William Lemuel Horn Jr.

     William Lemuel Horn Jr. was born on 20 June 1880 in Fairfield, Freestone County, Texas.^2,3,1 He was the son of William Lemuel Horn and Naomi Simmons.¹ He married second Ruth Minerva Fairfield, daughter of James Edmund Fairfield and Catharine Minerva Cordrey, on 11 March 1916 at Angleton, Brazoria County, Texas.^4,5 He and Ruth Minerva Fairfield were divorced on 5 July 1932 in Angleton.⁶ He died on 25 May 1944 in Jefferson Davis Hospital, Houston, Harris County, Texas, at age 63.^2,7 He was buried on 30 May 1944 in Brookside Memorial Park, Houston.²
     
     Bill Horn grew up on the family farm on Tehuacana Creek in Freestone County near Fairfield. He was a veteran of the Spanish American War. It is unknown why he came to Brazoria County, or when he arrived. When he married Ruth Fairfield, he was 35, she 16. He had a store and gas station in Sandy Point, and was Postmaster. At that time, it was common for a store owner in a small community to also serve in that capacity. According to his daughter Ruth Anna and son Charles, he gave away groceries during the Great Depression rather than see people go hungry. They remember an old black man named Ike who came in the store one day and collapsed. When he was revived, he looked at Bill and said, "Mr. Hone, I's hungry!" Bill's generosity was admirable, but unwise. He went bankrupt and disappeared in about 1931 with Ruth's inheritance from her mother and from her grandfather Francis Cordrey. Ruth tried to find him, going so far as to hire a private detective, but to no avail. Some years later, Charles found him in Houston where he was running a boarding house for Spanish American War Veterans.

     Ruth Anna says she has heard talk from time to time that her father had been married before, and perhaps had other children. Naomi Yates, Bill Horn's niece, told the writer that she faintly remembered hearing the same thing. Also, the writer questioned some of the 'old timers' at the Horn Reunion at Carnegie, Oklahoma, in 1986, and some said they had heard the story but had no recollection of meeting any children of this supposed marriage. There is, however, probably at least some truth to the rumor because his age at the time of his first marriage was 23 according to the 1930 census. Assuming the census is correct, he married first in 1903 or 1904, but in the 1910 census he is found living as a single man in the household of his brother Bob in Vera, Texas. If he had living children, they were not with him in 1910, and no unidentified Horn children have been found living with any of Bill's siblings. Taking everything into consideration, the most likely scenario, provided there was issue, is that Bill and his first wife divorced. Although it would be interesting to discover the truth of the matter, it seems an impossible task. Bill Horn is nowhere to be found in the 1900 census, and without a clue as to his movements between then and 1910, the writer has no idea where to begin looking.