The Story of 3 Orphan Homesteaders in Alabama

On March 19, 1904, the General Land Office in Washington, D.C. issued a Homestead Certificate for 46 acres in Etowah County in northeastern Alabama to three young children, ages 10, 8, and 5 years old. They were orphans of John H. Hagler who had died in 1899 at age 29. His wife, the mother of their three children, had died a few months earlier at age 24. As John was homesteading at the time, but had not yet proven up on his claim, it was later patented to his orphaned children. How this was possible and the story behind this specific homestead will follow.

Sources used in this article include Federal census records, Find A Grave, FamilySearch, Newspapers.com, land records found at https://glorecords.blm.gov/, and various information found in Ancestry.com.


John H. Hagler, born July 1, 1869, in DeKalb County, Alabama, was the father of the three orphan homesteaders. He was one of several children of Isaac Wilson Hagler (1838-1905) and his wife Louisa Jane (Killian) Hagler (1831-1877). Isaac had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War and held the rank of Sergeant in the 54th Alabama Infantry. At the time of his death in 1905, had been the pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church at Howelton, Alabama for nearly a decade. Otherwise, he was also a farmer. His children, including his son John H. Hagler, grew up on a farm in rural northeastern Alabama.

At age 22, John H. Hagler married on December 6, 1891, in Etowah County, Alabama to Lizzie May Huff (called “May”), age 17. She was born May 7, 1874, in Georgia and was one of nine children of William M. Huff and his wife Margaret (McNeil) Huff. Both of May’s parents would become directly involved in the lives of their grandchildren, the three orphan homesteaders.

Over the course of their seven-year marriage that ended with May’s death on February 27, 1899, she and her husband John H. Hagler had three children: Beulah, born 1893; Maggie, born 1895; and William, born 1898.

Sadly, May Hagler’s death occurred less than seven months following the birth of her son William on July 30, 1898. The Gadsden Times-News of Gadsden, Alabama included the young mother’s obituary in its March 7, 1899 issue:

“Death Claims Another Victim. The death angel placed its icy hands on Mrs. May Hagler, the loving wife of John Hagler, on the 27th of February, at her father’s home in East Gadsden, Mr. W. M. Huff. She was a Christian lady, having joined the Presbyterian church when young, and to know her was to love her. She was quietly laid to rest Tuesday evening at the Reid’s graveyard. A large crowd followed her to her last resting place. She leaves a husband and three little children to mourn after her. We say to her dear bereaved companion and relatives weep not, for she has only gone home to receive a shining crown, where she awaits your coming, and where there will be no parting.

Farewell, farewell, is a lonely sound,
And always brings a sigh;
But give to me when loved ones part,
That sweet old word, Good-bye.
Adieu, adieu, we hear it oft,
But the heart feels most when the lips move not,
And the eyes speak the gentle word, Goodnight.
Farewell, farewell, there is a vacant place in our home which never can be filled,
Adieu, adieu, she speaks it not,
But in heaven there will be no Good-bye.”

But the tragedy only deepened. Less than four months later, the same paper on June 30, 1899 (p. 3) carried a notice of her widower John H. Hagler’s untimely death at age 29:

“John Hagler was found dead by the side of his bed, near Ewing, Ala., last Monday morning. Mr. Hagler had not been long in that section and had been ill for some days and it is thought that he was attacked with heart failure soon after he arose early in the morning.”

Because of the loss of both parents, the three young Hagler children would be raised by relatives. At first, the three children were taken in by their father’s brother Columbus Newton Hagler, age 26, and his wife Bessie, age 21, who were farming in the same area. The three young orphans were added to their uncle and aunt’s also young family of two small children.

But tragedy would strike twice more in 1900. Soon after the birth of a 3rd child to Columbus and Bessie Hagler, their oldest child, Cora, died on June 2, 1900. That same year, Columbus died at age 27, leaving Bessie alone with five small children to care for. Understandably, it was too much, so not long after Columbus died, the Hagler orphan children went to live with their grandparents, William M. Huff and his wife Margaret.

When the Homestead Act of 1862 was written it included a provision that the guardian of orphan heirs to a homestead could sell it prior to patent for their benefit, with the buyer then able to get the homestead awarded in his or her own name. However, the law was silent on whether a homestead could just be awarded to orphan children in their names, which might not have been initially anticipated. Yet, it wasn’t prohibited. So, in this case, that’s indeed how the three children of John H. Hagler ended up as “orphan homesteaders” with their own homestead in 1904 in Alabama. They had rights to their late father’s claim. And with the help of their maternal grandfather, they received it.

On November 15, 1902, William M. Huff, as guardian for his three orphaned grandchildren, provided proof before the clerk of the circuit court at Gadsden, Alabama that the homestead claim of his late son-in-law should be awarded to his three orphan children under their grandfather’s care.

The U.S. Land Office at Huntsville, Alabama printed a “Notice for Publication” dated October 2, 1902, in the local Gadsden Times-News. It stated that William had “filed notice of his intention to make final proof in support of his claim” and had named three witnesses to support his statements to have the homestead awarded to his three grandchildren. The evidence of John H. Hagler’s settlement and farming the land was recorded, verified, and evaluated for his orphan children to receive the land. Eventually, they did receive their father’s homestead, issued on March 19, 1904. When it arrived, it named all three children as jointly receiving the homestead, with the patent also stating that they were “minor orphan children of John H. Hagler.”


William M. Huff, the grandfather and guardian of his three Hagler grandchildren, was himself a homesteader. He had received a 120.03-acre homestead on July 23, 1896, about two miles southwest of the homestead received by his three grandchildren.

To conclude is a brief account of what became of the three orphan homesteaders.
#1 Beulah Lilly Hagler was born August 22, 1893, in Etowah County, Alabama. She married King Merill Moore on July 12, 1914, King Merrill Moore. They had four children. King Moore served as a Corporal in the Alabama State Infantry prior to registering for the draft during W.W. I on June 5, 1917. The federal census for 1920 and 1930 listed Beulah and King Moore and their family as living in Gadsden, Alabama. In 1920, he worked there as a laborer for the Republic Steel Company. Then with the Depression, in 1930, King Moore was a salesman of cooking ware. Beulah died February 8, 1937, with her widower passing away in 1945. He and Beulah are buried in the same cemetery as her parents, the Reid Cemetery at Glencoe, in Etowah County, Alabama.

#2 Maggie Lou Hagler was born in 1895 in Etowah County, Alabama. She married James Lawson Hicks on October 14, 1914. He was born in 1886 in Alabama and had two children from a prior marriage, with James and Maggie adding another nine children together to their large family of 11 children. The 1920, 1930, and 1940 census returns all reported that James worked in a cotton mill at Gadsden, Alabama where he and Maggie lived during their married lives. Maggie died in 1952 and James in 1957. They are also buried in the same cemetery as her parents.

#3 William Isaac Hagler was born July 30, 1898, in Etowah County, Alabama. On September 21, 1916, at age 18, he enlisted in the U.S. Army at Gadsden, Alabama, and served over two years including during all of W.W. I. He was discharged on February 14, 1919, at a military hospital over two months following the end of the war. He married Lovice Savannah Patty (1896-1972) on March 20, 1920, in Calhoun County, Alabama. The two had a child the next year, in 1921, but he was not in good health. He was readmitted to a military hospital that same year. He had likely sustained an injury or had contracted a disease during his military service that shortened his life. He was only 23 when he died in early 1922. He was also buried in the same cemetery with his parents and other family members.