The Hyphen Family Lineage

[Obituary for John Jacob Stuver, from the Huntington Daily News-Democrat,15 Jan 1904, p1, jointly with another area citizen.]

[headline] Jacob Stuver Dies at Age of Ninety-Five.
[second headline] Funeral to be Saturday
[third headline] Two Deaths Due to Pneumonia - Announcements Made of Funerals

Jacob Stuver, one of the oldest men of Huntington county, died near Bippus Wednesday afternoon at 3:45 Physicians thought paralysis was working on him though death was mostly attributed to age. He had been in feeble health some time, though his last sickness came upon him only Tuesday at noon.

Mr. Stuver was born in Northampton county, Pa., June 27, 1809. From that state he came to Seneca county, Ohio, then to Hancock county, Ind., and in the spring of 1863 to Huntington county, settling on a farm in Warren township where he lived until his death with the exception of possibly two years when he lived in Bippus. He was married more than fifty-nine years ago and to Mr. and Mrs. Stuver were born several children. Surviving him are his devoted wife and children as follows: Alfred of this city, Jacob of Clearcreek, Edward of this city, Mrs. Savilla Keiger [sic] of Kosciusko county, Mrs. Emma King of this city and Mrs. Ada Bender who with her husband lives with her parents on the home place. Two sons and four daughters are dead.

Mr. Stuver was formerly a member of the Lutheran church but recently has not been an active member. Nor was he connected with any fraternal organization. In politics he was always a democrat. He was a most highly respected citizen and well-to-do, leaving an eighty-acre farm.

The funeral will be held Saturday morning at 10 o'clock from the Funk church. An effort is being made to secure the services of the regular pastor of that congreggtion [sic].

[Article "Jacob Stuver Sr." from Huntington County, Indiana History & Families 1834-1993, p382.]

Jacob Stuver Sr. was born 1809 in Northampton County, PA. He married Anna Dorn, then with seven children moved to Seneca County, OH. He then moved to Hancock County, IN and from there to Warren Twp., Huntington County, IN in 1863.

He bought 80 acres of farmland to the NE of Bippus. He farmed this until shortly before his death in 1904. Anna and Jacob had 12 children. Those known are: Alfred, Mary Stuver McConhney, Jacob Jr., Edward, Savilla Stuver Keiger, Francis, George, Charlotte Stuver Winch, Emma Stuver King, Adeline Stuver Bender, and John.

Neither Anna or Jacob could read nor write. They both spoke very broken English even though both they and their parents were born in this country. But Jacob was a very successful farmer and businessman. His will was very detailed and well thought out. His granddaughter, Effie Stuver Bayha, remembered him as a kindly gentle man in nature, but astute, even though uneducated.

Alfred Stuver, my great-grandfather, oldest son of Jacob and Anna was born in 1846 in Northhampton [sic] County, PA. He enlisted in the 55th Vol. Regt. of Ohio at Fostoria, Seneca County, OH in 1861. He was only 14 at the time, but lied about his age so that he might serve in the Civil War. He was in the second battle of Bull Run, and may have been wounded or ill as he was in the hospital for a period of six months following this battle. He was wounded just above the left ear, the bullet exiting the back of the head, in the battle of Chancellorville, VA in 1863.

He was left on the battlefield for dead for three days. He was discovered by Confederate soldiers that had come to bury their dead. He was taken to the hospital in Andersonville. At first the Union side reported Alfred missing in action, then when his body was not found, he was listed as a deserter. Finally he was found, a prisoner of war. He was traded, then sent to a hospital in Washington, DC. He was transferred to the invalid division, sent to Lookout Mountain in 1864, then discharged in Louisville in 1865.

Alfred returned to his family in Warren Twp. He met and married Melissa Forst, daughter of George and Henrietta Miller Forst in 1869. Alfreda [sic], "Effie" Stuver Bayha was borne to them in late 1869. Melissa died in childbirth in 1874.

Alfred married Martha Jane Cooper in 1876. They had four children: William, a vault maker; John, a farmer; Charles; and Anna Stuver Poe.

