Nathan Hornaday

From "Martha's Extended Family" family tree page on Nathan Hornaday:

http://martisgenes.info/p246.htm#i3140

Nathan Hornaday[1],[2]

M

Marriage* He married Ruth Piggott circa 1802.[3],[2]

Family Ruth Piggott b. 25 May 1777, d. 10 Jan 1859

Citations:

1.[S177] William Wade Hinshaw, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy, p. 414.

2.[S194] Jack Weaver, Martha G Cline.

3.[S177] William Wade Hinshaw, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy.

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From Bill Putnam's information on Nathan Hornaday's family:

http://www.billputman.com/Hornaday.pdf

UPDATED MARCH 2, 2010

THE HORNADAY FAMILY

This is a brief history of the Hornaday family. John Hornaday's daughter, Keziah Hornaday, married John Patterson in Orange County, North Carolina, and thus this family became a part of my Patterson lineage.

Quinn Hornaday, a descendant living in California, wrote a book on the Hornaday family in 1979. Most of the following is taken from that book. If others are interested, it is a very well done and thorough piece on that family.

Mr. Hornaday like myself has very little information on the early background of the family. He has one family tradition that two young boys came as stowaways from England by ship. They refused to give their true identities and were given the name Horn-a-day because they had the shipboard duty of passing the sailor's daily grog rations around in a horn used for drinking. Who knows?

I feel that the family is more than likely Scotch Irish as the area they lived in while in North Carolina was heavily populated by Scots who had come down from Pennsylvania. I have read another source in a 1947 letter from Carl Veale stating John Hornaday came from Antrim in Northern Ireland and went to Pennsylvania like so many others in the early and mid 1700s. I tend to feel that this is more likely the origins of John Hornaday. This is the same route the Pattersons and so many other Scotch Irish immigrants took.

Later work by Robert Veale shows that John Hornaday came to America with Henry Patterson on the ship Princess Carolina captained by William Halladay in the early 1700s.

At any rate the first American notation is a 1752 tax list in North Carolina for one John Hornaday. It is here that I begin this history.

JOHN HORNADAY

John Hornaday appears as a married taxable in 1752 in Orange County, North Carolina. On June 15, 1757 he had a deed recorded indicating he bought land on Mud Lick Creek in what is now Chatham County. He lived and farmed on this land for some thirty years before moving to South Carolina in the late 1780s.

John Hornaday's wife was named Christian, but nothing more is known about her. These would be the parents of Keziah Hornaday who married John Patterson Junior in 1780 in North Carolina.

The Hornadays lived a few miles from a Quaker community at Cane Creek. Several of their children married into Quaker families. It is of interest to note that one of John Hornaday's sons, Nathan, married twice, and his second wife was Ruth Piggott. Ruth was from the same family that our James Piggott was from. Most of the Piggotts moved from the Quaker community at Notingham in Cecil County, Maryland to the one at Cane Creek. Only our James Piggott's father headed further west to Westmoreland County in Pennsylvania. Again, it was a very small world' in those days. I have no idea what religion the Hornadays followed.

John Hornaday began purchasing lands in South Carolina along Twelve Mile River in the late 1780s and moved there shortly afterwards, by 1788 at least. He is there in the 1790 census and 1800 census and was living alone in both reports.

John and Christian seem to have split up, for what reasons I do not know. He left her to go to South Carolina in the mid 1780s and she remained in North Carolina. They jointly sold their original homestead on Mud Lick Creek in 1792, but had been separated for several years.

The last records of John Hornaday were letters being held in the Pendleton County Post Office in 1808. John had either died or left by that time. Nothing more is known about him after that date.

The Children of John Hornaday

John and Christian had 10 children at the best guess. The following is a brief recap of what I know. Much more information is contained in the book THE HORNADAYS, ROOT AND BRANCH by Quinn Hornaday.

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Nathan Hornaday

Nathan Hornaday was the fifth child, born about 1765. He spent his early life in the St. Asaph's district of Orange County as a farmer. He married Ruth Pike in December 1792 and they had three children before her death about 1799. He then remarried to Ruth Piggott about 1800. He moved to Preble County, Ohio in 1812 and died there in April of 1820. Ruth died there in 1859.

Children by his first wife were Susannah, Ezekiel and Hiram Hornaday. Nathan and his second wife had Ruth, Jemima, Elisha, John, Mary Ann, Nathan, Benjamin and Ezra Hornaday.

