John M. Horner (1821-1907) built – then lost – one of the first great Mormon fortunes. Despite his living only briefly in Mormon communities, then spending decades living geographically far from the Church, he always considered himself a Latter-day Saint, and his personal story is entwined with some of the greatest events of 19th century Mormondom.

Near the end of his life he published a brief autobiography in the Improvement Era. You can read the entire account here; I have excerpted some of the best parts below.

And then I add my own contribution, the content of a letter Horner wrote but does not include in his autobiography.

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I was born on a New Jersey farm in Monmouth county, June 15, 1821, the son of Stacy and Sarah (Johnson) Horner. There I continued to live until the end of my twenty-first year, when I was expected to shift for myself. I was without money and had only small business experience. I had good health however and was industrious and ambitious. These qualifications impelled me to strive to be the best workman on the farm to run faster and jump farther than anyone else, to be at the head of my class at school. I did not always succeed but was awarded a premium by my teacher, for “trying harder to learn than any other scholar in school.”

My star of hope arose early promising me many things as well as time to acquire them. My youthful hopes of earthly wealth have been more than realized. I never thought myself a pauper or a dependent upon father or friends. I fully realized that I must rely upon myself and the Great Father for success, that I must take my chances among thirty million others and await my opportunity.

Industry, honesty and perseverance were my guiding stars to success. I found them in demand everywhere I went. I had never thought of success coming to me from other sources; it never did. After becoming my own boss, which all young men were supposed to be in New Jersey at the age of 21, nothing better presenting itself, I hired to a farmer to work during the summer and fall for nine dollars per month, with board and washing. In the winter, I taught a district school. Thus passed my twenty-second year, as happy a year as has ever fallen to my lot to enjoy. I was just as content working for thirty-five cents per day as I was in after years when my time for overseeing my business netted me seventy-five dollars per day or when my net income exceeded sixty thousand dollars per year.

Horner told his conversion story:

During the previous three or four years I had been wrought up over the subject of religion. The Methodists were the most persistent in my neighborhood and my preference was for them. In these days came ministers of a new sect calling themselves Latter-day Saints, with a new revelation preaching the gospel of the New Testament with its gifts and blessings. It attracted much attention, people listened and some obeyed thereby enjoying the promised blessing. Members of the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian faith as well as non-professors began to join them. Among the latter class were my father, mother and sisters. I was the first of the family to obey being baptized by Erastus Snow in the Layawa Creek on the second day of August 1840. In the spring of 1843, I went up to Nauvoo. Here I was introduced to and shook hands with the Prophet Joseph Smith. I stopped in Nauvoo during the summer and was one of the four men who laid the brick in David Yearsley’s three story house and in the Masonic brick lodge under guidance of Brother George Woodward, who was one of the four.

Mixing mortar, handling the trowel, the square, the saw, the plane, etc, was new work for me, but, as in the case of using farm tools, I found it a great help in after years not only in the days of my poverty when I did all my own work but later thus knowing how to handle tools and do things enabled me to build up and superintend the comparatively large business I afterwards controlled. …

There being no labor to be had in Nauvoo, in the fall I went home to the school which I had left, and in the following spring, I returned to Nauvoo, where, at the suggestion of Brigham Young given at a meeting of the Seventies, my name was placed upon the books as one of their number. Things were exciting in Nauvoo in those days. The Laws, Fosters, Higbees and other apostates and enemies were doing all the injury they could to the Church and apparently were seeking the life of the Prophet.

He played a role in Joseph Smith’s campaign for President of the United States:

About this time, a convention was called for the purpose of making a nomination of some one for President of the United States. The Prophet was unanimously chosen and many delegates were appointed to electioneer in a number of states, to endeavor to elect the Prophet president. I was sent back to New Jersey; I ordered a thousand or so of the Prophet’s “Views of the Powers and Policies of the Government of the United States,” printed and took these with me. One night while speaking to a full house of attentive listeners, I invited all to speak who wished to, at the close of my lecture. One gentleman got up and said: “I have one reason to give why Joseph Smith can never be President of the United States: my paper, which I received from Philadelphia this afternoon said that he was murdered in Carthage jail, on June 27th.” Silence reigned: the gathering quietly dispersed; but the grief and sadness of this heart was beyond the power of man to estimate.

The Prophet’s martyrdom ended our political campaign. It was a severe shock to us. But we kept up our branch meeting, myself and other elders taking short missions into the northern part of New Jersey, and into eastern Pennsylvania, holding wood meetings, preaching in school houses, etc. For one year or so thereafter, in the meantime reading the Nauvoo papers eagerly.

Then word came that the Church was moving west – and one of the westward movements was the chartering of the ship Brooklyn. Horner sailed with that ship, including only the briefest mention in his account of sailing around the southern tip of South America, touching briefly at Hawaii, then landing in California.

