John William Hornbaker, Sr

John W. was the 2nd son of John & Charlotta (Bishop) Hornbaker, who were married in Maryland around 1810. He must have been born in Kentucky, around 1817. Life in those early pioneer days were very different to what we are acquainted with today. Travel was by horseback or by heavy horse-drawn wagons, which carried the family, the meager household goods and the merchandise of every description of that day. Roads were little more than paths over the hills and through the valleys, and often very difficult to negotiate because of there rough, rocky condition or deep mud or sticky clay. Streams had to be forded as there were few or no bridges. Rivers were often swollen and fording was very dangerous at times. Indians were everywhere in the frontier country and were even more dangerous to the life of the early settlers.

It was around the last week of Febuary that his father John drowned while attempting to ford the Licking River on horseback in Kentucky. Leaving Charlotta a widow in a new untamed country with one young son Benjamin and John W. born a few days after his death.

As was very customary in those days, fatherless children were often "bound out", which means they were apprenticed under contract with little or no guarantee of fatherly care on the one side and often but little responsibility on the other. So Benjamin and John William grew up facing many difficulties and much neglect and longed many times for the love and care of a real father.

While yet a boy of 12 or 15 years, John W., as he likely sat, despondent on a rail fence by the roadside one day, without shoes and but little clothing, was accosted by a gentleman who needed the help of a lively boy in the driving of hogs (perhaps turkeys) to the markets futher east.

Perhaps with the idea of bettering his condition, John W. at once joined this man, thus breaking his contract as an apprentice. He soon learned that he was free and very competent to make his own way in the world. This trip on foot to the market of the east was not his last. He quickly learned business tactics and later found profit in conducting a business of his own account similar to his first experience.

Being very adverse to compulsory servitude and slavery, so general in Kentucky at the time. John W. soon found himself in the free state of Indiana, where in 1843 he married Mary (Polly) Finley an established a home. He was energetic and frugal and soon became a large property owner, in several counties of Indiana.

His first child a daughter, was named America Jane, which indicated patriotism and love of country. His first son was named James Madison, because of his love for the former President of the United States. A third and last son was named Finley D. to perpetuate the family name of his wife who died when Finley was but eight days old.
John W., after the death of his first wife married Margaret I. Mathers and to this union were born three sons, Benjamin Curtis, Winfield Scott and John Williams the last born and four daughters Mary L., Angeline, Laura Belle and Grace Eunice.

Other great changes in the life of John W. came as the years passed. He was one who volunteered his help in an armed effort to capture or drive out of Indiana that lawless raider, Morgan.

After the end of the Civil War when values began to slump, many good men lost heavily. The panic of 1873 was a terrible disaster in the life of John W. Farmers and stockman and feeders suffered great loss. Many who had amassed good, modest fortunes and those just beginning their business career took the advise of Horace Greenley, and went west and grew up with the country.

So it was in 1879 that John W., after shipping a car load of fat hogs to the St. Louis market, went on west into Kansas, where he bought a farm three miles north of Newton.