylor acquired so much fame. He immigrated to southwest Missouri and settled four miles southwest of where Carthage now is, which was then the very outskirts of civilization. There our subject spent his youth and early manhood, assisting his father in clearing and making a farm, and acquiring what education he could by the limited means then in vogue. In 1855 or 1856 he, with a younger brother, located a claim on section 29, Madison township, erected a cabin of black hickory logs, and “ kept bach” while breaking and improving sixty acres. His brother died in 1860, and our subject administered the estate; he sold the property, taking purchasers’ notes, due in one year, but before the paper matured the civil war broke out and the makers of the notes scattered he knew not where. During the subsequent years of the war he shifted about as best he could; tended crops when the country was free from armed bands, his greatest difficulty being to keep his cattle from falling into the hands of marauding parties, in which effort he was not always successful. In 1868 he drove what stock he had left into northern Kansas and sold them. He then went to Montana and engaged at mining and teaming. From there he went to British Columbia; then to Lewiston, Idaho; then to Dallas City and Portland, Ore.; Chico, Cal.; Idaho City, Idaho; and San Francisco; then to Humboldt, Nev.; again back to Chico and Sacramento, and took shipping for New York via Panama; then to Douglas county, Kan., whither his parents had fled during the war, and returned to Jasper county April 9, 1866, his travels having occupied three years to a day. He then resumed his farming operations, or in other words made a new start. He rebuilt his fences destroyed by the hostile parties and raised a fair crop the same year, for which there was good demand and good prices. He was married April 30, 1868, to Miss Elizabeth E., daughter of John and Nancy McMeechan (deceased), a native of Green county, Mo., but reared and educated in Decatur county, Iowa. Of this union there are three children living: John J., born Jan. 29, 1869; Mary N., born March 13, 1872; and Hattie M., born Nov. 16, 1877. His farm consists of 100 acres, well improved, with fine house, orchard, etc.; he also owns sixty acres of timber.