Morris Horner died August 18, 1923, and is buried in the Lanark Cemetery. Etta continued to teach school and she and her mother lived on the farm until about 1933 when they had a charming two-story house built at 114 W. Pearl Street in Lanark. They established a beautiful garden there, and every year Etta outdid herself with row upon row of beans, tomatoes, peas, carrots, squash, and other vegetables and the most marvelous bearded irises you could imagine. Mary Hanse Horner died at that house on December 18, 1938, and is buried in the Lanark Cemetery.

On September 10, 1944 Etta (pictured here in June 1961 dressed for the Lanark Centennial) married John Henry Bowers in Lanark. He was born December 3, 1873 in Mt. Carroll Township, Carroll County, Illinois, the son of Peter (born 1835) and Elizabeth (Maesinger) Bowers (born 1834). John Bowers was retired by then but he’d farmed and also had run a hardware store and coal supply firm in Lanark.

Etta Horner Bowers was a staunch Church of the Brethren member all her life. She was involved in a lot of church activities and kept an active mind by reading books from the Lanark Public Library. She was a great cook and everyone loved going to her house for dinner. She did wonderful needlework and tatting, and made intricate tatted crosses used for bookmarks. Etta never had any children of her own but kids loved to come to her house, play with toys she had and play board games, including Wahoo, a game played with marbles. John Bowers died June 12, 1967 and Etta on January 11, 1973; both are buried in Lanark Cemetery.

Like his brother Morris, Harry Huber Horner wasn’t happy in Kansas and returned to Shannon possibly as early as 1895, when he was 20 years old. He got a job as a hired man and appears on the 1900 US Federal Census for Cherry Grove Township as a boarder with the H. C. Ainsworth family, for whom he may have been a farm laborer. On January 23, 1901 he married Louise Hamann in Shannon. She was the daughter of Christof Hamann (born about 1827 and died before 1900) and Louise Maris (born in 1832). Both of her parents were born in Germany, but Louise Hamann was born in Illinois (probably Carroll County).

Harry Horner and Louise Hamann Horner took up farming south of Shannon, on 160 acres of the southeast part of Section 23 Cherry Grove Township. They produced five children. Gladys Louise Horner was born September 7, 1901; Florence Elizabeth Horner was born May 11, 1903; Elmer Earl Horner was born in 1904 and died in 1907; Huber Lee Horner was born December 24, 1906; and Francis Willard Horner was born March 20, 1910.

Harry and Louise (Hamann) Horner (photo on the right taken about 1937) lived on the farm until they retired in the early 1930s. He died January 29, 1960 and Louise died December 20, 1959; both are buried in Brethren Cemetery, Shannon.

On December 25, 1919 Gladys Louise Horner married Irvin Woessner in Shannon. He was born May 22, 1900 in Shannon, the son of John Woessner (1872-1966) and Lydia Bremmer (1878-1966) and like his father he was a farmer. Their farm straddled the line between Ogle and Carroll Counties, with 160 acres and their house in the southwest corner of Section 15, Forreston Township, Ogle County and 80 more acres in the southeast corner of Section 16, Shannon Township, Carroll County. Four children were born to Gladys and Irvin Woessner. Donald Irvin was born July 24, 1920 and died August 19. 1922. Lawrence Earl Woessner, Marilyn Rose Woessner, and Carol Jean Woessner all are married and have children and grandchildren.

Photo at left - Marilyn, Lawrence, and Carol Woessner with their parents,
Irvin and Gladys (Horner) Woessner, about 1936.

Irvin Woessner died suddenly July 8, 1944 in Shannon. Gladys Horner Woessner married Harvey Edward Woessner on December 17, 1945. He was born March 9, 1902 in Shannon, the son of Charles Woessner (1878-1938) and Cora Kuhlemeier (1881-1940). Harvey Edward Woessner and Irvin Woessner were first cousins; their paternal grandparents were John Woessner (1848-1894) and Barbra Woessner (1850-1926), both of whom are buried in Brethren Cemetery, Shannon. Harvey Edward Woessner farmed 160 acres on the south east corner of Section 10, Cherry Grove Township. Harvey Edward Woessner died February 20, 1983, and Gladys Louise Horner Woessner died October 18, 1990; both are buried in Brethren Cemetery, Shannon.

Florence Elizabeth Horner married G. Ray Moll on February 18, 1925. His parents were David Sheldon Moll (1871-1950) and Katharine Susan Woessner (1875-1970). Florence and G. Ray Moll farmed for 25 years west of Shannon, with 160 acres on the northeast corner of Section 22, and 80 acres across Highway 72 on the southeast corner of Section 15, all of it in Cherry Grove Township. Their children are: Kenneth Ray Moll, Doris Marie Moll, and Phyllis Elaine Moll. All have children and grandchildren; one has great grandchildren.

Florence and G. Ray retired in 1950 and moved to Shannon. Florence Horner Moll died September 4, 1969 and G. Ray Moll died February 25, 1963. Both are buried in Chapel Hill Cemetery, Freeport, Stephenson County, Illinois.

Photo on the right - Florence Horner Moll & G. Ray Moll, with children Kenneth and Doris, about 1937.

Huber Lee Horner was born December 24, 1906 and married Mildred Sturtevant on January 11, 1928. She was born June 21, 1907, the child of John Sturtevant (1882-1965) and Metha Brinkmeier (1885-1975). They farmed 80 acres on the eastern part of Section 23, adjacent to and just north of his father’s farm.

They had one child, Reynold Horner, who was born May 9, 1929. Reynold married and had children and grandchildren, and farmed on the land owned by his parents and grandparents (Harry and Louise Hamann Horner), all of which is along what is now Maple Grove Road. Reynold Horner died September 5, 2000.

