Hannah (Henry) Horner, BiographyPorter County biographical sketches . . . .
Transcribed biography of Hannah (Henry) Horner
REMEMBRANCE
I remember my Grandmother, Hannah Henry Horner, as a small and very industrious person. The sugar cookies she gave me have helped a lot too! Hannah told me once of how she and her new husband, Samuel Horner, had walked across the fields after the wedding ceremony to the new log cabin he had built in a grove of trees. A large room was the kitchen and contained a fireplace. A small connecting room was their bedroom. Two more rooms were later added to this house; they also were of logs and the cracks filled with mud and one window of many panes in each room. Hannah was a tiny female about 5 feet tall but she had three sons, Robert, Dan and Garfield, and four daughters, Mattie, Harriet, Mary and Carrie. The boys slept in one bedroom and the girls in the other on feather mattresses with heavy pieced quilts over them.
The oxen had been replaced with horses but water was still carried from the spring. This was known as the St. Clair neighborhood and the young Horners were active in school affairs and dances and box socials of the times. School lasted three months and the teacher boarded with different families. They were taught to figure and most of them completed the second reader and had fun at spell-downs. School was about a mile from the log house and when weather was severe school ended.
I remember Hannah best when she was a widow. At this time Bob and Dan, my father, were dead and Harriet had married and moved to the west coast. Only Carrie and Garfield were at home and Carrie also later married and moved west. The old log house was now used for storage of grain and supplies and Hannah was enjoying her new modern home about a quarter mile from the 'old place' as she called it. I and my cousins visited here each summer and often walked down the dusty dirt road in our bare feet to get the mail.
Hannah and Carrie baked bread twice a week, 6 loaves at a time, and the odor was glorious! What a treat it was to be given the heel of the warm loaf spread with fresh butter and sprinkled with brown sugar! On churning day we youngsters stood fascinated to see the cream turn to yellow butter and were thrilled to be allowed to push the dasher up and down in the churn. This churning was done in the so-called summer house and the baking was done here too in a wood burning cook stove. This kept the main house cool and clean.
It was fun to pick up the apples that had dropped over night from the yellow transparent apple tree and how we kids gobbled down that apple sauce! Another treat was cornstarch pudding made with lots of eggs and rich milk and covered with cream! I've never tasted it so good since then.
Grandma Hannah also had lots of old fashioned flowers and memories return whenever I see the striped Tiger lilies which bloom in July. Such a brave woman -- why didn't I love and appreciate her more?
Submitted by Almira Horner Downing
Source: American Revolution Bicentennial Committee of Porter County. 1976. A Biographical History of Porter County, Indiana. Valparaiso, Indiana: American Revolution Bicentennial Committee of Porter County, Inc. 180 p.
Page(s) in Source: 123-124
This biography has been transcribed exactly as it was originally published in the source. Please note that we do not provide photocopies or digital scans of biographies appearing on this website.
Biography transcribed by Steven R. Shook