Henry Hickman Bruner
Farmer and later wagon maker, known as Hickman, who moved from Martin County, Indiana, to Appanoose County, Iowa, by 1850 and on to Somerset, Mercer County, Missouri, where he was a founding member of the Methodist church in 1858. He married Sarah Ann Bridges, probably in 1824 in Lawrence County, Indiana. Probably the father of Eli Woodruff Bruner, beside whose forge at Somerset he kept a wagon shop.
Life
- c. 1806BornKentucky
Aged 45 in 1850 and 54 in 1860, born Kentucky. The Bruner research file puts his birth in Breckenridge County.
- 1824Married Sarah Ann Bridges
- 1840Lived
- 1850Lived
- 1860LivedSummersett Township, Mercer County, Missouri
Head of the next household (family 815), farmer.
documentedproven - 1874Died1874
The research gives no source for the year.
compiledpossibleSources
- Reasoning:
research/bruner/bruner_family_research.md
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- —BuriedBruner Cemetery, Sullivan Gardens, Sullivan County, Tennessee
The research gives no source. The 1886 sketch of David M. Bruner, probably his son, says both parents died in Arkansas.
compiledpossibleSources
- Reasoning:
research/bruner/bruner_family_research.md
- Reasoning:
Family
- Father
- Adam Peter Bruner
The Bruner research file states it without a source, apparently from FamilySearch, and adds that he is in his father's household in Breckenridge County, Kentucky, in 1810 (a census of that year names only heads).
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- Reasoning:
research/bruner/bruner_family_research.md
- Reasoning:
- Mother
- Elizabeth Rice
As for his father.
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research/bruner/bruner_family_research.md
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Pedigree
Notes
Farmer, and later a wagon maker: he kept a wagon shop beside his son Eli’s forge at Somerset, Mercer County, Missouri. A “Henry Bruner” household in Daviess County, Indiana, in 1830 (record) has eleven people, and its only grown man is 40 to 50, too old for Hickman, so whose household it was is open. In 1840 he is in Martin County with his wife and four children. On 23 December 1844 Congressman John W. Davis presented “the petition of Hickman Bruner and 32 others, asking a post route from Mount Pleasant,” then the seat of Martin County [identity probable]. In Center Township, Appanoose County, Iowa, in 1850 (“Hickman Burner,” $400), two pages from Bradley and Andrew Collins. In 1860 farming beside Eli in Mercer County, Missouri; a founding member of the Somerset Methodist church in 1858. The county history of 1888 lists “Hickman Bruner, a wagon shop, and Eli Bruner, a blacksmith’s shop” among Somerset’s first businesses. An “H. Bruner,” probably he, was a member of Somerset Lodge No. 206 of the Freemasons in 1865, when Eli was its Senior Warden (record).
Children named in the research: Lucinda (c. 1825), Eli Woodruff (1827), Nancy Ellen (1830), Adam (c. 1835-37), Absalom (c. 1838), Sarah (c. 1841; later Taylor, d. 1922 at St. John, Whitman County, Washington) and David M. (b. 22 July 1846, Knox County, Illinois, a druggist in Iowa in 1886 [probable]). The E. G. Bruner whom the Bruner research file lists among his children is his grandson Eli Hickman “Heck” Bruner.
The 1886 sketch of David M. Bruner traces the family to Indiana in 1852, Putnam County, Missouri, in 1856 and Kansas in 1857, where the father took up a claim, then Mercer County, and at last Arkansas, “where both parents died.” Those dates don’t fit the censuses well (Appanoose in 1850, Mercer by 1858).
Open questions
- Where did he die? Sullivan Gardens, Tennessee (the Bruner research file), or Arkansas (the 1886 sketch)? Neither has a source for 1874.
- His parents: no source is given for Adam Peter Bruner and Elizabeth Rice.
- Who was the older man in the 1830 Daviess County household?
- A photograph posted as Hickman Bruner and Sarah Bridges (Arkansas GenWeb, contributed by Mike Freels) shows an elderly couple, the woman in a dress of the 1890s (picture). If it is them, he lived well past 1874; if not, who are they?