Ancestors

John Horn

John Horn was born on 25 March 1848 in South Carolina. His parents are given as Thomas Horn and Priscilla Watson. By the Civil War he was living in Leake County, in the middle of Mississippi.

He went to war late and young. In September 1864, at sixteen, he enlisted in Leake County in Company I of the 26th Mississippi, under a captain he remembered as Kennedy and a commander he named as Mabry. The 26th was an infantry regiment raised in 1861 in the northeast corner of the state. The same month he was transferred to Adams' Brigade, and he stayed with it to the end. In May 1865 the Confederate forces in Mississippi and Alabama surrendered, and his command gave up its arms near Columbus, Mississippi. He had served nine months. Years later he swore that he had never been absent without leave.

On 1 February 1872 he married Darewa Ann Eliza Flowers at Carthage, the Leake County seat. She was twenty and had been born in North Carolina. They had seven children over twenty four years: Eligha Jefferson in 1872, James William in 1875, John Oliver in 1878, Nancy Jane, called Sissie, in 1880, Annie in 1882, Alvah Cecil in 1890 and Lafayette in 1896. In June 1880 the census found them at Edinburg, Leake County, written as the Horne family, with the four oldest.

Eliza died on 5 June 1917. Three months later, on 3 September 1917, John went before H. N. McMillan, the circuit clerk of Leake County, and applied for a Confederate pension. Mississippi paid small yearly pensions to veterans and widows who were poor and unable to work, and each applicant had to swear that he and his wife owned less than six hundred dollars in property. John gave his age as seventy and his post office as Dossville. He answered that he was a widower, that he was not able to work, and that he owned his home and about $500 in property. He was living with a son. Two neighbors swore to his identity, and he signed the application himself. It was allowed on 12 September 1917.

In January 1920 the census found him in Beat 1 of Leake County, in the household of his son Alvie, Alvie's wife Lillian and their small son Howard. He died on 9 December 1923 at Renfroe, in Leake County, aged seventy five, and was buried at Zion Hill Cemetery near Coosa, where Eliza lay. His grave carries a government stone for a Confederate soldier, with the Southern Cross of Honor at the top: "John Horn, Co. I, 26 Miss. Inf., C.S.A."

A photograph of John with a large family group of three generations, taken in front of a weatherboarded house, has come down to his descendants. He sits at the far left, white haired and bearded, in a dark coat.

If John Horn is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "John Horn (1848-1923)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-horn-1848-1923-26571e.