John
Warner
John Warner, second child and eldest son of John Warner and Marancy
Alexander, was born 24 February 1847 in Winslow, Stephenson County, IL. He was his father’s namesake, but
does not seem to have been a “Junior” and will not be referred to as such in this biography, although
sometimes on the other pages of this website he is called that in order to make clear which John Warner is
being discussed. It could be that the two Johns had different middle names.
John’s childhood was radically shaped by the death of his father 5 January, 1858. Given that the late 1850s were not a time when widows were offered good-paying jobs, and given that Marancy still had fairly small children to care for, it was up to John as the eldest surviving male of the household to support the family, even though he had not quite turned eleven at the time of the tragedy. He waited just long enough to graduate from the sixth grade, then at age twelve assumed the responsibility. (Despite having a limited education, his clerical skills did not suffer and in middle age he would slip into professions which required skills in reading, writing, and record-keeping.) Precisely what type of work he found at age twelve is not recorded. It was probably a variety of odd jobs at first. However, it is worth noting that his father was a miller. Young John may have had some opportunity to follow in those footsteps. If so, this would surely have brought him to the huge mills of Nathaniel Martin, a mile north of Winslow in the village then known as Martin, that would later be relabelled Martintown. This location was just barely over the state line in Green County, WI. This employment scenario, while undocumented, would help explain how he came to know his future wife Eleanor Amelia Martin, daughter of Nathaniel. Another link is that John’s first cousin Robert Emmett Mack temporarily lived two or three houses away from Nathaniel and Hannah in the late 1860s, while working as a Martintown blacksmith.
In the summer of 1862 Marancy Alexander married a neighbor, Nicholas Balliet, who had recently become a widower. John no longer had to be the man of the household. Nor was he even the eldest male child. He had at least two Balliet step-brothers who were senior to him, though one of those was so much older he had already made his own way in the world. The other, David M. Balliet, was one year older.
The extended period without a father must have left John with a degree of pride and independence that could not be surpressed. John was part of a generation whose young males were measured by their willingness to show their courage and determination, so he chafed to join the Union Army and fight in the Civil War. He attempted to do so as early as sixteen, but was rebuffed by the local recruiting officer, who knew him and was aware John was too young. At seventeen, by taking advantage of a new recruiter who had not lived in Winslow long, John succeeded in his ambition. He enlisted 28 May 1864 and the eighteenth of June was inducted into Company F of the 142nd Infantry Regiment, Illinois at Camp Butler near Springfield. He was mustered out 26 October 1864 at Chicago, IL. He must have indulged his mother to a degree by signing up only for a 100-day term. He was accompanied on his adventure by Aquilla Ballenger, who was even younger -- not turning seventeen until the middle of their hitch. Aquilla was the stepson of John’s uncle Seba White. Like John, Aquilla returned safely, going on to spend over sixty years residing in Schuyler County, MO, where he did not pass away until he was nearly eighty-three years old. (The photograph at the upper left was scanned from a tintype preserved by John’s son Albert Frederick Warner. The image dates from the Civil War period and probably shows John at about age fifteen or sixteen. Though this is a low-resolution version, perhaps you can see the wispy traces of a beard along his jawline. Had he died in the war like so many other young American men of his generation, this might have been the only photograph of John ever to exist. John’s military file describes him as 5’5” tall, with hazel eyes, a dark complexion, and dark hair.)
Marancy’s maternal concerns went on past 1864, though. A couple of weeks before John was mustered out, David M. Balliet joined up, as if to take his step-brother’s place. But fortune smiled again. Though the war cost Winslow a number of its young men -- the casualties including John’s first cousins George C. and Harry A. Mack -- David Balliet made it back intact. One of the tales he told was to boast of having been issued a cartridge rifle, an advance in weaponry John had narrowly missed out on.
Though the war went on past John’s own eighteenth birthday, he did not reenlist. It may be that Nicholas Balliet had entered the period of ill health that would claim his life, though remained alive long enough to be noted in the 1865 state census. If so, John would have been needed once again as a breadwinner.
By the end of the 1860s romance bloomed between John and Eleanor Amelia Martin, better known as Nellie Martin. If he had not worked at the Martin mills in his younger days, he surely did so during that period. His occupation as given on his marriage declaration is mechanic, and this must mean he maintained equipment for Nathaniel Martin. Given that he was a young man of modest means, Nellie could have been said to have been nearly out of his league. She was the eldest daughter of a village founder and reigning patriarch, the biggest landowner within miles. Nellie could have had her pick of any number of suitors, but she chose John. The marriage took place 21 April 1869 in Cadiz, Green County, WI. (Cadiz, as shown on the marriage record, may be shorthand for Cadiz Township -- this was the official name of the part of Green County that included Martintown. If so, the ceremony probably took place within Martintown itself. However, a hamlet of Cadiz existed back in those days, and the couple could have been married at a home or public gathering spot in that community.)
