Horton and Bryan Family History

Lucy Ethel McCoun was born in Wolfe County, Kentucky, on 15 September 1896. The fourth child of Syrene Cockerham (1868-1962) and Robert Pepper McCoun (1860-1940), she always went by “Ethel.” On 1 January 1914, 17-year-old Ethel married Herbert Hilary Horton. They had seven children, including the author’s father, Raymond Thomas Horton, the eldest. Herbert tragically died of typhoid fever on 20 July 1931, after consuming contaminated water at the oil field in western Kentucky where he had been working as a well driller. After that great loss, Ethel moved to Louisville and took a job as housekeeper for an elderly gentleman, Charles Shuck, whom she later married. In the early 1930s, all of Ethel’s seven children also moved away from Campton, and all ended up in Louisville. After Charles’ death in 1954, Ethel continued to reside in Louisville the rest of her life, initially in the home at 2532 Garland Avenue that Charles Shuck and she had shared. Later Ethel moved first to a home in the Louisville suburbs closer to where her son Sam and other children lived, and then to a nursing home, when her health declined. Ethel died on 20 April 1985 at age 88 and was buried in the Resthaven Cemetery in the Buechel area of Louisville.