The Hyphen Family Lineage

Note: Researching the ancestry of Henry Marshall Hover

My initial online searches of a number of sources had given me the following ancestry for Henry Marshall Hover:

1 Johan Hendricus Huber (b. 1705 - Holland, Netherlands)
+ Susanna Hohleys (b. 1710 - Sussex Cty, New Jersey)
2 Hendrik Hover (b. 4 Apr 1740 - )
+ Cornelia Cortwright (b. 1749, d. 1776 - Sussex Cty, New Jersey)
3 Henry Hover (b. 12 Jul 1766 - Smithfield, Fayette Cty, Pennsylvania)
+ Elizabeth Hunt (b. 1766 - New Jersey), m. 1790
4 Henry Marshall Hover (b. 15 Mar 1790 - Sussex Cty, New Jersey)
+ Leah Jones (b. 1797, d. 30 Sep 1840 - Ohio)

An online transcription of the register from Henry's Bible (later kept by his son, Rev. Cornelius Hover) gave me birthdates and death dates for Henry's children, along with his birthdate, his wife's birth month and year, and their marriage date. There appear to be incomplete references in the transcription to "H Hover" and "Eliz," who are presumably Henry Marshall's parents, with dates given as "1762 NJ" and "1760," respectively. There also appear to be incomplete references to his parents-in-law, John Jones ("June 23, 1760 Ma") and Mary Evans ("Ma"). On the last page before the New Testament begins, the transcription continues with "H. Hover Sen. Dec 1756 or 9," "Eliz. H. Hover 1752 or 3," "J. Jones 1743." Whether these were written by Henry Marshall or Cornelius is unclear, though my suspicion is that these last were by Cornelius.

Some online sources seemed to point to a family history text The Huber-Hoover Family History (Harry M. Hoover, 1928), though I was unable to find any of the purported ancestors of Henry Marshall in the published index for that text, much less Henry Marshall himself. Additionally, the progenitor in that text was given as Hans Huber, a farmer from the Swiss Palatinate born around 1670 to 1675; his wife was given as Margaret Koch, and the family was described as being Mennonites.

Another text referred to in some online sources was A Genealogical History of the Descendants of Johannes or John (Huber) Hoover (Mary Ruthrauff Hoover, 1937). This text also does not seem to include Henry Marshall or any of his ancestry, and in this text the progenitor is gives as Johannes Hofer, later John Hoover, who came from Basel Landschaft in Switzerland somewhere in the early 18th century. His date of death was given as 1804, his settlement in American named as Lancaster Cty, Pennsylvania, and his wife was named in the text as Mary Watson, who preceded him in death by about four or five years. His oldest named child is Henry Hoover (d. 1798), and that man was given as having three sons who would have been born around the same age as Henry Marshall, but none of them match up to him in terms of wife or children.

Our Henry Marshall's ancestry, if documented, would seem to lie in another direction; further research of families with similar names from the area of New Jersey would seem to be the best avenue to take.