Background
Horton was born in Windsor, Vermont, in 1802. He was the son of Zenas and Nancy (Seaver) Horton.
Horton was born in Windsor, Vermont, in 1802. He was the son of Zenas and Nancy (Seaver) Horton.
As a boy he attended the local schools, then he went to Partridge's Military Academy (later Norwich University) at Norwich, Vt. After his graduation in 1825 he taught mathematics and ultimately philosophy and political economy and was teaching when the school was temporarily situated in Middletown, Connecticut On leaving the institution he studied law and was admitted to the Connecticut bar.
For a time he practised law in Pittsburgh, Pa. , then in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in 1835 he settled in Nyesville, Ohio, which he renamed Pomeroy. While yet a law student he had become interested in the coal deposits in the Ohio districts and went to see the outcropping veins. He carried samples of the coal to Boston and succeeded in interesting his friend Samuel W. Pomeroy, later his father-in-law, from whose ground he had taken the coal. Pomeroy and some friends thereupon accompanied Horton to the region. They mined about one thousand bushels of coal but their first attempts at shipping it were unsuccessful. Later, however, Pomeroy with his two sons and two sons-in-law, C. W. Dabney and Horton, formed a company and began to operate the mines.
The coal which was shipped from the region was loaded on rafts and sent down the Ohio River, but the current of the river made the return of the rafts impossible and new barges had to be built for each trip. Horton conceived the idea of having the empty barges towed upstream and built the first towboat to ply inland waters. It was driven by a single engine and was a "sidewheeler. " It was named the Condor and during the forty years which followed, the "Condor" idea spread and Horton profited immensely.
The presence of numerous salt wells in this region made the salt trade increasingly important. Horton was among the first to enter the business on a large scale and in 1851 organized the Pomeroy Salt Company. Among the wells which he drilled was one which remained in operation for forty years and produced salt estimated at ten million barrels during that time. The Civil War increased the growth of the trade especially since foreign importation stopped. The opening of the Michigan and New York supplies, however, brought about keen competitive conditions and led to the reorganization of the Ohio River Salt Company with Horton as president. This company was regarded as one of the early trusts.
Horton was a member in 1850 of the Ohio constitutional convention and served in Congress in 1854 as an anti-slavery Whig, capturing what was ordinarily a Democratic stronghold. He was reëlected two years later but refused a third nomination. In 1860, however, he was nominated by the Republicans without his knowledge or consent and accepted only for "the good old cause of human liberty. " He served on the ways and means committee and in 1861 he was a member of the Peace Congress in Washington. For forty years he was a trustee of the Ohio University at Athens, Ohio.
In 1833 he married Clara Alsop Pomeroy. He had six children, one of whom was Samuel Dana Horton. One daughter, Clara Pomeroy Horton, married John Pope, and another daughter, Frances Dabney Horton, married Manning Ferguson Force.