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1821 - Abt 1871 (61 years)
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Several Horton family reunions in Quanah, Texas between 1976 and 2000 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 there 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 and Sarah had nine children in Tennessee and Mississippi and moved just across the state line from Tishimingo County to Allsboro, Alabama, where Sarah died in about 1872. Shortly afterwards, "Ezra" moved to Tennessee with his three youngest children. The reason for that move is not known. In the mid-1870's he married Margaret Amanda Ross Todd (the widow of George Henry Todd) in Dyersberg, Tennessee. Amanda (as she is identified in the marriage record) had three children of her own. The blended family eight then undertook a migration to Texas.
The oral history does not say exactly when Ezra moved to Texas, nor when he moved to Tennessee. He may even have moved to Texas before going to Tennessee to marry Margaret.
The wagon carrying family records and heirlooms was reportedly lost when the family crossed the Mississippi River during their migration to Texas. By 1880, the family settled had settled in Fannin County, in north central Texas, near his son John. Ezra died there before 1877, when (and where) Amanda married a James Williams. (By 1900, Amanda and James had moved to Quanah, Texas (about half-way between Fort Worth and Amarillo), where Margaret's children and several of Ezra's children lived.)
The oral history identifies our ancestor as "Ezra", but existing records indicate that his name was not “Ezra”. He may have have been called "Ezra", but (until very recently), the records that I had found not only do not mention “Ezra”, but all references to him start with the letter “A”. He identified as Azwell, Asbery, and Azre".and as “A” three times. (See Government Records that mention Azre Horton below.) 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 my realization in 2014 that the name recorded in the 1870 census was "Azre", not "Azne", as I had interpreted it 40 years earlier. Since "Azre" sounds so much like "Ezra", I presumed that the true spelling of his name was lost in the oral history.
Although there are Hortons in the 1830 census of Washington County, Tennessee who could possibly be related to Azre, his first evident appearance in the historical record was in the 1840 Federal Census of Bedford County, Tennessee, which lists an Azwell Horton" 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.) Bedford County is in the hills of Middle Tennessee, about 50 miles south southeast of Nashville, and 35 miles from the Alabama state line.
Azre appears 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 listed as "A Horton", with wife Sara 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, and just a few miles from the town of Allsboro. This census reports that Azre was born in Tennessee, and mistakenly reports that all three of the children were born in Alabama. Since the Hortons' residences in 1860 and 1870 are so close, I just discount the state name in their births.
The next documentation of Azre is the marriage of "A Horton" to "Mrs. M. Amanda Todd" in Dyersberg, Tennessee on November 26, 1874. This is consistent with the oral history that Sarah died in about 1872 and that Azre moved to Dyersberg between 1870 and 1874. Dyersberg is in far west Tennessee, near the Mississippi River.
The last documented event in Azre's life is 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 daughter.
In early 2022, I came upon the 1940 death certificate of Ezra's son Jeff . That document identified him as "Ezera". But, of course, we already know that his name began with "A", not "E", so I consider "Ezera" to be a mistake just like "Azwell" and "Asbury", especially since the death certificate says that a son-in-law was the informant.
Ardena was born in Mississippi in about 1850/ The 1860 census reports her name as Ardeny and that she was 11 years old, but she doesn't appear in the 1850 census, so I assume that the 1860 census was off by a year. We don't know what happened to Ardena; the 1860 census is the only formal documentation of her that I have found. We know her name to be Ardena because we know that her brother Will named a daughter after her.
Thomas Jefferson ("Jeff", 1852-1940) migrated to Texas with Azre and Amanda. One of the other children was Amanda's daughter Jennie (Virginia Caroline). Jeff and Jennie were were married in 1883 in Bonham, Texas, the county seat of Fannin County. They moved to Quanah in 1889 or 1890. Jennie died in Quanah in 1935. Jeff was living with his daughter Viera Reagan in Los Angeles when he died in 1940.
Given that the 1840-1880 censuses are inconsistent in their reports of Azre's name and both Azre's and Sarah's ages, the names and ages of the children are the primary factor in matching the family's record in the four censuses. 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, though I have not found a Hamby family there. But Azre's state of birth is given twice as Tennessee and twice as 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. I first encountered them when I discovered the family's 1850 and 1860 census records. Then, in 1981, Eva Horton Lobley (Will's daughter) sent me a letter noting that she knew of them through her father and that her sister Ardena was named for her aunt.
In about 2010, I found an Ancestry.com tree that identified Ardenny as Mary Ardilla Horton, who wound up in Arkansas. I spoke with that tree owner, and she claimed that she had some documentation of that fact somewhere, but her tree also listed census records from two other Horton families as documentation of Ardenny's birth. Given the distinct inconsistency in her claim and Eva Horton's letter, I rejected the notion that Ardenny and Mary Ardilla were the same person. validity of so I was quite skeptical of her claim. But what happened to them remains a mystery.
At least 44 Ancestry.com trees now conflate Ardenny with Mary Ardila, but only two trees that make that error, and one of them lists two two possible birth families.
A more problematic Horton error that has been copied to far more that 44 trees is the conflation of Azre Horton with a Daniel Asbury Horton, who is widely reported to have been born in 1822 to a specific Horton family in South Carolina. Daniel's life story is similar to Azre's in that both married twice, both lived for a time in Alabama, and both died without documentation in the 1880s. But I found enough conflicting records about the two men that I have written a proof that they are not the same person. The first several times I encountered "Daniel Ezra Asbery Horton" in Ancestry.com trees, I notified the tree owners of the error, but so many people on Ancestry.com and similar sites copy data willy-nilly that it soon got out of hand.
Acknowledgements
A good bit of the data in my Horton family tree came by word of mouth from my grandfather, Brady Horton, and from numerous people attending Horton family reunions between about 1977 and 2000. I must thank the many family members who contributed information, but I must also admit that until about 2013, I didn't even try to track changes or information sources. Fortunately, Mary Link, who is descended from Azre's son John Henry Horton, has done solid genealogical research on Azre, Sarah, and Margaret Amanda Horton and their children, and that information has greatly improved this narrative.
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