Nellie, as a member of the clan of Nathaniel Martin and his wife Hannah Strader, is the subject of a full biography on another section of this website. For more about her and her background, click here.
The marriage placed John in distinctly different economic circumstances than his mother and siblings. As a dowry gift, Nathaniel gave the young couple eighty acres of farmland at the edge of Martintown, along the Pecatonica River in Green County. In the coming decades there may have been occasional seasons when money was less plentiful than at other times, but he could never again be said to be poor. Not surprisingly, this level of security resulted in John putting down roots with Nellie in Martintown for decades. This stands in contrast to the rest of the Warner family. Over the course of the 1870s all of his full siblings -- his older sister was Araminta, his younger brothers were Fred, Clifford, and Charles -- left for Nebraska, where homesteading opportunities allowed them and their young families to have a chance to prosper. It is thought that his Balliet step-siblings all left as well, with the possible exception of Susan Balliet. (Her married name is unknown, and so she has not been tracked past the 1870 census, when she was nineteen and getting by as a domestic servant in Winslow.) John would see his birth family members seldom if at all from that point on.
For the first year or so of the marriage, John and Nellie lived in Winslow, then inhabited their land. His main occupation over the next two decades was farmer, but he did not limit himself to only that. He is thought to have stayed involved with the community in other ways, and probably helped from time to time with the Martintown sawmill. The children began arriving in 1870 and continued to be born every even-numbered year through 1886, skipping 1880 (when Nellie endured a miscarriage). In an age when children were often lost young -- Nathaniel and Hannah Martin lost half their fourteen children during their childhoods -- John and Nellie lost only one. Their fifth child, Ida Ellen Warner, survived only seventeen months from the late summer of 1878 to the early part of 1880. The toddler’s remains were buried in the Martin cemetery.
Living under the shadow of such a prominent father-in-law does not seem to have been a strain for John. The one separation he experienced was when he and Nellie and the kids went along with Nellie’s sister Emma and family to Howell County, MO in about 1883. Emma’s husband, Cullen Penny Brown, had obtained lumberman/sawmill job there, and must have enticed John with an employment opportunity. John and Nellie were there in the summer of 1884 when seventh child Albert Frederick Warner was born, but the family returned to Martintown not long after. They were certainly back by 1886, when eighth and final child Walter Clare Warner was born. (The Browns did not linger in Howell County, either.)
John doted upon his family and regarded fatherhood as one of the great blessings of his life. In addition to the eight children, he and Nellie also served as foster parents for a period in the late 1870s and early 1880s of two of Nellie’s first cousins, Henry and Isaiah Martin, sons of her uncle Charles Martin, whose marriage had fallen apart. And later, as will be discussed, the couple helped raise their orphanned granddaughter Selma Alice Warner.
Farming lost its allure for John, though he and Nellie continued
to own their acreage. He let his grown,
unmarried son Charles Elias Warner handle much of the cultivating and spent the 1890s in other occupations.
Chief among them was insurance agent. (The photograph at left shows him during that phase of his life, wearing
his business suit.) He also served as a justice of the peace for Green County. (When Nellie’s youngest sister
Juliette married her husband Edwin Savage in the mid-1890s, it was John who signed the marriage certificate.)
During the 1890s three of the four oldest children acquired spouses and founded families. The three
were John Martin Warner, who married Anna Lueck, Mary Emma
Warner, who married Fred Philo Hastings, and Cora Belle Warner, who married Alfonso James Spece. The first
two couples began farming in Green County. Belle’s husband Alie ran the Martintown cheese factory.
Son Charley was the exception. Though Charley farmed in Green County (upon land deeded to him
by his Martin grandparents), he remained a bachelor and continued to live with John and Nellie.
Finally in the latter part of 1903, another child married -- though somewhat precipitously. Cullen Clifford Warner had managed to impregnate his girlfriend Minnie Brecklin, and so a wedding was hastily arranged. Daughter Selma was born the following May. Almost at once fate began to “dump on” the young couple. Minnie and then Cullen developed tuberculosis, a scourge that was running rampant in the area. John and Nellie rose to the occasion in a proactive way. Despite having made their home in Martintown for over thirty years, they bought a house and farm about ten miles to the southeast near Scioto Mills, Stephenson County, IL, where they set up a “sanitarium” section to accommodate Cullen and Minnie and isolate little Selma from them. The whole household moved, including unmarried sons Charley, Bert, and Walter -- though for some of the next three years, Bert was off at college.