“War was raging in California, when we arrived there,” he wrote. While some of the Brooklyn men assisted by standing guard at Yerba Buena (today’s San Francisco), Horner was “anxious to get to work” at what he knew best: farming. with James Light, another of the Latter-day Saint men, Horner made a contract with a Dr. John Marsh to put in forty acres of wheat on Marsh’s farm, to be paid in shares when the grain was harvested.

The wheat at the doctor’s was harvested and stored in the granary, but when our share was called for, the doctor gravely informed us: “You have no wheat here, your share was destroyed by elk, antelope, and other wild animals, my share alone was harvested.” So we got nothing for our labor. Thus ended my first year’s farming in California. Although I got no dollars out of it, I did get experience, which I profited by in after years.

Horner purchased a farm from an Indian, and worked hard for three years fencing and farming the land. It was hardly a successful venture, at first: “The first remuneration from my first three years of farming venture in California was two dollars paid me for water melons in September of this year.”

But in the following months thousands upon thousands of men flooded into California to dig for gold. “As I was the only farmer in the territory who had vegetables for sale,” Horner wrote, “I was much sought after by customers from all sides. The wagons came several times from the mines two hundred miles distant and bought loads of vegetables at fair prices.”

In 1850, Horner’s brother William reached California, and the two brothers went to work.

My brother had also been bred on the farm was young (about twenty-one) ambitious and very industrious. I received him as a partner in my business. We worked and flourished together during the next four years, perhaps as no other farmers ever flourished before in the United States, in so short a time. My experience my location my established business our skill and industry together with the property I had acquired all became capitol in our hands. We worked them to the utmost of our ability, knowing that we were almost the only farmers in the territory that year. We knew too that there would be a good sale for all the produce we could raise.

Fortune is said to knock at least once at every man’s door. We looked upon this time and opportunity as the knocking at out door, she found us home. We opened the door and bade her welcome, thankfully accepting her offer.

We extended our fence inclosing about five hundred acres. Farming what we could we let to two tenants a part of our land to be worked on shares, the teams, seed, and tools being supplied by us.

Our crop this year was comparatively large and the soil being virgin the product was of good quality. We bought out our tenants at harvest time paying them over thirty thousand dollars for their share of the crop.

Our gross sales this year approximated one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Our onions sold for forty dollars per cental, tomatoes, three hundred dollars per ton, potatoes one hundred and fifty dollars per ton and other things in proportion.

The Horners expanded their business, not only increasing the size of their fields, but establishing a commission house in San Francisco to handle their sales, and those of other farmers. They imported machinery from the eastern States and wire fencing from England. They bought large tracts of land, including 5,250 acres of what would eventually become the Mission District of San Francisco, and laid out streets and building lots. Horner sent his brother William on a trip back to New Jersey, and William returned bringing the Horner parents, and children and grandchildren with them. In 1853 the brothers established a stage line to handle passenger traffic between San Francisco and San Jose. They built an $85,000 flouring mill, and warehouses, and stables, and good livestock, and a steamer. Everything they touched seemed to prosper.

The position I held in the community at this time made me much sought after as an endorser of notes, a signer of bonds, and a loaner of money to the impecunious. As I had been raised in purely a rural district of New Jersey and was unacquainted even in theory with the “tricks of trade,” the unwise course of endorsing notes, or loaning money without adequate security had never entered my head. I loaned and endorsed freely, hoping to do good thereby. I have no recollection of refusing any one asking for an accommodation, or requesting his notes endorsed, up to 1854.

Our worldly prospects at this time were bright and our property was ample to gratify every wish and was yearly increasing. As I nor my brother ever drank strong drinks, smoked, gambled or dissipated in any way, no cloud of doubt ever crossed our mental visions, that our property should not always continue to increase as we attended strictly to business.

But then, in 1854, the National Panic reached California. The Panic had cost hundreds of millions of dollars in bank losses in the East. “Yet how small are these sums when compared with the direct and indirect losses suffered by the whole people during those years of panic!” Horner wrote. “The breaking up of business, the depreciation of property, the enforced idleness of labor and machinery, and the check to enterprise, all combined to make up a loss impossible to compute, not counting the heartache and mental anguish arising from loss of business and homes.”

In California, farm products rotted unsold, because there was no money in the market to pay for it. Millions of dollars in gold and silver were still being dug from the mines, but most of it was hoarded, and nothing circulated. All those notes John Horner had signed to secure loans for his friends and neighbors came due … and fell on Horner when his friends defaulted. He sold land to stay afloat, and mortgaged other properties. Despite loss of much of their fortune, the Horners hung on.