And now that it's established that Nathan Hornaday went to Preble County, Ohio, from the Preble County, Ohio Genealogy Trails Gratis Township page:

http://genealogytrails.com/ohio/preble/gratistownship.html

William Hixon, from Georgia, came in 1806 and settled in section 9. Thomas Talbert came in 1807 and settled near West Elkton. Elijah Mendenhall, from Georgia, settled in 1806 in section 34. Martin Sayler, from Maryland, settled on section 3 in 1809. He was a millwright and helped build most of the mills for a number of years. William Clevenger, from New Jersey, settled on section 24 in 1806. Nathan Hornaday, from North Carolina, settled in section 18 in 1806.

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CEMETERIES.

There are, or were (some are now forgotten), a number of small cemeteries, called family cemeteries, scattered about the township. Some settler lost a wife or child, or the settler himself died, and, the roads being only trails and there being no regular public cemetery, a little plot of ground, generally on high land, was fenced off on the farm. The body of the loved one was deposited there, and carefully guarded. As their neighbors lost some member of their families they were granted permission to bury on the family plot, and in this way sometimes quite a number of graves were made.

One such, on the land formerly owned by Jonas Brubaker, who married Rebecca Phillips, the first white girl baby of the county, is now enclosed by an iron fence, and lies on the hill top about a hundred yards west of Fair View cemetery at Gratis. It is now kept up by the township trustees, as are several others.

Fair Mound cemetery, at West Elkton, now called locally the Quaker cemetery, was laid out in 1805, and the first person to consecrate the ground with her dust was Martha Maddock, one of the family that was so prominent in leading the hegira of Quakers from Georgia and the Carolines to the land of freedom. She died in 1805, being the first white person to die in the township. The cemetery continued to be used until the limited space was practically filled a few years since, when it ceased to be generally used.

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WEST ELKTON.

West Elkton is located within a mile and a half of the south line of the township, and just grew up along a small branch. David Taylor, shortly after the settlement of the township, built a wagon shop and his cabin on the little stream that flows through the town and dug a well, being the first to locate. Gradually others built around him, buying such plats of ground as they desired, until, in 1847, a movement, headed by Jesse Stubbs and Nathan Hornaday, started to have a town laid out.

The next year the -plat was filed, but as the lots sold before, about a dozen in number, had been very irregular in size and shape, they had to remain so. They could not now be traced but for the painstaking care of the surveyor, James L. Street, who surveyed them and planted cornerstones so generally that he is easily followed.

In the northeastern part of the state is Elkton, hence this place is called West Elkton. The first store is said to have been opened by a man named Rockill about 1828. The first post office was established in 1844, and Rawley Wheeler was appointed postmaster. In 1860 Argerbright & Talbert started a carriage shop in West Elkton, but in 1863 Isaiah Talbert sold out, on account of bad health, and W. S. Maddock took his place.

In about 1869 Talbert returned from Miamisburg, where he had been engaged in the same business. With A. Van Trump and D. L. Wineland, Talbert bought out the business, and in 1871 he bought Van Trump's interest, and in 1874 Wineland's interest.

A. Van Trump and Thomas Stubbs at the time were running a saw-mill and other business connected with it, and they consolidated under the name of Van Trump, Talbert & Company in 1874. Later, about 1895, Talbert bought out his partners and took in three of his sons, and they are now doing a prosperous business.

NATHAN HORNADAY (Nathan's son - 1812-1899, Find A Grave page exists)

Perhaps the best remembered man who was a permanent resident of the village was Nathan Hornaday, who was born in 1812 and died in 1899-He was by trade a plasterer and stone mason, and by religion a Methodist, in which church he was for many years a local preacher.

A man of medium size, strongly built, emotional, but clear minded, he was elected a justice of the peace in 1842, which position he held most of the time for 50 years. He was later mayor of the town, which office he held almost a lifetime, his sympathy always going out to the suffering or the wronged, he was ever a peacemaker in the community.

With a courage and integrity that never faltered, he was an ideal justice of the peace. It is claimed that, although he had many cases tried before him, a jury being waived, he was never reversed by the common pleas court but once, and then the defendant refused to give any evidence, and appealed. From the evidence Mr. Hornaday had to decide the case. From outside knowledge he knew the matter was wrong, and tried to get the plaintiff to settle, but he would not, and he later lost the case.

No attorney was ever able to influence his decision nor by honeyed logic lead him wrong. He won and held the love, respect and almost reverence of the community. He was for five years deputy United States collector of revenue.