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Tom Horn in Life and Legend
By Larry D. Ball UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2014 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4518-1
CHAPTER 1
Missouri Roots
The family of Tom Horn was typical of thousands who sought a new life on the American frontier in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While there is some uncertainty about Tom Horn's ancestry, it appears that Jacob John Horn, born about 1721 to English parents, possibly in Philadelphia, was an early progenitor. Jacob married Duschea van Natta, who bore him four children. Their last child, Hartman, was born in Virginia in 1747. Subsequently, Jacob Horn relocated his family to the frontier village of Washington, twenty-five miles southwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Duschea Horn, who was apparently born in Germany, insisted that only her native language be spoken in the household; hence the erroneous story that the Horn family was from Germany. In 1771 Hartman married Elizabeth Hough and settled in Buffalo, a few miles west of Washington. Among their children were Martin, born 1772, and C. Hartman, in 1794. After the younger Hartman Horn married, his wife gave birth to a son, Martin C., in 1813. Hartman then moved his family to Mt. Vernon, in Knox County, northeast of Columbus, Ohio. In their new surroundings, Hartman's wife gave birth to Thomas H. Horn, on 15 January 1825. In 1833 Martin Horn, elder brother of Hartman, joined him in Knox County.
On 12 December 1850, Thomas H. Horn married Mary Ann Maricha Miller. Mary Ann, born on 22 January 1831, came from a locally influential family. Her father received a 4,000-acre land grant on the Muskingum River (later Coshocton County) for honorable service in the War of 1812 and eventually served in the Ohio legislature. On Mary Ann's maternal side, one ancestor, Abraham Clark, as a representative of New Jersey, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Her maternal grandfather fought in the bloody Shawnee Indian Wars in the Ohio country in the 1780s and '90s.
Thomas and Mary Ann Horn began married life on the Horn family farm in Coshocton County. Their first child, Charles, was born on 1 January 1852. (A second child, who may have been a twin of Charles, died in 1854.) While Thomas Horn was hardworking, he was something of a gambler, and, like many frontiersmen, given to speculation. When he and his father, Hartman, joined three Knox County farmers in a cattle venture, Thomas Horn was designated to manage the money. Rather than paying off the initial debt, the Horns invested the proceeds in a second venture, apparently with the complicity of some of the partners. When the other partners, as well as their creditors, filed suit in 1851, an Ohio judge ordered Thomas Horn to pay his indebtedness of more than $800. Horn indicated that he was bankrupt. The next year Thomas Horn, his father, C. Hartman, and other family members departed Ohio at night. Angry creditors pursued the Horns through the courts for many years.
The Horn family settled in Scotland County, Missouri, in 1853, in the northeastern corner of the state on the Iowa border. Thomas Horn and his brother, Martin, as well as their father, C. Hartman, purchased property near Etna, in Harrison Township, southeast of the county seat of Memphis. Founded in 1834, Etna was situated on an important east-west roadway and soon boasted stores, churches, and a newspaper. With typical frontier optimism, the inhabitants expected a railroad to come their way.
The family of Thomas Horn soon began to grow into a frontier brood. In addition to Charles and the deceased twin, who were born in Ohio, Mary Ann Horn gave birth to ten more children. William, or "Willie," who was born in 1856, died at the age of eight. Nancy "Nannie" Belle arrived in 1858, and Thomas H., Jr., was delivered on 21 November 1860. Martin Isaac Horn followed two years later, while Mary Ann was visiting relatives in Coshocton County, Ohio. The remaining children were all born in Scotland County, Missouri: Hannah May, 1865; Austin H., called "Oss," 1866, and Mary "Maude" Ambrosian, 1869. A set of twins, Ima and Ina, were born in 1871, but died the following year. The twelfth and last child, Bertha ("Alice"), was born four years later.
Thomas Horn, Sr., built a substantial home and barn a few miles northeast of Etna and was soon the largest landholder in the county, with title to 1700 acres. In addition to raising cattle, horses, and sheep, according to one newspaper, the elder Horn speculated in farm products. Before railroads arrived in northeastern Missouri, he purchased large herds of animals, drove them to Alexandria, on the Mississippi River, and sold them. In September 1874, Thomas, Sr., purchased ten shares of stock in the newly established Citizens' Bank of Memphis at ten dollars per share. He and a partner, W. W. Purmort, who owned a hardware store in the county seat, began to introduce improved breeds of cattle. The editor of the Memphis Reveille praised the Horn-Purmort herd as "some of the finest cattle in the world." In May 1885, Purmort & Horn advertised short-horned cattle for sale, all "well bred and registered."
In later years Thomas Horn, Jr., remembered his father as an active and energetic man, always on the go. It was not uncommon to see his father ride off "to an election or a public sale" of livestock. Although Thomas Horn, Sr., "had only a common school education," according to another informant, he "wrote a good hand, [and] was a natural mathematician and persistent reader." The elder Horn did not shy away from the rough-and-tumble aspects of frontier life. He enjoyed horse races, Tom, Jr., recalled, and was a man of "nerve." Thomas, Sr., had the reputation of being the best man with his fists in Scotland County and was regarded as "the most prominent man in his section of Missouri."