Alfred was plagued with headaches for the remainder of his life. He worked variously at being a carpenter, served as town marshall of Huntington and farmed with his father. My mother remembered his booming voice, hearty laugh, and jolly manner. She said he was very good with children and always had time for them. Alfred died in 1928.

Room does not permit more information about this family, but if there are other members of this family who wish knowledge I have, I will be happy to share. Submitted by Jane Anne Thomas.

 

Note: Potential parentage of John Jacob Stuver Sr., and spelling of his surname

I had not previously spent much time looking for Jacob's parents, owing mostly to an assumption that Jane Anne Thomas would have found something with the more immediate information she would have had from her grandmother Effie (Stuver) Bayha - herself a granddaughter of Jacob. In trying to come to a better substantiation of Jacob's presumed birthplace of Northampton Cty, Pennsylvania, I had looked more closely at the years and residences in the family's migration west. This led to finding the 1850 US Census listing for Jacob's household in Bethlehem, Northampton Cty, Pennsylvania, which included himself, his wife, and four children (adding one-year-old Ann Stuver, who appears to have died prior the family's count in the 1860 US Census), in addition to Anna's mother (named Mary Doney in the record). In this record, the family surname is recorded as "Stuber."

This led to the finding of a listing and photograph on the FindaGrave.com website for Johann Jacob Stuber, b. 19 Sep 1772, d. 16 Jul 1855, which is not only a close match for the name of our Jacob, but is of an age that falls into the correct range to be Jacob's father. In that same cemetery is buried Elizabeth (Bauer) Stuber, somewhat younger but still old enough to be Jacob's mother, and the website listing gives them three known children born from 1806 through 1818 - also of a range that bracket's Jacob's birthdate. It is worth noting that the gravestones are inscribed entirely in German, which would hold with the information at hand that Jacob and his wife spoke little English and that their parents likely also spoke little or no English, primarily using their native tongue of German.

Though I have not fully reviewed the available census forms for a comparison of genders and ages, there are the following entries found so far in the census records for Bethlehem, naming the head of household only:

- 1810, John Stuber
- 1820, John Stauber
- 1830, John Stover
- 1840, John Stuber

I will note that the oldest known child of Jacob and Anna was named Mary E. Stuver, and I strongly suspect that she was named for the two grandmothers (Anna's mother Mary, and Jacob's mother Elizabeth). If they were naming their first children after their parents before naming any children after themselves (third child was Jacob Jr., and the fourth child was daughter Ann), then it stands to reason that their second child Alfred likely bore the name Johann or Jacob as one of his given names, but was called by Alfred throughout his life. I must also note that I have never found reference to a full given name for Alfred, so this is admittedly supposition on my part, but it holds with the other naming patterns and with observed common traditions amongst many German-descended families of the time. If true, this would also suggest that Anna (Dorn) Stuver's father was named Alfred.

A study of the various transcriptions and phonetic spellings of the Stuver surname suggests to me that the original spelling was likely Stüber or Stüver, and a combination of poor literacy and thick accents that began as German but drifted over the generations in America contributed to the varied spellings found in the records over the years. I would believe it likely that the descendants of any of Jacob's siblings who remained in Pennsylvania ended up using a slightly different anglicized spelling of the family surname than did Jacob's children.

Note: The Children of Jacob and Anna (Dorn) Stuver

Establishing the names, vital dates, and fates of the children of Jacob and Anna has been somewhat challenging; the initial primary sources I had for this were notes and files from Jane Anne Thomas and Franklin Harry Bayha, first cousins and both second-great-grandchildren of Jacob and Anna. In addition to paper research, a large portion of Jane Anne's information was derived from Effie (Stuver) Bayha, Jacob's granddaughter and Jane Anne's grandmother, who lived with Jane Anne's family for some years.

Anna's obituary does not offer a count of their children, naming only the survivors, but Jacob's enumerates them indirectly. His obituary names six surviving children (Alfred, Jacob, Edward, Mrs. Savilla Keiger, Mrs. Emma King, Mrs. Ada Bender), while also stating simply that "[t]wo sons and four daughters are dead." Not named amongst the survivors was Mrs. Mary McConihey, his oldest daughter and a resident of Kansas at the time of her father's death, though she was named in her mother's obituary as a survivor. This suggests that there were likely at least a dozen children born to Jacob and Anna, and possibly more.

