Alford M. Hacker Jr.

ALFORD (Alfred) MEGGS HACKER Jr. was born 25 February 1845 in Tennessee, the fourth of six children of Alford M. Hacker Sr. and his wife Margaret Freeman Hacker.

If his parents ever owned property, I have not found a record of it. Instead, they moved a lot, which may or may not have been related to his father's job as stagecoach driver.

When the Civil War broke out, the family was living in Roane County, where other members of the extended Hacker family also lived. Alfred married (1) SABIE ROBERTS 11 08 November 1864 in Roane Co., Tennessee; and when the war ended, they lived for a while in the same county. They had two chidren, JAMES T. SHELLEY Hacker, born March 30, 1866, and Virginia Elizabeth, born Feb. 26, 1867.

Sabie Roberts Hacker died 11 April 1868 in McMinn Co., TN. She appears to have been the daughter of blacksmith Tine Roberts and his wife Mary, who were in the Roane 9th District in the 1860 census with a daughter Saby, 21, in their household.

Times must have been hard for the Hackers after the War. In the 1870 census, Alfred was living with his mother in the household of his brother-in-law, John Delaney and wife Mary Jane (Hacker) Delaney. There was no sign of Alfred's two children. In fact, I have never found his son James in a census listing of this family.

In 1880, James was living and working as a farm laborer in the household of Jacob P. HAGLER, 29, a farmer, and his wife Emily, living in District 8, Meigs Co. Were these people kin or just previous neighbors? In the 1860 Roane Co. census, Jacob Hagler's father Andrew J. Hagler was living a few households away from the Hackers, so the families were at least acquainted with each other..

Alfred's 1915 pension questionnaire for veterans is the only source of James's parentage. It lists James' name and birth, with the notation "Now living in Oklahoma."

On 18 January 1871 in Meigs Co., Alfred married (2) NANCY TAYLOR WHITE, who was born 01 March 1847. In 1880, Alfred's census household included his wife, his mother Margaret Hacker, 62; daughter Elizabeth, 13; and children from his marriage to Nancy: MARGARET Hacker, 8; NANCY Hacker, 6; ALFRED Hacker, 4; MARY (MOLLY) Hacker, 2.

Other children that I know of born to Alfred and Nancy include ESTELLA L. HACKER, b. 15 March 1881; DALLAS HAMILTON "HAM" HACKER, b. 22 June 1883; TENNESSEE "TENNIE" S. HACKER, b. 22 July 1885; and KATE HACKER, b. 08 August 1887. There may have been other children as the newspaper article indicated that he had a dozen children.

Alfred appears to have remained in McMinn Co. for the rest of his life. He is listed on the 1890 Veteran's Census for McMinn, and his pension papers were all processed from McMinn. He was living in McMinn County in 1809 and 1812 when two of his sons were born.

The newspaper articles celebrating Alfred 95th birthday and his and Nancy's anniversary, as well as his obituary, note that he was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. When he died 11 June 1937, he was the last member of his post.

We know little about his wife Nancy, but it seems likely that she was a midwife, for in the McMinn County Birth Records, a Mrs. Nan Hacker was midwife for the birth of Hazel Shadden born 27 Jan 1910 in Athens. Nancy's middle name of Taylor was her given name - she had not been married before her marriage to Alfred.

The birthdates given for Alfred in his pension conflict with the newspaper accounts, but he lived to be very old - at least 92 although the newspaper said 98 - when he died in Athens in 1937. He outlived all of his children except his son Dallas Hamilton "Ham", and daughter Margaret Luda (Hacker) Knox. His sister Martha Jane (Hacker) Delaney survived him, dying in 1940.

Nancy was in ill health when Alfred died, and lived only two months longer than her husband, dying 21 August 1937 in Athens. They are both buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery, Athens, McMinn Co. Descendants still live in the area today.

©Alexis Hacker Scholz 2002-2014.