Photo at right - Mildred and Huber Horner With Reynold about 1940.

Huber Lee Horner died January 11, 1992 and Mildred Sturtevant Horner died May 18, 1993. All three are buried at Brethren Cemetery.

Francis Willard Horner was born March 20, 1910; his name shows as Benjamin Horner (named after his grandfather) on the 1910 US Federal Census for Shannon Township, so it was apparently changed to Francis Willard later. He married Lucille Porter on September 2, 1936; her parents were Robert R. Porter, born about 1889 and Eva M. Condit, born about 1889. Francis Willard and Lucille Horner had been farming on his parents’ farm less than a year after they’d married, when he died of an appendectomy on August 7, 1937 in Freeport, Stephenson County, Illinois. He is buried at Brethren Cemetery. Lucille has remarried.

Benjamin Horner’s wife, Elizabeth Morris Horner, died in Dickinson County, Kansas on February 16, 1897

She is buried in the pioneer section of the Abilene, Kansas cemetery.

Her headstone reads "Elizabeth (Morris) Horner tombstone, reads Elizabeth, Wife of Benjamin. Abilene Cemetery, Abilene, Kansas"

Benjamin and his daughter Emma apparently remained in the Abilene area, because they appear on the 1900 US Federal Census for Abilene, Kansas, with his occupation being “salesman,” although the writing on the census is hard to read. According to the Abilene Heritage Center, they are not in the 1904 Abilene City Directory, so they must have moved back to Illinois sometime between 1900 and 1904. Emma Horner moved to somewhere around the Forreston, Ogle County area, but I’m uncertain who she lived with. She married Andrew Jackson Stoner sometime before 1907. His parents were Samuel Stoner (1824-1906) and Catherine Lehman (1825-1905). Their only child, Samuel Stoner, was born 26 May 1907.

In 1910 Emma Horner Stoner and Andrew Jackson Stoner and their child Samuel were living on a farm in Forreston Township, Ogle County, on Maple View Road near the corner of West Town Line Road, according to the 1910 US Federal Census. (Photo at left is Andrew Stoner, Samuel Stoner, Emma Stoner, and unknown child in the back seat of a horse and buggy, about 1909). Their farm neighborhood was filled with Horner family relatives. Living with them were Fred & Minerva Horner (he was a son of Peter Horner, Emma’s uncle) and their children: Grace, Ruth, Robert, Mary, Kenneth, and Leo. Their 15-year old son, Harold Horner, was living and working as the hired man on farm next door, that of Orr and Ida Anderson. At least that was the farm listed before Andrew Stoner’s on the census. Ida Anderson was another child of Peter Horner’s, and Orr Anderson was her second husband, whom she married after her first husband, Frank A. Marsh, died in 1902. Living with them was their child, Mina Anderson, and Ida’s two other children, Walter L. Marsh and Martha Marsh.

Emma Horner Stoner died October 9, 1916 and is buried in White Oak Cemetery, Forreston, Illinois, in the same plot with Andrew Jackson Stoner’s parents. By 1920, Andrew and Samuel were living in Rockford, Winnebago County, Illinois where Andrew was working as a mill wright. But they had moved to Burbank, California about 1925 and in the 1930 US Census he was married to Mabel M. Shierk. They were living on North Olive Ave. in Burbank and both were selling real estate. Mabel’s parents were Jacob Shierk (born in 1837) and (Unknown) Stebbins. I have no wedding date for them and the census only shows how old they were at their first marriages, and both had been married before. Andrew Jackson Stoner died August 18, 1945 and Mabel on May 2, 1959; both died in Los Angeles.

Samuel Stoner married Lelian Wood and they had two children.

They had been living in Long Beach, California when he died on November 14, 1950.

Lelian Wood has remarried.

This photo of Samuel Stoner taken about 1948

Benjamin Horner lived in a variety of places when he first arrived back in Illinois, including spending an apparently short time in downtown Chicago. Possibly as early as 1907 he married Jennie Morris, about whom not much is known. She is not named in any correspondence I have found between Benjamin Horner and his family. She was born about 1862 in New Mexico, and was 58 years old on the 1920 US Federal Census for Malibu Township, Los Angeles County, California. Benjamin sent Reid (my father) and Etta charming postcards from various locations in Wisconsin between about 1907 - 1915, and the January 6, 1909 card is of the National Soldier’s Home in Milwaukee. In it, he refers to himself and presumably his wife Jennie as “we.” He sent another card November 15, 1911 from the Veteran’s Home at Marston Hall, Wisconsin. In July 31, 1912 and August 1913 he sent postcards from the Grand View Hotel on Chain o’Lakes, Waupaca, Wisconsin, a summer resort where he was living and running the candy stand.

The photo above is the Waukesha, Wisconsin Old Soldier’s Home, December 26, 1916. Benjamin Horner and his wife are standing right above the words “Hall” and “Second” on the photo.

But apparently Wisconsin did not satisfy Benjamin Horner’s longtime wanderlust, for by January 1920 he and his wife Jennie had moved to Darlington Avenue in Malibu Township, Los Angeles County, California. Darlington Avenue is in the complex near the National Military Home in what was then Sawtelle, California, and is now in the middle of Los Angeles and right off Wilshire Blvd where Highway 5 crosses it. By March 23, 1920 he’d moved into the National Military Home so he appears at both locations on the 1920 US Federal Census. Benjamin Horner died at the National Military Home on September 1, 1923 and is buried at the Los Angeles National Cemetery, which is adjacent to the National Military Home.