My Genealogy Hound

JACOB BRUNER GILTNER has lived for the past twelve years on section 2, township 45, range 28, Johnson County. It is now nearly thirty years since he moved to Holden, a village not far distant, and began to work at his trade of carpentering. Holden was then only a mere hamlet, and our subject has erected many buildings both there and in the adjoining country, thus being closely associated with its development and progress. In 1883 he bought one hundred and twenty acres of his present homestead, paying $40 per acre, and has since added another tract of forty acres to the original place. Among the improvements which he has inaugurated on the farm are a comfortable house and large barns, and everything about the place shows the constant attention of the careful and thrifty owner. He is a self-made man, and commenced his career not only without money, but with very little education, for his opportunities in an educational way were extremely limited. He was the eldest in a family of nine, and as his parents were poor he had to earn his own livelihood from the time he was about thirteen years of age, the greater part of his wages going toward the support of the other members of the family.

Mr. Giltner was born in what was Columbia, but is now Montour, County, Pa., January 20, 1830, his parents being J. F. and Mary (Bruner) Giltner, the former a native of Lehigh County, Pa. The first of the family came from Holland to the United States in 1612, settling in Philadelphia, and some of the descendants located in Lehigh County. The great-grandfather of our subject, John Francis, and his son, John Christian, were likewise natives of Lehigh County. The latter died from the effects of being kicked by a horse, when Jacob B. was a small boy. As far as known, the family have always been farmers and very industrious, hardworking people. In 1854 J. F. Giltner moved to Stephenson County, Ill., making the trip by team. He had learned the shoemaker’s trade, and followed this both in his native state and after moving to Illinois.

It was not until after he was in his twenty-first year that J. B. Giltner, of this sketch, began to reap the profits from his own labors. He then began an apprenticeship to the carpenter’s trade, and for two and a-half years’ work he was to have $60 and his board. He was also allowed a week’s vacation in harvest time, when he managed to earn quite a little money by raking and stacking grain. When he had learned his trade he hired out as journeyman at fifty cents a day, but after working for six months was cheated out of his pay. Some farmers by whom he had been previously employed then gave him work as a carpenter, paying him $1 per day, and soon he had enough money to take him to his parents in Stephenson County, Ill. At first he worked at his trade by the day and then took contracts, continuing to make his home in Lena, Ill., until 1868, when he moved to Missouri.

May 15, 1857, Mr. Giltner married Elizabeth Galbraith, of Stephenson County, Ill. She was born in Huntingdon County, Pa., March 14, 1836, and has become the mother of three children. Charles William, born June 15, 1858, was married, September 25, 1889, at Warrensburg, to Miss Virginia Smith, by whom he has two children. He is a carpenter and is now living in Tulsa Creek Nation, Ind. T. James Franklin, born February 18, 1860, was married in Holden, December 7, 1890, to Lizzie Markley, of that place, whose birth occurred in Virginia, December 3, 1866; they have no children. John Henry, a barber by trade, and now a resident of Newton County, Mo., was born March 3, 1862; he was married to Nannie Douglas in January, 1893, but they have no children. The father of our subject was a Democrat, and he likewise espoused the principles of that party until after the Civil War. During the strife and contentions between the two parties which followed he did not give his allegiance to either one, and for twenty years did not use his right of franchise. However, he later voted for James G. Blaine, but is strictly independent. He is a strong temperance man, and if he knows it will never use his ballot in favor of men who have any connection with the liquor traffic.