Daniel Ketner, farmer and stock-raiser, was a son of Dawalt Ketner of Rowan County, North Carolina. Dawalt Ketner married Miss Mary Eisenhower on January 17, 1819 in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, their son, Daniel, being born November 26, 1825. Dawalt is the son of a George Michael Ketner II (which was born in Berk County, Pennsylvania). The Ketner family came to America in 1733 on the Charming Beauty.
Daniel's mother died on April 24, 1846. Daniel remained with his father until he reached the age of twenty-four years. In the spring of 1849, Daniel moved west and settled in the state of Illinois. He labored on a farm in Union County for eighteen months, and then, thinking the prospects brighter for him in Tennessee, he moved to that state, where he married a Miss Catherine A. Bour , born in 1835 in North Carolina.
After his marriage, he settled on a farm in Weakley County, Tennessee, where he remained three years, and then moved back to Union County, Illinois , residing there until the fall of 1858. He then came to Arkansas and bought eighty acres of new land, which he cleared and put under cultivation, and meeting with success in his new home, he bought more land on different occasions. His home place consisted of 160 acres, with fifty-five acres cleared, and another of seventy-three acres, of that, thirty-five acres ready for cultivation.
In 1863, he enlisted in the Confederate army, and served until the final surrender. He served in Company G; 38 Ark Infantry as a private. His name is on a prisoner of war list, which has him being paroled at Shreveport, LA, on June 8, 1865. His was in the battles at Pilot Knob, Pine Bluff, Little Rock, Independence and Price's raids through Missouri. He divorced Catherine and married a Sophia Cozart, but she left him and would not live with him. Daniel divorces her and married a Mrs. Mary J. Lawson, a widow lady of Tennessee, in 1883.
He is the father of seven children by his first marriage: George Henry Ketner; John Daniel Ketner; Jesse Alex Ketner; Sarah Mahala Ketner, wife of Henry Clay Oldham (son of Jackson Henderson Oldham and Sarah Ann McCarroll); Jane Ketner, wife of George Caspar; Margaret Ketner, wife of James Nunley; Amanda Ketner, wife of Elihu Davis; and there was also one child by a third marriage, Nettie Ketner.
Nettie told her daughters that Catherine Ketner, Daniel's first wife, had an affair and a child by the name of John Berry. Daniel kicked her out and divorced her. One family legend had stated carpetbaggers had raped Catherine during the Civil War and this was the reason Daniel kicked her out, but this must not have been the case as she was still living with Daniel during the 1870 census.
A picture of John Berry with Nettie Ketner is available and one of John Berry's daughter in front of the Ketner homestead in Powhatan, Arkansas.
Mr. Ketner was a member of the Old School Presbyterian Church, and also of the Agricultural Wheel, while Mrs. Mary Ketner attended the Baptist Church.
Catherine A. (Bour) Ketner died on March 12, 1898 and is buried in the Clover Bend Cemetery in Clover Bend, Arkansas. Daniel and Mary J Ketner both died on October 12, 1902 and are buried in the Old Lebanon Cemetery in Eaton, Arkansas. The reason for their deaths is unknown at this time. Nettie stated that Daniel had been ill and was lying down. Her mother asked her to watch her father and she went to lie down also. When Nettie went to wake her mother up, she had passed away. Daniel followed shortly afterwards.