Those named as survivors, along with Mary, are much more well-known and represented in the research than those that preceded their parents in death. Part of the challenge in finding these less-well-known siblings is the variant spellings of their surname, along with the transcription challenges presented when indexers have had difficulty reading the older script-style penmanship. The Stuver name has been found alternately as "Stoover," "Stuber," "Stowver," and "Stover," along with several other variants that indicate a complete break-down of spelling and transcription. At some point, a visual review of the complete census records for some of the regions of Indiana in which the family lived (primarily Huntington Cty, Indiana) may be necessary to complete this work.

Of the seven children known to have survived parents Jacob and Anna, along with those who preceded them in death, here is what is known so far.

Mary: oldest child of the family, married to Elias McConihey and moved to Kansas, where they ran a general store and had one daughter (Anna May) who herself had at least sixteen grandchildren.

Alfred: second child and oldest son, and my third great-grandfather. Alfred married twice - first to Melissa Forst (my third-great grandmother), with whom he had one daughter, and second to Martha Jane Cooper, with whom he had three sons and one daughter. Alfred was a wounded Civil War veteran and served as a Justice of the Peace in the city of Huntington.

John Jacob Jr.: third child of Jacob and Anna. "Jake" married Mary Jane Dungan and had one son, "Little John" Stuver, before his first wife died. He remarried, but had no other children, and Little John married and divorced without children.

Ann: fourth child of Jacob and Anna, she is found only in the 1850 US Census listing for her father's household at the age of one year, suggesting she had died before the family was counted again in 1860.

Edward: fifth child of the family, he married Ella Wilson and had several children, only three of whom (two daughters and one son) lived to adulthood. His son (Henry) had two daughters who died in childhood, and his oldest daughter (Myrtle) had only one grandchild who died as a young man with no known children, leaving his other daughter (Ona) as the only continuation of his line with her three children and nine grandchildren.

Savilla - sixth child of the family, and second daughter, she married Leonidas Kiger and had six children and at least fourteen grandchildren.

Francis - seventh child who died just a few weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. He is believed to have married, but this is not yet confirmed, and I have no knowledge of any children of his.

George Franklin - eighth child of the family who married Hulda Goble and had two children (son Arva and daughter Virgie Alice). His wife died in her early thirties, and George died just a handful of years later in his early forties, leaving the children to live with their maternal grandparents for a time prior to striking out on their own. Virgie moved to Michigan, married, and had five children and at least thirteen grandchildren; Arva moved to parts west, married (to a Huntington native) in Montana and raised his five children in North Dakota before coming back to northeast Indiana with four of his five children.

Charlotte: ninth child of the family, and third daughter. Little is known of Charlotte other than she appears to have married Hiram Winch and is believed to have died before either of her parents. It is not known if she had any children.

Emma: tenth child of the family, she married Phillip King and had at least four children and at least eleven grandchildren. Emma was widowed twice - first by Phillip's death, and then by the death of her second husband, John Stoy.

Adeline: eleventh child and fifth daughter, "Addie" married John Bender. The two of them had no children, and spent several years living with and caring for her parents in their home. The two of them also appear to have raised Addie's nephew Wilbur King (Emma's youngest child) for many years. After Addie's death, John remarried and remained close to his wife's family.

The only remaining child for whom there is any information is Clara, youngest of the known children and an infant death (at the age of two months). Her name exists in an old interment listing for a cemetery (County Line Lutheran Cemetery) that has been disused for over a century; she is also named in notes from the files of Jane Anne Thomas as the youngest known child of Jacob and Anna, but otherwise I have no information on her and nothing else that identifies her as a sibling of the others.

As twelve children are accounted for, that seems to complete the total suggested in Jacob's obituary. There may have been one or two infant or child deaths that remain unknown, but discovering these (if they exist) may prove difficult.

 

There is mention of Alfred Stuver and wife (Martha Jane Cooper Stuver) being called to Warren Township to visit his father, who was noted as being 94 years of age, bedfast for five years, and was "lying at the point of death," in the 5 Nov 1903 issue (p8) of the Huntington Herald.