Bruner Line

A Kentucky family that moved to southern Indiana in the 1820s and, after 1850, on through Illinois to Mercer County, Missouri, where Eli Woodruff Bruner kept a forge beside his father’s wagon shop and captained the township’s militia company in 1861. Eli married Mary Elizabeth “Polly” Collins in Appanoose County, Iowa, in 1850; he died at Colorado City in 1879, and she at Siloam Springs, Arkansas, in 1887. Their daughter Mariah Emma married John Marshall Clifford, and her daughter Jessie married into the Holbrooks.

The line at a glance

Adam Peter Bruner Sr. (1763 - 1846) [unsourced] > Henry Hickman Bruner (c. 1806 - 1874?) = Sarah Ann Bridges > Eli Woodruff Bruner (1827 - 1879) = Mary Elizabeth Collins > Mariah Emma Bruner (1853 - 1933) = John Marshall Clifford > Jessie Lorene Clifford

The weakest links

• Adam Peter Bruner > Hickman (possible): stated in the Bruner research without a source.
• Hickman > Eli (probable): the censuses (1840, 1850, 1860) and the family’s naming fit; no record states it.

Where the line ends

It stops at Adam Peter Bruner Sr., the earliest name in the research.

Open questions

• Sources for Adam Peter Bruner, his wife Elizabeth Rice, and his Revolutionary service.
• Where Hickman and Sarah died: Tennessee or Arkansas.
• Eli’s Masonic lodge, and why he went to Colorado.