In spite of his seeming success, Thomas Horn, Sr.'s creditors pursued him all the way from Ohio. In 1867 one former partner filed a damage suit against him for $1,650. When Scotland County Sheriff H. H. Byrne attached the property necessary to fulfill the monetary terms of the suit, Tom, Sr., took steps to put his land out of all suitors' reach. He placed some property in the name of Mary Ann Horn and "sold" other pieces of real estate to his sons, Charles and Martin.
Thomas Horn, Sr., took a keen interest in community affairs. He and his brother, Martin, were strong supporters of Andrew Jackson and the recently created Democratic Party. Indeed, Martin cast his first presidential vote for Jackson in 1828. In February 1872, Thomas Horn, Sr., presided at a Democratic gathering in his precinct. Two years later, he was an unsuccessful nominee for delegate to the county convention. The brothers also answered the call to jury duty and served as road supervisors and as members of Scotland County fair committees. At one fair, Tom Horn, Sr., won prizes for best bull and best cow.
Tom Horn, Jr., was born in a border state just before the Civil War, during the highly charged atmosphere of sectional conflict. Since Democrats throughout the border region were suspected of being Confederate sympathizers, many migrated to the Colorado and Montana mining country in order to avoid the secessionist stigma. However, Thomas Horn, Sr., and his family stayed put in spite of such problems. While some skirmishes took place between Union and Confederate forces in and around Scotland County, and the Horns may have given aid and comfort to the latter, there is no indication that the Civil War seriously disrupted the Horns' everyday lives. But many years later, Tom Horn, Jr., recalled that he was born in "a troublesome time." "Anyone born in Missouri is bound to see trouble," he wrote, citing Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson), the noted nineteenth-century humorist.
Tom Horn, Sr., and his wife imposed a stern religious discipline at home. The Horns, including Tom, Jr.'s Uncle Martin and Aunt Drusilla Horn, were devout Disciples of Christ (the forerunner of the present-day Christian Church). This protestant sect, considered radical in the early nineteenth century, was founded by Thomas Campbell in Washington County, Pennsylvania, the Horn family's ancestral home. The Campbellites, as they were called, emphasized a simple gospel, democratic church polity, and the unity of the Christian community. Their call for a stern piety in daily life fitted the hardships of frontier life. As their children grew up, Tom, Sr., and Mary Ann Horn employed the rod liberally in an effort to enforce order in the home. They were very disappointed that none of their children showed a keen interest in the church.
Instead of religious services, the forest and its wildlife exercised a relentless pull upon young Tom. "We had Sunday schools and church," he recalled,
and as my mother was a good, old-fashioned Campbellite, I was supposed to go to church and Sunday school, as did most of the boys and girls in the neighborhood.... I had nothing particular against going, if it hadn't been for the 'coons, turkeys, quail.... [Hunting] kept me busy most every Sunday.... I would steal out the [family] gun and take the dog and hunt all day Sunday and many a night through the week, knowing full well that ... I would get a whipping or a scolding from my mother or a regular thumping from father.
Tom's education also suffered. "My mother was always anxious to have all the children go to school during the winter months," he wrote, "and I always had to go, or to start anyway." Unfortunately, "all the natural influences of the country were against my acquiring much of an education," he admitted. Since the summer months were taken up with "hard and long hours putting in crops and tending to them," he "had little legitimate time to fish and hunt bee trees." With the arrival of winter (and school), all the adventuresome Tom, Jr., wanted to do was "to go look after the game." Nonetheless, "I was ordered to go to school," he wrote, and "I had to go." Whether he matriculated the full six grades of elementary school is not known. Yet Tom Horn, Jr., later demonstrated some basic writing talent.
Although the school was located only a mile from the Horn farm, Tom, Jr., found many distractions in that short walk. With winter snows on the ground, "I would always be finding fresh rabbit or 'coon or cat tracks crossing the trail to school," he said, and "I never could cross a fresh track" without following it up. "I would then go on a little farther," he recollected, "and then I would say to myself, 'I will be late for school and get licked.'" But the desire to see where the animal trail led was "overpowering." "I would go back in the orchard behind the house," admitted the truant boy, whistle for his hunting dog, Shedrick, and "school was all off." "'Shed' and I would go hunting." "I could climb any tree in Missouri, and dig frozen ground with a pick [for animal burrows], and follow cold tracks in the mud or snow," he recalled proudly. Had the school building "been nearer," he protested, "I could have gotten there a great deal oftener" (a doubtful statement in view of Horn's having spent much of his adult life outdoors). In spite of Mary Horn's concern about her son's "Indian ways," she took some pride in his hunting ability. "When our neighbors would complain of losing a chicken," he recalled "mother would tell them that whenever any varmint bothered her hen-roosts, she would just send out Tom and 'Shedrick.'"
