It appears that our Hamner family is descended from the Hamner families
of Mecklinberg County, Virginia. Patrick Hamner's website (below)
has additional information on many of those families. The exact relationship
to these Hamner families has yet to be determined and the earliest
known ancestor on our side is James (1787 - 1875). The family participated
in several migrations, first to Kentucky and
then to
Bartholomew and Johnson Counties, Indiana. In the mid-1850s, my Hamner
family moved to Buchanan County, Missouri (near
St. Joseph) and a few years later to Atchison, Kansas. The family
was in Atchison before the Civil War and also before Kansas became
a state.
Thomas Franklin "Doc" Hamner and his wife Nancy Ann Howard had 13
children in Atchison County. Most of the children stayed around Atchison
while a few of them moved to California.
The origins (and fates) of the Howard family is a little less certain.
Nancy Ann's father was William Howard, originally of Kentucky. Nancy
Ann
was born near St. Joseph, Missouri and her mother died soon after.
William remarried, had more children by his second wife and apparently
moved to California in the late 1870s. His date of death (or those
of his other children) have never been determined.
