The Hyphen Family Lineage

[Obituary for "Mrs. Melissa Stover," from the Huntington Herald, 1 Jul 1874; provided by newspapers.com account of the Huntington County Public Library.]

STOVER - On the 18th of June, Mrs. Melissa Stover, daughter of George and Harriet Forst, aged 22 years, 11 months, and 16 days. Mrs. Stover was born in Warren township, and was married six years ago. She leaves a husband and a child.

Note: Researching Melissa Forst

Limited information has been available for Melissa (Forst) Stuver. Initially, most of what I had came from the notes, files, and writings of Jane Anne Thomas. In two different county history texts (Huntington County, Indiana History & Families 1834-1993 and Wells County, Indiana Family History 1837-1992), in articles on Jacob Stuver (Melissa's father-in-law) and George Washington Forst (Melissa's father), Jane Anne writes that Melissa had married Jacob's son Alfred Stuver in 1869, given birth to a daughter (Elfrieda "Effie" Stuver) that same year, and later died in childbirth in 1874.

In Jane Anne's files was a pedigree family tree (compiled by Jane Anne's cousin, Franklin Harry Bayha, in 1973) that included birth, death, and marriage dates for Melissa and Alfred. Alfred Stuver's obituary (also from Jane Anne's files) contained a bit of information that confirmed some of what had been found to that point. Jane Anne had also written in her notes that Melissa's grave was lost, which led me to believe that she did not know in which cemetery Melissa was buried.

Initial searches showed a listing for Melissa's grave in County Line Lutheran Cemetery (Luther, Whitley Cty, Indiana) on the FindaGrave.com website, which included birth and death dates that disagreed slightly from what I had from the notes and files. My thought at this point was that I should walk the cemetery to try and confirm what the stone said, and possibly take a rubbing. What I found at the cemetery (on 28 Dec 2014) was that, out of at least forty interments, only a small handful of stones are still standing, and most of those are damaged or worn beyond any legibility. A few more fragments can be found lying on the ground or near the standing stones. There are rows of visibly sunken graves, so it seems obvious that most of the stones are gone and the graves are, for all intents and purposes, now unmarked. Jane Anne may have meant simply that Melissa's grave in this cemetery was now unmarked and its specific plot unknown.

The photos of Melissa in Jane Anne's files included a cab photo of Melissa as a teenager, and photos of her with husband Alfred and, later, also with her daughter Effie. I was unsure whether the second child (whose birth purportedly brought about Melissa's death) had survived, but there does not seem to be any such child still living in either Alfred's household nor in his father's or any of his siblings' households after Melissa's death. (All of the children in Alfred's household in later years were born after his second marriage, to Martha Jane Cooper.)

Further research into Melissa Forst turned up only a marriage record to confirm the wedding date to Alfred. Some work at the Huntington County Public Library (Indiana) brought up a very brief obituary for Melissa (from the Huntington Herald) that confirmed a death date (18 Jun 1874) and gave an age (22 years, 11 months, 16 days) that calculates back to a slightly different birthdate (2 Jul 1851) than I had from Jane Anne's files and notes (4 Jul 1851). Additionally, only a "husband and child" are given as survivors, which would also seem to confirm that the second child did not survive the event that killed Melissa.