until he was about seventeen years of age, when he was apprenticed to the carpenter's trade, landing finally in Lexington, Ky., with a wellknown mechanic there, always meeting the approval of his master as a faithful and capable workman. With a strong penchant for mercantle life, we find him, in 1849, the chief salesman and sort of man-of-all-work in the store of Richard E. Mason, in North Middletown, Bourbon Co., Ky. In this position he soon demonstrated his business capacity, and meriting, won the good opinion of the customers of the store, attracting at the same time the notice and sympathy of two of his maternal uncles, gentlemen well-to-do in the world, who very shortly added to his little patrimony (trifling enough in itself) a sum which enabled him to purchase the stock of his employer, and to embark in business on his own account. His business grew rapidly, until he became the largest and most prosperous tradesman in the village, thus becoming, at less than twenty-one years, the leading merchant and marked man of business in the community in which he lived. In Mar., 1852, he married Emily Duke Meyers, daughter of Isaac and Caroline Meyers, of Garrard Co., Ky., a union which has contributed not a little to the life of influence and success of the husband. It is related of Mr. Hearne that a few years after he embarked in business he built a business house--rather an imposing structure for the time and place--and this while living with his young family in a very humble home. He was urged by his friends first to build a handsome residence, but, with great good sense, he replied; "I may hope to make my handsome store build for my good wife a nice house, but I do not clearly see how I could make a nice house build the handsome store." In 1857 he removed to Paris, the county seat of Bourbon Co., the center of a wealthy trade, and here, until the breaking out of the Civil war, he did a large and lucrative business.

In nothing of the life of Mr. Hearne was his true character more clearly illustrated than in his course in the late Civil war. Born a Southern man, bound by almost every tie of interest and consanguinity to the slaveholders of the South, with a large business and a rapidly growing future, prominent in his church--for he was then an active and influential member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South--he did not hesitate to put them all in the balance with his convictions of duty and the demands of patriotism. He allied himself actively and earnestly with the friends of the Union,

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Thanks to Catherine Bradford for transcribing this page.