Elijah Hackney Family History
By Clarence Hackney
Newton,
IA 50208
Some history of the Elijah Hackney family reported by a
grandson.
Elijah Hackney was born June 7, 1834 in Blount County,
Tennessee.
He and a brother, Aaron, came to the Amboy community, Jasper
County, Iowa, in the late 1850
s. There is no record as to the mode of travel or why they came to this
area. There is no record as to where
they lived or what they worked at.
Mary Hinshaw, born April
24, 1842, in Grant County, Indiana, along with her parents, had
moved to the Amboy area also. Elijah and
Mary were married July 27, 1859. Part of the house that Ivan & Colene
Hinshaw lived in was Mary Hinshaw's home where she was married.
The Hackney s built a house about 1/2 mile southwest of Mary's
home and started farming. I don't know how many acres they farmed. Now three
generations of the Hackneys have farmed and are still farming the same land.
The house was built of all native lumber, part hand hewed,
all rough oak and walnut. How they raised
as large a family as they did in such a small house is hard to believe. Three generations lived in this house which
was taken down in the 1950s. During the early years of their marriage, the
railroad coming west stopped at Iowa City. My grandfather traveled to Iowa
City to sell products and buy what they needed at
home. Some years later the railroad came
west to Kellogg where it terminated for several years. After the mill was built
at Lynnville , he traveled there for their flour.
The Hackney s had nine children, six born at home and three
born in Kansas. The reason for the three births in Kansas
was that the Hackney-s were of the Quaker religion and they did not believe in
bearing arms against anyone. This was
during the Civil War and Kansas
was a neutral state. They remained in Kansas
until the war ended and then returned to their home.
The children were:
- Evan ,
born 1860 in Jasper County, Iowa.
- Nancy,
born 1861 in Jasper County, Iowa.
- Phoebe
Serena born 1863 in Jasper County, Iowa.
- John
Francis, born 1864 in Chase County, Kansas.
- Milton
Chamness, born 1866 in Chase County, Kansas.
- Joel
Conklin, born 1869 in Chase County, Kansas.
- Zimri
Richard, born 1873 in Jasper County, Iowa
- Sarah
Elizabeth, born 1874 in Jasper County, Iowa
- James
Uriah, born 1878 in Jasper County, Iowa.
Two of the children died young, Zimri less than one month
old and Joel at 9 years.
The area around the Hackney farm was known as the Amboy
area. (What year it was named and why I do not know). The area is still known as the Amboy
Community, with the Amboy cemetery, Amboy church, Amboy grange and Amboy
schoolhouse still in existence. The
school is where the Hackney children attended classes. My daughter, Linda, was
the last Hackney to attend this school. (The school was closed in 1958).
My grandfather, Elijah, hauled stones to build the
courthouse in Newton (the structure
built prior to the present courthouse).
Evan Hackney furnished a team of horses and helped with the
dirt work in building the railroad from Kellogg to Newton.
He was married in 1903 and started farming in Marshall
County.
His first wife died in 1904.
He remarried in 1909.
A few years later he bought a 40 acre tract just north of
the Newton city limits, the land
located between the existing 1st Street North
and west 4th Street North,
and south of north 19th Avenue west.
The house, still standing, is the first two story house south of the Union
Hall. The house was a ready-cut, mail-order house. Material cost was less than
$1,000. Evan and his wife, in later years, came to the Amboy area and built the
home that I now live in. Evan had no children.
Nancy always
lived at home and never was married.
After her mother died in 1889 (her father never remarried) she kept
house for her father and brother, Milton and was more or less a mother to her
younger brother, James, who was then 11 years old.
Phoebe married Charlie Berry in 1891 and went to Nebraska
to live. They always lived in Nebraska. Charlie was a guard at the State
Penitentiary. They had one son.
A little more about Amboy.
At one time there was a small store and post office there.
John [Francis] (always known as Frank) ran the store and
post office. He was married in
1888. His wife died in 1890 and he never
remarried. They had no children. I do
not know where they started housekeeping for as long as I knew him his home was
in Marshalltown. He worked all over the Midwest
at building construction work. He was
also a speculator. He bought and sold
houses in Marshalltown and large
tracts of land in Canada.
Milton was the
blacksmith of the family. He had a shop
from the time he was a young man to as long as he could work at it. He also had
a steam engine and a horse power sweep.
It was a four or eight horse sweep.
The way it worked was you hitched one or two horses to four wooden beams
about 12 feet long. The horse traveled
around in a circle. Through a series of
gears and rods you got power to run such things as saw mills and threshers. Milton
worked in many saw mills and threshing crews.
He always lived at home and was never married.
Sarah started doing in-home, house work when she was quite
young. She was well liked and a very
good worker. She was seldom out of
work. When she got older and had to slow
down, she went to Marshalltown and
made her home with her brother, John [Francis] (Frank). She remained in Marshall
County until her death. She never married.
James, the youngest of the children, worked by the day at
anything that was available. He was
married in 1905. He and his wife, Anna,
started house keeping east of Colfax where he worked top side at the Severs
Coal Mines. He worked there for four
years and then started farming northeast of Newton. He farmed all his life in Jasper
County, except for one year in Marshall
County. Over the years they moved many times because
they always rented. In 1929 they moved
to the old Hackney home place where they lived until 1938 when they moved to
the home where I now live. James and his
wife had three children, one daughter and two sons. I am the older son.
There has been a Hackney living in Kellogg township since
Elijah and Aaron came here in the 1850's (except during the Civil War). That trend will no doubt come to an end when
I no longer live here. There are three
generations back of me now but none of them live close by.
I hope you have enjoyed reading about the Hackney family.
Written by Clarence Hackney.