Descended from Azre Horton via Thomas Jefferson (Jeff) Horton, Brady Horton, and Valle Horton Richmond.
The Horton family reunions in Quanah, Texas were organized around the descendants of "Ezra" Horton and Sarah Hamby or Henby. (There is no record of her last name.) Several of their children lived in or near Quanah in the late 19th century, and some descendants remain their today. 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 Todd ("The Widow Todd"), who had at least three young children herself. Ezra and Margaret and their blended family moved to Fannin County, Texas (northeast of Dallas). His children John, Lizzie, and Jimmy moved to Texas before he did, and his three youngest children accompanied him on his migration to Texas. The wagon carrying family records and heirlooms was lost when the family crossed a river during their migration to Texas. He died in Fannin County in north central Texas in the 1880's. Six of his children settled, at least for a while, in or near Quanah, Texas, on the road from Dallas to Amarillo. His second wife Amanda and her third husband James Williams also settled in Quanah, where they operated a store.
The oral history identifies our ancestor as "Ezra", but there's no documented evidence that his hame was "Ezra". He may have actually have been called "Ezra", but none of the few records that have been found (see Government Records that mention Azre Horton below) use that name or the initial "E". He is referred to as "Azwell", "A", "Asbery", and "Azre", 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. The key to my decision to identify him as "Azre" was a my realization in 2014 that the name recorded in the 1870 census was not "Azne" (as it had been transcribed), but "Azre". Since "Azre" is so close to "Ezra", I now presume that the true spelling of his name was lost in the oral history, and that it was "Azre".
Although there are Hortons in the 1830 census of Washington County, Tennessee who could be related to Azre, 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.
Azre 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 Mississippi, 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, Azre is in the same place, listed as "Asbery" Horton, with wife "Sallie" (a common nickname for Sarah), 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, Azre appears to have moved from Tennessee to Alabama between 1847 and 1850.
In the 1870 census, Azre 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 Azre 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 Azre is the marriage of "A Horton" to "Mrs. M. Amanda Todd" in Dyersberg, Tennessee on November 26, 1874. So we have to figure that Sarah died, and Azre moved to Dyersberg between 1870 and 1874. Dyersberg is in far west Tennessee, near the Mississippi River.
Azre next shows up in the 1880 census for Bonham, Fannin County, Texas, northeast of Dallas, near the Oklahoma border, as "A. Horton", with his new wife "M.A", and one stepdaughter.
We can't say exactly when Azre 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.) Azre'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 Azre'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 Azre. The 1900 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 1887 (to James Williams), we have to figure that Azre died between 1880 and 1887, probably in Fannin County. 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, though records of that prison camp do not list Dennis Horton among the soldiers who died there.
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 his great grandson Johnny Horton is a rancher on the family land near Quanah.
Lizzie (Elizabeth Genora, 1842-1924) was born in Tennessee, and, like her brother, John Henry, moved to Texas before Azre did. Lizzie and her husband, Mack Harvey, were married in 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. 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, that he was firt married in Alabama, and that he 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 Azre 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 the first Ardena. 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 a Mary Ardilla Horton, who wound up in Arkansas, but there is no published documentation of that connection.)
Jeff (Thomas Jefferson Horton, 1852-1940) migrated to Texas along with Azre, Azre'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.
Sidney Ann (1858-1942) migrated to Quanah with father and step-mother. She married Edward Cooper in 1878 in Fannin County, Texas. They had six daughters by 1889, when he either died or left (the stories vary). Sidney and the girls ultimately migrated to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where her brother Will lived.
Will (William Wright Horton, 1855-1907) migrated to Texas with Azra and Amanda. He married Hester Ann Burns in 1886, and soon moved to Quanah. He moved 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, 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 late 1970s.
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 Azre and Sarah are surprisingly inconsistent. Where the recorded names of "Azwell" and "Asbury" came from is a mystery.
The origins of Azre and Sarah are also unclear. I'm comfortable saying that Sarah was born in Tennessee, but the evidence about Azre'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 Azre's and Sarah's birth dates is that Azre was born between 1808 and 1821, and Sarah was born between 1809 and 1821.
In addition, Azre 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 Lobley 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.
Also, parenthetically, Azre Horton is NOT the same man as Daniel Asbury Horton, although they have been conflated with each other in several Ancestry.com family trees.