Although our labors and struggles above referred to related only to temporal matters, yet spiritual things were not altogether neglected. My brother and I had erected a schoolhouse in a central locality, for accommodating our neighborhood, and hired and paid a teacher. To this school all were welcome. In this house we held church every Sabbath during our prosperous years, and for a long time after. Prayer meetings were frequently held evenings in the houses of different members. Some “Mormon” Battalion boys, and some ship Brooklyn families, had settled around us. We baptized some good people of other faiths, who left for Utah upon the first opening. In fact, the Battalion boys had married, and, I may say, all the more faithful Latter-day Saints in our settlement left for Salt Lake at different times.

We were not left altogether, as elders were frequently passing to and from missions. Brothers Amasa Lyman and C.C. Rich from San Bernardino, sometimes visited us; also Brothers Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, Addison Pratt, George Q. Cannon, David Cannon, Joseph Bull, and many other worthy brethren whom I can’t name, whose society we enjoyed.

I never was a lover of money in a miserly sense. I did love to make a success of all business in hand. When I had money, it gave me more satisfaction to assist the elders and others requiring help than to use it for my own personal gratification.

I never mourned over the loss of my property, as many losers did, but endeavored to forget, and go ahead again. I have sorrowed and regretted repeatedly that I did not do my duty with it more completely while I had it; but I must attribute it to ignorance or procrastination, not selfishness. I should have paid, and could have paid a tithing on $25,000 as readily as the $1,500 I did pay. …

One other thing I have also regretted. President Brigham Young wrote advising me to be cautious, as reverses frequently visited people doing large business, and suggested that I send up $30,000 to the Trustee-in-trust, as a precautionary measure, that would serve a good purpose as a future help, if misfortune should overtake me. The above may not be the exact language of the President, but it is his meaning, as I understood it. From ignorance, procrastination, or misfortune coming so quickly, or something else, the wise council was not acted upon, my misfortune came suddenly, and as unexpected as thunder from a clear sky.

The Panic eventually subsided, but Horner’s personal troubles continued. Horner’s only daughter died. He became sick, and even when health returned, he lost the use of his legs for months. He worked again, and was able to support himself and his family. He built a bridge for the county. He drained a lake, doing most of the work himself. He began to farm again.

Then, in 1879, Horner pulled up stakes in California and moved to Hawaii, where a son had become established in the sugar cane industry.

This was rather discouraging work to undertake as the land, though rich, was covered with a jungle of trees and brush. All had to be grubbed and cleared before it could be used at an expense of thirty-three dollars per acre. Over one hundred acres per year was cleared and brought under cultivation. In addition to rents and clearing the land, houses had to be built for managers, quarters for one hundred and fifty or two hundred laborers; and accommodations for more than half that number of horses had to be provided. The horses had to be purchased as well as plantation tools’ and roads, bridges, a mill (a wagon wheel had never yet turned upon the land) had to be built, fencing had to be erected, besides the raising of the cane. The building of the mill and the providing of all the necessaries for producing the first two hundred acres of cane, would involve an expenditure of near three hundred thousand dollars. To provide this sum was no small concern. However, our unprecedented success in making our first crop gave confidence to people of means that whatever we undertook in the way of cultivation would be a success. So we readily found means to carry on the planting department of the plantation.

Never one to be idle if could help it, Horner also built a stock ranch to produce the animals needed for farm labor, and to provide beef and dairy products for sale. He built dams, and cisterns, and houses, and mile upon mile of fencing. He expanded into coffee. From 1880 to 1903, his efforts generated some $2,500,000 … which had “nearly all been absorbed in enlarging, working and improving the plantation.” He was actually in debt in 1903. “We are encouraged to believe, however, that we will get out of debt, as this year we have paid over fifty thousand dollars of the above debt, and hope to do as well by the blessings of heaven until all is paid.”

Although he does not mention it in his autobiography, Horner may have had one other reason for his confidence that “by the blessings of heaven,” his debt would soon be paid. For some time past, Horner had been sending $100 every three months to Salt Lake City, to be applied to his tithing. He sent those funds, by postal money order, as regularly as if he were paying it to a bishop whom he saw every week.

Late in 1906, he sent $300 instead of the customary $100, and he included this note:

Please credit on my tithing. I have paid tithing on this money and my income some time ago. This money I am sending to help make up a shortage in tithing that should have been paid 51 years ago. I paid $1600 of what I should then have paid. I had the money and intended to pay it all. Neither selfishness or love of money prevented, but communications between San Francisco and Salt Lake was then difficult and I, thru ignorance, delayed payment untill it was too late as it proved for in 1854, an unlooked for cyclone of a money panic struck California, stoping most all business. Money stoped circulating, interest was 4% per month and paid in advance. Most banks faild and many business men. My property was all swept away. Note endorsement for relatives and friends, and a small debt that my crop was expected to pay but co[u]d not be sold proved my financial downfall.

I have assurance that Heaven forgave me after repentance, but I have not forgiven myself. I am hoping after this payment to be able to continue paying until I can freely forgive myself for that ignorent blunder.

I hope he was able to forgive himself, and soon … because seven months later, John M. Horner passed away.