Rachel Magner was born to Margaret Meek and William Magner, probably at or near Crestline, which straddles the line between Crawford County and Richland County, Ohio.

Rachel married Christopher Burns in 1826 in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. At the the time of the 1830 U.S. Census, the family lived in Perry Township, Wayne County, Ohio, with one son, John Burns, and one daughter, each under five years of age.

Adam Burns was born about 1833 in Ohio. On January 1, 1835, they were in Logan County, Ohio, where their son, Simon Pierce Burns, was born. Mary Ann Burns was born in 1836 in Muscatine County, Iowa. Silas Burns was born about 1840 in Iowa according to the 1850 U.S. Census.

At the time of the 1840 U.S. Census, they were living in Geneva, Muscatine County, Iowa; their household included three girls and five boys. John, Adam, Simon Pierce, and Silas are four of the five boys; the fifth may have been named James, based on naming patterns in subsequent generations of the Burns family.

By 1845, Christopher and Rachel Burns and their family had moved to "Upper Missouri," (probably in or near Atchison County, Missouri) where Christopher Burns was shot and killed, probably in a property dispute. His grave has never been found.

Rachel later married James Amen, who was born in Virginia. The 1850 U.S. Census of Holt County, Missouri, lists the household of James Amen, age 57; Rachel Amen, age 42; Adam Burns, age 17; Mary Ann Burns, age 14; and Silas Burns, age 10. By this time, Simon Pierce Burns had gone to Texas, where most of his descendants still live; John Burns had married Lydia Ann Porter, daughter of Elizabeth Slotterbeck and James Buchanan Porter; and another brother "a bachelor, went to Montana and Oregon, and was never heard from after." (The one I'm calling James, I believe).

Lydia Ann Porter and John Burns were married in 1848 and had a son, James Christopher Burns, born 16 September 1849, in Linden, Atchison County, Missouri. About May 1850, this young couple with their son started west in the Slaughter and Cavett Company, headed for the gold fields in California. Both parents died of cholera just before reaching South Pass, in late June 1850. In a letter written at South Pass on July 4, 1850, the writer noted that he had recently passed the grave of "J. Burns of Atchison County, Missouri."

The 9-month-old baby was brought to the Utah Territory by a newly-married couple, Sarah Wilson Dailey and Milton Dailey, who were in the Slaughter and Cavett Company, and providentially had brought along a milk cow. The baby was taken to his maternal grandparents, James Buchanan and Elizabeth Porter, who raised him as their own. Census records list his name as James Burns Porter or James Porter Burns.

Shortly before his marriage to Matilda Josephine Anderson in 1869, James Christopher Burns traveled to Colorado to see his grandmother Rachel Magner Burns Amen.

In 1856, in Rockport, Atchison County, Missouri, Mary Ann Burns married Samuel James Akins, who was born in Ogle County, Illinois. Samuel originally came to Atchison County with his uncle, Capt. Thomas Avery Akins, to engage in farming. After the death of James Amen, Rachel lived with her son-in-law and daughter, Samuel J. and Mary Ann Akins. In the early 1860's, both Akins families, along with Rachel Magner Burns Amen, moved to Valmont, Boulder County, Colorado.

Rachel died March 23, 1876, in Valmont, and is buried in the Columbia Cemetery.

Sometime after the 1880 U.S. Census, Samuel J. Akins and his family moved to Enterprise, Wallowa County, Oregon, where they continued farming.

Simon Pierce Burns married Sarah Ann Gibson, and settled in Clio, Brown County, Texas. Col. Simon P. Burns was an officer in the Confederacy. Silas Burns fought on the Union side, as part of the Second Iowa Artillery; he died in battle in 1865.

I'm still searching for the other two daughters and one son, who are recorded in the 1840 U.S. Census of Muscatine County, Iowa.