Joseph Hooten was born in the State of Tennessee, in the year 1824. He came to Hopkins County in the year 1848 and located in the same section where he has lived all of his long and useful life. He married Miss Manda Strother soon after he came into the county. By this union ten children were born to them, six of these are living. They all live near their parents, their eldest and youngest live at home with their aged parents and are a comfort and a joy to them in the evening of their days. Mr. Hooten is known all over the county as Uncle Joe. He has been a minister of the Gospel for 52 years. He is noted for his veracity, integrity, and honesty, and his children will inherit an untarnished escutcheon, a legacy more valuable than gold. He is of the Christian faith and has taken great numbers of people into his church through baptism. His ministry has been eminently successful. Since he has been preaching the gospel he has united in the holy bonds of matrimony 520 couples, and out of this vast multiplicity of marriages only four of these couples have disagreed to a point of separation. He has been useful to his country in many ways; has acted in the capacity of school teacher ever since he came into the county. He has taught the fathers to read, their sons to read, unto the third generation, and it is said to his credit as an honest sincere Christian gentleman that no man who was taught by him for the length of five months’ time was ever sent to the penitentiary for the commission of crime.
The great mass of his students have made Christians and useful citizens in the community in which they are living. He has lived the life of personal purity, and is absolutely incorruptable and feels that when he is called to his long rest in the shades that eternal happiness awaits him. His companions till lives to brighten his home. He, with this noble woman, who has been his solace and his comfort in hours of trouble, and who hand in hand together have ascended the hill of life, now look back over the path they traveled, seeing the hardships they have endured, remembering, too, the pleasures they have enjoyed, no doubt their hearts fill with gratitude when they can say we have nothing to fear in the great beyond, we will soon pass to our reward.