The Hyphen Family Lineage

Note: Researching the families of Sarah Weimer

My first reference to the parentage of Martha Ann (Hoover) Shaw was a hosted user website on genealogy.com for the Grepke family of Indiana (by Franklin Leroy Grepke), which named her parents George Hoover (with vital dates) and Sarah Weimer (without vitals). There was no wedding date given for the two of them, nor any parentage for the two of them, and no burial information. Martha was the only child of George and Sarah listed there.

From there the family proved somewhat difficult to find, due mostly to George's death at a young age and the lack of further information about any other members of the family. I found a listing for George on the FindaGrave.com website, giving a death date that matched the information I had and placing him in a cemetery in Miami Cty, Ohio. Further searches turned up a Sarah Hoover Margerum buried in the Weimer Cemetery in Saratoga, Randolph Cty, Indiana, the same cemetery in which Martha Ann was buried. This suggested that Sarah must have remarried, which would not have been all that unusual, given her young age as a widow. The name of the cemetery (and the large number of interments with the surname Weimer) also strongly indicated that this burial was for Sarah Weimer. The only other Margerum listed there by FindaGrave is Lewis Margerum; his listing did not initially include vital dates, and the photo showed a service marker that bore his name and his military information (Co. G, S. Pa. Res. Inf.) but nothing else.

The next record of any note that I found was the 1880 US Census record for Martha Hoover as a step-daughter in the household of Lewis Margerum, with wife Sarah and two other children. That record gave birthplaces that differed for nearly all of the family members - Martha and the youngest child (Mary Margerum) born in Indiana, wife Sarah born in Ohio, middle child Jacob born in Missouri, and husband Lewis born in New Jersey.

Finding that Sarah was Ohio-born helped locate other records, including further census records for her household with Lewis, as well as the 1860 US Census record for her household with George Hoover that showed that Martha had two older brothers. I also found the records for her marriages to both George and Lewis, as well as the 1890 veterans and war widows census listing for Lewis and for Sarah, which gave George's service information.

While I have not yet found Sarah's parentage, I think it likely that her origins were somewhere around Miami Cty, Ohio - where George is buried, and where his family likely called home. I have not quite finished chasing down the fates and possible descendancies of all Martha's siblings yet, but what I have so far for the family reads something like this.

Both George Hoover and Sarah Weimer were both born in the early-to-mid 1830s in Ohio, and at some point they each relocated to Randolph Cty, Indiana, where they were married in 1856 in Randolph Cty, Indiana.. They had two sons (William and John) in the late 1850s, and were living in Wayne Twp, Randolph Cty, Indiana in 1860. Martha Ann was born in 1861, and in August 1862 George enlisted in the 63rd Indiana Infantry, Company K, to serve in the Civil War. His time of service is given as only four months, suggesting he died during his service; whether this was due to an accident, an illness, or combat is not known at this time.

In 1866, Sarah remarried to New Jersey-born Lewis Margerum, about eight years her junior, in Randolph Cty, Indiana. Lewis had enlisted in Philadelphia to the 32nd Pennsylvania Regiment, Company G, and later re-enlisted and served in the 198th Pennsylvania Infantry. How and where he and Sarah met isn't known at this point, but it appears that prior to the war he may have been living in Delaware.

At some point after their marriage, the family relocated to Missouri, where Lewis and Sarah had their first child, Jacob, in about 1870. By 1874, however, they had moved back to Indiana, as their younger child, Mary, was born about that time in Indiana. The 1880 US Census puts the family back in Randolph Cty, this time in Jackson Twp. (While I have not yet found the information to confirm it, I believe Martha stayed with her mother and step-father through the family's migrations, but I think it possible that the older boys likely stayed in Indiana, as they may well have been old enough to work on the farm of family or friends. At this time, I do not have further information on their lives past 1860.)

Martha married (to Edmund Shaw) in 1881, and by 1890, Lewis and Sarah had moved with their two children (Jacob and Mary) to Charlevoix Cty, Michigan. Mary (called Lizzie, presumably for a middle name of Elizabeth) married to Sylvester Potter in 1891 in Charlevoix Cty, and the two of them are buried in Kent Cty, Michigan, suggesting they lived out their lives in Michigan. (Mary appears to have remarried after Sylvester's death, as she's named in her daughter's obituary as Mary Meyers, and is buried as Mary Potter Meyers.) Mary had one child, daughter Goldie, and no grandchildren. Jacob would remain living at home with his parents until he married in 1894 to Mary Busher, and then moved back home to them by the time of the 1900 US Census (which listed him as widowed). He remarried in 1907, and appears to have remained married the remainder of his life, to Jennette Treachler. Jacob and Mary had one child born to them (Clara May) who died in infancy; he is presumed to have had no other children.

Lewis died in 1910, and Sarah followed in 1913. It is presumed they remained in Michigan until their deaths, but this is unconfirmed. The two of them are both buried, as noted above, in the Weimer Cemetery in Randolph Cty, Indiana.

ADDENDUM: In the text The History of Randolph County, Indiana (1882) are a few occurrences of the family name Wimer, to which my attention was drawn after I had seen some other variations of the spelling in the transcribed records. This includes a listing for a Catherine Wimer (b. 1806, d. 28 Dec 1869) on the FindaGrave.com website, which places her burial in Reitenour Cemetery in Winchester, Randolph Cty, Indiana. The listing also includes a note saying that "one cemetery transcription has last name as WEIMER." This led me to review the aforementioned history text again, and on p493 is an article on Jacob S. Howard, whose wife was Margaret Wimer, b. 18 Mar 1824 in Stark Cty, Ohio. That article includes a description of Margaret's parents (Michael and Catherine) and siblings, giving death dates and locations for her parents that match the listings on FindaGrave. (Michael's burial listing places him Sugar Hill Cemetery, West Alexandria, Preble Cty, Ohio; the history text agrees with this.) The list of siblings includes Sarah, b. 27 Jun 1835.

Records searches for Michael Wimer or Weimer turn up US Census listings for 1850 and 1860 in Clay Twp, Montgomery Cty, Ohio and Wayne Twp, Randolph Cty, Indiana, respectively; both give Michael's wife as Catherine and their birthplaces as Pennsylvania. The 1850 US Census record also includes the fifteen-year-old Ohio-born Sarah.