The Horton family reunions in Quanah, Texas were organized around the descendants of Ezra Horton. Several of Ezra's children lived in or near Quanah in the late 19th century. Oral family history tells us that Ezra Horton was a farmer from Tishomingo County, Mississippi, who migrated to Texas via Tennessee in the 1870's. Although Ezra never reached Quanah himself, Quanah became the primary home base of his children and their descendants. Two of his sons lived out their years in Quanah, one daughter lived nearby (closer to Vernon, Texas), and another son and daughter lived near Quanah for a while, before moving on to New Mexico.
According to the family stories, Ezra's wife Sarah died in about 1872 in Allsboro, Alabama (just across the border from Mississippi), and Ezra then moved to Tennessee with two or three of his younger children, where he married Margaret Amanda Ross ("The Widow Todd"), who had two (or maybe three) young children herself. Ezra and Margaret moved on Bonham, Texas (in Fannin County, north of Dallas), and Ezra died there sometime before 1890.
In truth, it's not real clear that there ever was an Ezra Horton. That is, though I believe that the story above is accurate, it seems pretty apparent that Ezra's name wasn't really "Ezra". He may have been called Ezra, but none of the few records that have been found (see "Government Records that mention Ezra Horton" below) use that name or the initial "E". He is referred to as "Azwell", "A", "Asbery", and "Azre" (or something like that), but never "Ezra". It seems to me that Ezra is a common enough name that, if that were his name, names like Azwell and Azre wouldn't have been recorded out of confusion. But Ezra is the name that survived oral family history, and no other name appears more than once in official records, so I continue to refer to him as Ezra.
Although there are Hortons in the 1830 census of Washington County, Tennessee who could be related to Ezra, his first evident appearance in the historical record was in the 1840 census of Bradford County, Tennessee. An "Azwell Horton" is listed, with a wife and two boys under 5. (The 1840 census recorded the first name of only the head of household, and then just counted all other males and females by age range.) Bradford County is in the hills of Middle Tennessee, about 50 miles south southeast of Nashville, and 35 miles from the Alabama state line.
Ezra appeared as "A Horton" in the 1850 census for Cartersville, in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, with his wife Sarah, and five children. His occupation was listed as "farmer", and everyone in the family is shown as being born in Tennessee. Tishomingo County is in the far northwest corner of Missippi, bordering Tennessee and Alabama. Cartersville appears to survive today only as a tiny hamlet called Carter on country roads just a mile or two from where the Natchez Trace crosses the Alabama-Mississippi border.
In the 1860 census, Ezra is in the same place, listed as "Asbery" Horton, with wife "Sallie", three of the five children from the 1840 census, and four more children, shown as being born in Mississippi. Using the children's ages and birthplaces as a guide, Ezra appears to have moved from Tennessee to Alabama between 1847 and 1850.
In the 1870 census, Ezra is just listed as "A Horton", with wife Sarah, and their three youngest children. They are in the community of Cherokee, in Colbert County, Alabama, which is just across the state line from Cartersville. This census reports that Ezra was born in Tennessee, and all three of the children were born in Alabama. Since the Horton's residences in 1860 and 1870 are so close, I just discount the state name, and consider that they were born in the same general area where they lived in 1870.
The next documentation of Ezra is his marriage to "Mrs. M. Amanda Todd" in Dyersberg, Tennessee on November 26, 1874. So we have to figure that Sarah died, and Ezra moved to Dyersberg between 1870 and 1874. Dyersberg is in far west Tennessee, near the Mississippi River.
Ezra next shows up in the 1880 census for Bonham, Fannin County, Texas, northeast of Dallas, near the Oklahoma border, with his new wife "M.A", and one stepdaughter.
We can't say exactly when Ezra moved to Texas, any more than we can say when he moved to Tennessee, nor exactly who was traveling with him. (We don't even know for sure that he didn't move to Texas before coming back to Tennessee to marry Margaret.) Ezra's children Will and Sidney were almost certainly along for both of those moves, as were Margaret's children Frank and Jennie. Oral history suggests that Ezra's son Jeff, who was in his 20's at the time, was with his father, too.
That's the last report we have of Ezra. The 1990 census puts Margaret and her new husband, James Williams, in Tarrant County (Fort Worth), Texas, and gives a marriage date of 1887. Since Margaret remarried in Bonham in 1887 (to James Williams), we have to figure that Ezra died there between 1880 and 1887. Margaret and James are in Quanah in the 1910 census, and she died there in 1913.
Dennis was born about 1837, according to the 1850 census, and reportedly died as a prisoner of war during the Civil War, in Alton Military Prison, near St. Louis.
Advil was born about 1839, according to the 1850 census. He didn't appear in any of the family stories I heard, and my first discovery of him was when I found the 1850 census record in a Dallas library. No other records of Advil's life or death have been found.
