Horner, John M.

Life of John M. Horner

Source: Improvement Era, 1903-4.

"I was born on a New Jersey farm in Monmouth county, June 15, 1821, the son of Stacy and Sarah (Johnson) Horner. There I continued to live until the end of my twenty-first year, when I was expected to shift for myself. I was without money and had only small business experience. I had good health however and was industrious and ambitious. These qualifications impelled me to strive to be the best workman on the farm to run faster and jump farther than anyone else, to be at the head of my class at school. I did not always succeed but was awarded a premium by my teacher, for "trying harder to learn than any other scholar in school."

My star of hope arose early promising me many things as well as time to acquire them. My youthful hopes of earthly wealth have been more than realized. I never thought myself a pauper or a dependent upon father or friends. I fully realized that I must rely upon myself and the Great Father for success, that I must take my chances among thirty million others and await my opportunity.

Industry, honesty and perseverance were my guiding stars to success. I found them in demand everywhere I went. I had never thought of success coming to me from other sources; it never did. After becoming my own boss, which all young men were supposed to be in New Jersey at the age of 21, nothing better presenting itself, I hired to a farmer to work during the summer and fall for nine dollars per month, with board and washing. In the winter, I taught a district school. Thus passed my twenty-second year, as happy a year as has ever fallen to my lot to enjoy. I was just as content working for thirty-five cents per day as I was in after years when my time for overseeing my business netted me seventy-five dollars per day or when my net income exceeded sixty thousand dollars per year.

During the previous three or four years I had been wrought up over the subject of religion. The Methodists were the most persistent in my neighborhood and my preference was for them. In these days came ministers of a new sect calling themselves Latter-day Saints, with a new revelation preaching the gospel of the New Testament with its gifts and blessings. It attracted much attention, people listened and some obeyed thereby enjoying the promised blessing. Members of the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian faith as well as non-professors began to join them. Among the latter class were my father, mother and sisters. I was the first of the family to obey being baptized by Erastus Snow in the Layawa Creek on the second day of August 1840. In the spring of 1843, I went up to Nauvoo. Here I was introduced to and shook hands with the Prophet Joseph Smith. I stopped in Nauvoo during the summer and was one of the four men who laid the brick in David Yearsley's three story house and in the Masonic brick lodge under guidance of Brother George Woodward, who was one of the four.

Mixing mortar, handling the trowel, the square, the saw, the plane, etc, was new work for me, but, as in the case of using farm tools, I found it a great help in after years not only in the days of my poverty when I did all my own work but later thus knowing how to handle tools and do things enabled me to build up and superintend the comparatively large business I afterwards controlled.

In viewing my strenuous eventful and comparatively long and busy life the wise counsel of our present president of the Church and the twelve apostles given to the young men to learn mechanical trades as well as book knowledge and book theories, etc., strikes me with great force and I believe that every young man heeding this counsel will double and perhaps treble his value in the world. Not less wise is the move now being made in some of the Church Schools to instruct their students in manual and domestic as well as brain labors. We are taught that man has at least four natures, mental, moral, spiritual and physical and of course if only one or two of his natures are schooled he is not a fully developed man.

But to proceed. There being no labor to be had in Nauvoo, in the fall I went home to the school which I had left, and in the following spring, I returned to Nauvoo, where, at the suggestion of Brigham Young given at a meeting of the Seventies, my name was placed upon the books as one of their number. Things were exciting in Nauvoo in those days. The Laws, Fosters, Higbees and other apostates and enemies were doing all the injury they could to the Church and apparently were seeking the life of the Prophet.

About this time, a convention was called for the purpose of making a nomination of some one for President of the United States. The Prophet was unanimously chosen and many delegates were appointed to electioneer in a number of states, to endeavor to elect the Prophet president. I was sent back to New Jersey; I ordered a thousand or so of the Prophet's "Views of the Powers and Policies of the Government of the United States," printed and took these with me. One night while speaking to a full house of attentive listeners, I invited all to speak who wished to, at the close of my lecture. One gentleman got up and said: "I have one reason to give why Joseph Smith can never be President of the United States: my paper, which I received from Philadelphia this afternoon said that he was murdered in Carthage jail, on June 27th." Silence reigned: the gathering quietly dispersed; but the grief and sadness of this heart was beyond the power of man to estimate.

The Prophet's martyrdom ended our political campaign. It was a severe shock to us. But we kept up our branch meeting, myself and other elders taking short missions into the northern part of New Jersey, and into eastern Pennsylvania, holding wood meetings, preaching in school houses, etc. For one year or so thereafter, in the meantime reading the Nauvoo papers eagerly. Finally word came that the Saints were going to leave Nauvoo for California then a province of Mexico, and counsel was given to the eastern Saints to charter a ship and go around the Horn to California.

Ship Brooklyn was chartered and with two hundred and sixty eight Saints, including their children, I left New York in February 1846 for California by the way of Cape Horn. We stopped at Juan Fernandez Island, and at the Sandwich Islands finally reaching California in about six months.

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In the summer of 1845, I was boarding with my father, and teaching a district school. In his corn field were sharp corners, and crooks in his fence, leaving a few square feet of land, here and there, which he could not cultivate with his teams. He consented that myself and brother might dig it up and plant potatoes in it for ourselves, which work we did mornings and evenings, so as not to interfere with our daily duties. We did not anticipate much of an income from what we were then doing; but it was exercise, and a good lesson for us. It was the first time we had ever attempted to produce wealth from the elements, working under our own dictation. Little did we think that eight years from that time, we would have raised and sold for gold coin over one million dollar's worth of potatoes, in a strange country, three thousand miles away. Producing wealth from the elements has been our occupation since, and several millions of wealth, besides the one referred to above, has been produced under our superintendence. One hundred and fifty men was about the extreme number employed by us at any one time in California; here in Hawaii, the average has been double that number. The point I wish to make is, we raised some potatoes along our father's fence, dug and buried them to protect them from the winter's frost. They were yet under the frozen ground in January, 1846, when I was ready to start for California. I sold my share of them for five dollars. When I got to New York, I added two dollars to the five and bought a Colt's six-shooter pistol. I was told, "you are going to a country occupied by savage beasts, and still more savage men, so you must go armed to protect yourself."

When I arrived in California, it was in the throes of a revolution. A war was raging between the United States and Mexico. I carried my rifle and pistol wherever I went prospecting but seeing no one whom I wanted to shoot and no one who wished to shoot me, I concluded my pistol was useless and traded it to a Spaniard for a yoke of oxen, the first animals I ever owned; with them I plowed for my first crop of vegetables in California. From this small beginning grew the large business referred to. Five dollars worth of potatoes in New Jersey was a small capitol for starting a large farming business in California, but it had its effect; it helped me to a yoke of oxen. If I had idled away my mornings and evenings, I would have had no potatoes: no potatoes, no five dollars; no five dollars, no pistol; no pistol, no oxen; no oxen, no plowing and experimenting in 1847 and '48, and perhaps the foundation would never have been laid for the large business I afterwards built up.

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