In spite of such distractions, young Tom not only obtained the rudiments of an elementary education at Etna, but continued to read throughout his life. As one Scotland County resident recalled, the boy was "an enthusiastic reader of dime novels." Many years later, when Tom Horn faced the hangman's noose in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he informed the Denver Post that army officers in Arizona helped him with his education: "The very creditable education he has now, he explains by the interesting story that the officers of the post took a fancy to him as a bright, ambitious lad, gave him the rudiments of the ordinary public school training, and loaned him books which he took out on the hills and studied industriously while he herded sheep. And from that time on he has been a self-made man."
While he complained about work on the farm, young Tom also learned things from such drudgery that stood him in good stead later in life. The Horn farm was a typical nineteenth-century agricultural enterprise, involving orchards and livestock as well as raising other crops. He learned much about the care of livestock and developed a special affinity for horses that remained with him throughout his life. While he was reluctant to acknowledge his father's teaching, there is little doubt that the elder Horn schooled his son in the care of animals.
Young Tom had a reputation as a mischief maker around Etna. He organized playmates into a band of "outlaws," with himself as the leader, and made "frequent raids ... on chicken coops and orchards," according to an old resident. On one occasion, Tom and a friend lifted "a large quantity of shot" from a general store in Etna. As they walked out of the store, the loot began to escape through a hole in Tom's pocket, spilling across the floor and giving them away. "The lads were arrested for the theft but were not prosecuted."
Fighting was part of such young boys' lives. Little Sammy Griggs, one of Tom's hunting companions, proved a challenging opponent. On one occasion, Tom and Sammy, both of whom took great pride in their hunting dogs, quarreled over whose animal was the best. Tom admitted that he "went home pretty badly used up" after this fracas.
The same Scotland County resident who recalled Tom's fondness for the penny dreadfuls also remembered that, like many local boys, he "was inordinately fond of firearms." Anxious to impress his comrades, young Tom secretly slipped "an old fashion[ed] revolver" from the family home and carried it on one of their escapades. In a bit of horseplay, he "accidentally discharged" the weapon, wounding nine-year-old Charles Harris in the shoulder. A story circulated later in Horn's life that he killed Harris, but fortunately, Harris recovered.
The Horn household was a busy place "known far and wide for its hospitality." Mary Ann Horn, a woman with a big heart, "was famous for her charity." "There was never a neighbor who did not send for her in time of need," according to one informant. In addition to Tom, Jr., his siblings, and parents, the Horn household contained one grandfather as well as "an orphan nephew of Mrs. Horn, a girl who lived with them for many years and many hired hands." The latter increased in number during planting and harvesting time. With so much work required around the house, Mary Ann Horn kept extra help busy. Eva Horn Whitehead, a niece of Tom, Jr., recalled that her mother worked in the Horn household in 1879.
One of the many guests in the Horn household was Benjamin S. Markley, a nephew of Mary Ann. Bennie, whose family owned a farm in St. Francis County, in eastern Arkansas, came to live with the Horns in the 1870s. Tom, Jr., took an instant dislike to cousin Bennie, who was two years older. A poor marksman and hunter, Bennie ran to the womenfolk for protection from young Tom and his friends, who considered him a "sissy." Eventually, Tom picked a fight with Bennie. "I had him whipped before my mother and the rest of the family could get me off him," he recalled proudly. "Dad was there but he did not try to help the women pull me off," he continued, "for I do think Ben was a little too good [even] for him."
By the time of Bennie Markley's arrival, the relationship between Tom and his father had become strained. At the age of fourteen, the young boy simply quit school and informed the elder Horn that he was going to help full time on the farm. It was not long before "things [at home] were beginning to get rather binding on me," he wrote later, and his father's resort to frequent "thumpings" began to wear thin. Nor did Tom exhibit any particular affection for the women in the household, although he evidently had some feelings for his mother. This apparent disdain for females continued throughout his life, although he was known to associate with them occasionally for recreational purposes. While he admitted that tormenting cousin Bennie Markley "made me no favorite with the women folks," he went on to admit that their disapproval "was of little importance to me."
Aside from his hunting rifle, Tom Horn's most prized possession was his dog, Shedrick. Any mistreatment of this much-loved pet was a mistreatment of its master. One day when Tom was fourteen, he got into a scuffle with two boys from a passing immigrant train. The older of the pair carried a shotgun. In a moment of youthful bravado, Tom, who favored a rifle for hunting—it required more skilled marksmanship—blurted out "that a man who shot game with a shotgun was no good." In reply, the wielder of the shotgun "asked me if I called myself a man," recalled Horn. This challenge set off a "scrap" between Tom and the older boy. Soon the younger of the immigrant boys, as well as Shedrick, joined in the scuffle. Not only did the younger of the migrant boys give Tom a good bruising, but the older boy shot and killed "Shed."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Tom Horn in Life and Legend by Larry D. Ball. Copyright © 2014 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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