John Henry was born in 1840 in Tennessee, grew up in Tishomingo County, Mississippi and fought in the Civil War. He met his wife, Mary Carolyn Wilson, in Tennessee, and they moved to Texas shortly after marrying in 1872 or 1873. The first known Horton event in Texas is the birth of John's first son Edgar in Farmersville (north of Dallas) in 1875. I think that John was the first Horton settler in Hardeman County (Quanah), too, but we don't know precisely when he arrived. I think that his last child, Annie, who was born in 1885, was born in Quanah, so he must have arrived shortly before that. When the Hortons first arrived in Hardeman County, they reportedly lived in a half dugout home out on the farm. John died in Quanah in 1912, and one of his great grandsons, Johnny Horton, still works the family farm in Quanah.
Lizzie (Elizabeth Genora, 1842-1924) was born in Tennessee, and, like her brother, John Henry, moved to Texas before Ezra did. Lizzie and her husband, Mack Harvey, met in Tennessee or Mississippi, and Mack and Lizzie may have been the instigators of the Texas migration. Mack and Lizzie settled near Vernon (Wilbarger County), Texas, about 30 miles from Quanah. She died there in 1924. Someone at a Horton Family reunion (I don't know who) reported her birth date as July 18, 1842, and her name as Elizabeth Genora, though I don't have any formal documentation of that date or that middle name.
Jimmy (James Arthur 1848-1909) was born in Tennessee about. Family oral history has it that he moved to Oklahoma and lost contact with the rest of the family. Mary Link has discovered that his name was James Arthur Horton and that migrated to Texas independently of the rest of the family, then to Arkansas, and then to Oklahoma. She also found children and grandchildren by two marriages.
Ardena was evidently the first of Ezra and Sarah's children to be born in Mississippi - in 1848 or 1849, according to the 1860 census (though she doesn't appear in the 1850 census). Will named one of his daughters after her, but we don't know what happened to her. She's identified as "Ardeny" in the 1860 census, which is the only place we've found any official record of her. (Note: Some family trees on Ancestry.com identify Ardeny as Mary Ardilla Horton, but I haven't seen any documentation of that connection.)
Jeff (Thomas Jefferson Horton, 1852-1940) migrated to Texas along with Ezra, Ezra's new wife Margaret Amanda Todd, and Margaret Todd's daughter, Jennie. Jeff and his stepsister, Jennie, were married in Bonham, Texas, in 1883. They moved to Quanah in 1889 or 1890. Jennie died in Quanah in 1935. Jeff was staying with his daughter Viera Reagan in Los Angeles when he died in 1940. One of Jeff's grandsons, Gene Horton, farmed Jeff's land, and one of Gene's daughters still lives in Quanah.
Will (William Wright Horton, 1855-1907) migrated to Quanah with the family, and then moved his family to Fort Sumner, New Mexico in 1902. Will was shot and killed by his son-in-law Elmer Hern in New Mexico in 1907. Elmer and his wife Alva then fled to Canada. Will's daughter Eva Lobley lived to the age of 100 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and raised nine children. Will's son Grady Horton was a childhood friend of my grandfather, Brady (son of Jeff), but after Will moved his family to New Mexico, Grady and Brady didn't meet again until a Horton reunion in Quanah, Texas in the early 1980's.
Sidney Ann (1858-1942) migrated to Quanah with the family and married Edward Cooper (I don't know where or when). Her husband died (or left) when her daughters were young. She ultimately migrated to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
Note that it's really the children's names and ages (along with the father's first initial, "A"), not the parents' names or ages, that allow us to recognize the family in the various censuses. Unfortunately, the ages, names, and birthplaces of Ezra and Sarah are surprisingly inconsistent. The absence of the name "Ezra" from any of these records is particularly interesting. I can't say whether the name Ezra was mistakenly written down by someone who heard word-of-mouth stories, or whether he was really known as Ezra (outside of the official records). But it does seem apparent that Ezra was not his real name.
The origins of Ezra/Asbery and Sarah/Sallie are also unclear. I'm comfortable saying that Sarah was born in Tennessee, but the evidence about Ezra's state of birth seems split between Tennessee and South Carolina. And given the disparate ages in the various censuses, the best I can say about Ezra's and Sarah's birth dates is that Ezra was born between 1808 and 1821, and Sarah was born between 1809 and 1821.
In addition, Ezra and Sarah appear to have had two children, Advil and Ardena, about whom we know nothing. None of the many family stories I heard at family reunions mentioned either of them. But Eva Horton sent me a letter in 1981 noting that they were missing from the family trees I had printed up to that point, and I found them listed by name in one census record each. But what happened to them remains a mystery.