Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1876 — A Man in Tennessee Who Has Never Stopped Growing. [ARTICLE]

A Man in Tennessee Who Has Never Stopped Growing.

John Horner is % citizen of Perry County, Tenn., one of a family of eight children, none of whom had exhibited any unusual traits. At eighteen years he was a well-grown man, six feet high, and weighed 180 pounds. At twenty-one he was six inches taller, and weighed 210 pounds. He ceased to notice any growth after that until he was twenty-four years old; and then only by the smallness of his clothes, ana ie then measured in his stockings six feet nine inches. Since then—he is now thirty-one years of age—he has attained the height of seven feet nine inches, and is still growing, this being an increase of about two inches annually. Some years he grew more and some less, but this is his average. A correspondent who visited this giant says: “ After greeting, the object of our visit was stated, and the. giant seemed rather flattered that we had come to visit him. He was evidently good-natured, and was, I afterward learned, quite a favorite in the neighborhood. He showed us a place on the wall where his various measurements had been marked with chalk, and the date of each measure was opposite, rudely but plainly marked. The first and lowest was when at eighteen years of age it was six feet, and the to at twenty-one it was as before stated. The marks were from a half inch to an inch apart, the last having been taken about two months previous. At my request he stood up, and I accurately measured him, and found within the two months past he had increased his height just one half inch, which I noted on the wall in pencil, with the date July 24, 1875. He rolled up his pantaloons, and his shanks were simply immense, and hjs knee joints were extremely large and bulging. 1 took a careful measurement of his various lengths. His head to top of shoulders, was eight inches; from shoulders to the hip joint, two feet three inches; thence to center of knees, two feet tw o and one half inches; thence to the floor, two feet and eight inches, making the enormous aggregate of seven feet nine and one-half inches. From the shoulders to the tip of his fingers was four feet six inches! What a magnificent specimen of humanity he would have been had he been proportionally large. But truth compels me to a different version. In fact he was as if made of india-rubber, stretched out to a huge length. He ought to have weighed at least 300 pounds, but lie weighed only 233 pounds. In consequence of this want of conformity he was excessively awkward, lank and gatvky. Only one quality did he possess in a large degree, and that was his ability to walk. lie could stoop forward at a heavy angle and start off in his awkward, shuffling gait, that rivaled any horse, lie thought nothing of walking to Linden, twelve miles, and back to dinner. “He is, .as before stated, thirty-one years and a few months old, and is still f rowing. He has never been out of ’errv County. I suggested the idea of an exhibition to him, but- he seemed averse to publicity.”.

—The Treasurer ot the Boston RubberShoe Company found this among his correspondence the other day: “Sir—Conscientiously, as a Roman Catholic, having complied with the ardent religious duties which we are commanded to by our mother, the church, on the occasion of the calamity which befell your factor}- I took an article thcrefroip which deprives me from approaching the table of the Lord until I remit this as restitm tion, $1.25.”