Despite the family’s best efforts, Minnie declined rapidly and passed away in early 1906. The family doctor expressed the opinion that Cullen did not have much time left unless he was removed to a place with an arid climate. The family responded at once and on a communal basis. Some of Nellie’s cousins, the Frames, had moved to the San Joaquin Valley of California in the 1890s, and had successfully established themselves there. John and Nellie decided to follow suit. The couple purchased a large piece of acreage in Fresno County near the foothills east of the city of Fresno, near a tiny trading post called Academy. They moved en masse as soon as they could manage -- though Bert had to finish his education and did not follow until December.
During 1907, 1908, and 1909, the family devoted itself to creating new lives for themselves in Fresno County. Cullen remained on the ranch, which came to be called the “Fancher Creek place” for the stream that ran alongside the parcel. This kept him out where he stood less chance of infecting others. Bert was his main partner running cattle. At first, Cullen was usually feeling robust and was able to do his share. Charley helped with the farm operation, as well as possibly obtaining his own acreage not far away. There was, however, the matter of keeping Selma isolated. John and Nellie therefore spent most of their time residing in the town of Sanger, where John combined forces with his eldest son John (with Charley helping out) to found Warner & Warner, a huge feed grain warehouse. John Martin Warner and Anna and their kids had decided California sounded good to them, too. It also sounded good to Belle and Alie, who also bought a farm in the area -- though eventually they would shift to town life in Sanger. Of the whole brood, only Emma remained back in Wisconsin along with Fred and their kids. They would not come west until 1918. Walter Warner, who had married Margaret Bell in 1906, lived in a shack on the Fancher Creek and, a structure set apart from the main house, until he and Margaret acquired twenty acres of their own near Fowler and Reedley, in southern Fresno County, in early 1909.
Cullen went into severe decline during the spring of 1909. Toward the end of April the family gathered for a grim vigil at Fancher Creek. It was as bad a death as could be imagined, save for the admirable way the family gathered in support of one another. Those on hand included several of the Frame first cousins.
In the wake of the tragedy, another seemed to be brewing. Anna Lueck Warner also caught TB. John Martin Warner’s attention was increasingly taken up with this setback, and he and Anna often spent time back in Green County with her relatives. Neither John Sr. nor John Jr. felt they could devote proper attention to the feed grain warehouse -- in the case of the elder, because he was nearing retirement age and was needing to slip out of active business life. So John and John sold their interest to Bert and Alie during the early 1910s.
John and Nellie spent their final years either in Sanger or at the Fancher Creek ranch. John had a few years of leisure, but the Warners of his generation did not enjoy long lives as a rule. By the time he stepped fully away from the warehouse management circa 1913, his siblings Minta, Fred, and Charles were already deceased. He was still thriving in 1915, though, when an old veteran happened to stop by at Warner & Warner and asked the background of the owners, because he recalled serving with a John Warner in the 142nd Illinois Regiment during the Civil War. Bert summoned his father to the warehouse. The two old men had a grand time reminiscing. The timing of the encounter was fortuitous, because John had only a matter of months to live. He passed away suddenly of a heart attack while up in the Fresno County hills -- perhaps visiting his son Walter, who was working in the area at the time. The nearest village was at the bottom of the mountain at Tollhouse, and that community, which is not far from Academy, appears on the death certificate as the place where John expired. John’s date of death was 8 January 1916. His body was interred at Mendocino Avenue Cemetery on the outskirts of Parlier, Fresno County, CA, a few miles south of Sanger. The grave was next to that of his little grandson, Elbert Clare Warner, who had passed away of tuberculosis in 1913.
In her widowhood, with young Selma still her dependent, Nellie moved in with unmarried son Charles, and spent most of her remaining fourteen years of life residing with him in different places in California. For more about her life, refer to her biography. Nellie passed away 21 February 1930. Her remains were placed with those of John at Mendocino Avenue Cemetery. Many decades later the next grave over (on the side opposite little Clare Warner’s plot) would become occupied by the remains of son Bert and his wife, Grace Mildred Branson Warner.
Children of Eleanor Amelia “Nellie” Martin
with John Warner
For genealogical details, click on
each of the names.