Among those who fought in the second war against Great Britain was one Adam Warner, who was born in Virginia, and whose father was Christofel Warner. In this period of our national history a great tide of emigration from the Atlantic States was spreading itself over what is now the Middle West. Adam Warner seemed to catch the spirit of the times, and accordingly, in 1815, he set out with his family for the new country beyond the Alleghanies. He settled in Stark County, Ohio, where, about the year 1845, he died, at ninety-three years of age (a history of Williams County, Ohio, says ninety-eight, and that he had a sister who lived to the advanced age of one hundred and three). It is probable that before moving west Adam Warner lived for a while in Frederick County, Md., for there is where his son David was born, June 6, 1803.
David Warner, after moving to Stark County, was married, in 1823, to Leah Dierdorf, who was born in York County, Pa., Feb. 6, 1805. In 1830 he moved to Wayne County, Ohio, and a little later to Portage County, then back to Wayne County in 1836, to a place then called Bristol, where he kept a tavern for eight years. Of the parentage of David and Leah Warner, at their humble abode at Bristol, on June 25, 1842, amid the environment of tavern life, was born Daniel S. Warner, destined to be one of the principal instruments in God's hands to produce a shaking in the ranks of spiritual Israel, and to lead the hosts of the Lord back to Zion from their wanderings in the wilderness of denominationalism.
The children of David and Leah, in order, were as follows: Adam, Lewis, Joseph, John, Daniel, and Samantha. John died at the age of twenty, leaving but the five children. All are now deceased. A granddaughter says that the family was Pennsylvania German. Evidently the mother was. The father, as already noted, was a Virginian.
It was the misfortune of Daniel S. to be frail, sickly, and to a great extent unappreciated, from his very birth. His lungs were weak and he was denied that stock of vitality with which every child has the right to begin life. Intoxicants were freely used in those days, and David Warner had fallen an easy prey to intemperance. If the affliction of this infant may not be ascribed to paternal indiscreetness, possibly inebriety, it is not because such instances were uncommon. Into how many homes has the demon of strong drink entered to bring sorrow to the wife and mother and to curse the unborn with the blight of its baneful effects! In this case, at any rate, the father was rough, and inconsiderate of his offspring. While he exercised toward his family a degree of temporal care, it seemed that the very frailty of this child, which should have awakened compassion, met only his frown and disfavor. In later years Daniel, in reflecting on the circumstances attending his birth and childhood, wrote the following lines, which are a part of his poem on Innocence:
Conceived in sin, to sorrow born,
Unwelcome here on earth,
The shadows of a life forlorn
Hung gloomy o'er my birth.
A mother's heart oppressed with grief,
A father's wicked spleen,