Pictured is John Naylor as he probably appeared in the 1870’s.
(From the Archives by Stephen Kelley, The People’s Defender 1983)
In last week’s column we mentioned that Jabez Eagle’s second wife was John Naylor’s daughter, Mary FiLoma. John was a native Adams Countian, born on the old Naylor farm on Gift Ridge in 1823. He was married to Elizabeth Ruth Denning in 1848. They continued to reside on his father’s farm until 1854 when they moved to West Union. The Naylors were the parents of four children, Mary F., Virginia, Rebecca and Albert Quincy. During the War between the States, John served as corporal in the Second Independent Battery of the Ohio Volunteer Light Artillery. This company was activated for a period of only sixty-three days and guarded rebel prisoners of war on Johnson’s Island on Lake Erie. This was the same unit for which John’s future son in law, Jabez Eagle, had been recruited but rejected.
Naylor also served for a short time as Second Lieutenant in a recruiting company in the 70th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Sometime after the Civil War, John Naylor began operating a hack. A hack was a horse drawn covered carriage equipped to transport several persons, similar to modern day buses. John’s hack traveled on a daily basis between West Union and Manchester stopping at Bentonville. Traveling an incredible five miles per hour, it left the county seat at 7:30 in the morning, reached Bentonville one hour later, and Manchester, one hour after that. It departed Manchester at 2:00 that afternoon and arrived in West Union at 4 o’clock.. John Naylor’s wife, Elizabeth, died in 1858. Less than two years later, in January 1860, he married nineteen-year-old Emma Jane Eagle. Emma was the daughter of Jabez Eagle and his first wife, Maria Grooms. There were seven children born to this union. When this marriage occurred, Emma Jane became the stepmother to Mary F. Naylor.
Eighteen years later, Mary Naylor married Jabez Eagle, turning the tables on Emma becoming Emma’s stepmother in return. Each girl had married the other girl’s father. This unique situation made Jabez and John each other’s son-in-law as well as each other’s father-in-law. The children by each man’s second marriage became double aunts/uncles and or nephews/nieces, whichever they preferred. To further confuse you, when Emma Jane Eagle married John Naylor, she became the stepmother to John’s four children by his first marriage. When one of these stepchildren, Mary F., married Emma’s father, Jabez Eagle, Emma became her own father’s stepmother-in-law. The reverse would hold true for Mary Naylor Eagle.
