The Hyphen Family Lineage

[Obituary for Mrs. Anna Stuver, from the Huntington Herald, 18 Jan 1906; provided from the files of the Huntington County Public Library.]

[headline] Resident Since 1862
[second line] Mrs. Anna Stuver Died at Home Wednesday.
[third line] Funeral on Saturday
[fourth line] Born in Pennsylvania - Aged Resident of Warren Township - Surviving Family.

Wednesday evening at the old home place south of Luther occurred the death of Mrs. Anna Stuver, widow of the late Jacob Stuver. Death came after an illness which came upon her in the nature of a paralytic stroke some time Saturday night, since which time she had not regained consciousness.

In recent weeks Mrs. Stuver has been a regular attendant at the revival meetings in progress at Makin. Saturday she attended a funeral and had expected to go to church in the evening, but was feeling so badly that she gave up going. Sunday morning she was found by her daughter, Mrs. Bender, with whom she made her home on the old farm place, in an unconscious and partially paralyzed condition. It was realized that on account of her advanced age there was not hope for her recovery, though Dr. Ira Perry of Bippus gave close attention.

Anna Doney was born in Northampton county, Pa., eight-five years ago. About sixty-two years ago, while still a resident of Pennsylvania, she became the wife of Jacob Stuver. In 1855 the family moved to Hancock county, Ohio, whence they moved to this county about 1862, settling on a farm in Warren township which had since been the family home with the exception of two years spent in Bippus.

Two years ago in February Mr. Stuver passed to his reward. Mrs. Stuver continued at the home place. She is survived by the following children: Mrs. Emma King and A.L. and Edward Stuver of this city; Mrs. Savilla Keiger of Kosciusko county; Mrs. Mary McConahey of Kansas; Mrs. Ada Bender at the home place and Jacob Stuver of Clear Creek township. Prior to the disbanding of the Lutheran church near the home Mrs. Stuver was a faithful and devoted member. Recently she had been attending services at the United Brethren church.

The funeral will be held from the late residence Saturday morning at 9, Rev. W.A. Thomas probably officiating. Interment will be at the Funk cemtery [sic].

Note: The maiden name of Anna Stuver

Anna Stuver's maiden name has been somewhat challenging to establish; most of the more reliable sources I can find indicate that it was "Dorn," while a few other records and obituaries report it as "Doney" or similar. For some reason, Franklin Harry Bayha (second-great-grandson of Anna Stuver) had recorded her maiden name as "Winch" on some of his charts and pedigrees, but with no source indicated. I have not seen it reported as such anywhere else, and as one of her daughters was supposed to have married a man with that surname, I think it more likely a point of confusion on Franklin Harry's part.

I believe the primary reason for the uncertainty on Anna's maiden name is likely because of the language barrier and literacy issues. Information passed down from Elfrieda "Effie" (Stuver) Bayha, Anna Stuver's granddaughter, indicates that Anna and her husband Jacob spoke very little English (the German dialect commonly called "Pennsylvania Dutch" being their primary tongue), and what English they could manage was broken and likely heavily accented. Additionally, they were reported to be illiterate - unable to read or write in any language. This contributed to future generations being unable to properly determine the spelling or even the phonetic specifics of Anna's maiden name, and even lended some inconsistency to the spelling of "Stuver" for a number of years. (The latter issue seemed to resolve itself once their English-speaking and literate children reached adulthood.)

I have not yet had much success in finding Anna's parentage, though it has not yet been a major focus. Chances are, her parents also spoke little or no English and were also likely illiterate, which may present some challenge once that angle is pursued further.

ADDENDUM: Living with Jacob, Anna, and their children in Bethlehem, Northampton Cty, Pennsylvania in the 1850 US Census is a sixty-year-old woman named Mary (given the surname of Stuber, while the seven-year-old daughter Mary is given the surname Daney, suggesting an error on the census-taker's part). This is almost certainly Anna's mother, which is the first I have found of a written indication from the time period of Anna's family's surname. I find it unlikely that there was a German-origin surname that was spelled anything like Doney, as Dorn seems a closer match. It seems most likely to me that the two forms are different phonetic anglicized versions of the same name - possibly "Dörne" - which, depending upon the type of Germanic accent used to pronounce the name may have led to different-sounding names. As an example, it is known that the umlauted-o sound was pronounced much more like a long "a" by Prussians, while it sounded much more like the word "oar" when spoken with a Bavarian accent. Likewise, the ending syllable would have been more or less emphasized depending upon the accent, leading some phonetic spellings to include it as a long "e" sound while others would drop it entirely.

Interestingly, on that same page of the census record, just a few houses away from Jacob Stuver's household is another "Daney" household, this one with a sixty-three "Caty Daney" and headed by Thomas. It seems reasonable to assume that this family is connected to Anna May's family, with the elder Caty and Mary possible being sisters-in-law. Thomas shows up again in the 1860 US Census in nearby Freemansburg, Northampton Cty, and then in the 1870 US Census again in Bethlehem, both times with the last name spelled "Doney." In the 1880 US Census, this household shows up in Kansas City, Jackson Cty, Missouri, again with the surname spelled as "Doney."

Further speculation on my part is that the two families - Jacob's and Anna's - may have come from two completely different regions of German heritage, with two very different types of German accents that pronounced the two family surnames much differently. This might well have been the source of some of the inconsistency in the anglicization of the names over a few generations.

I will need to look further into this to determine what I can about the family's name.

SECOND ADDENDUM: In the nearby city of Allentown, Lehigh Cty, Pennsylvania, there was a German-language newspaper in the mid-19th century, Der Lecha Caunty Patriot, which has occurences of the surname Doney in the late 1850s. This would seem to suggest the spelling "Doney" is correct, and the misspellings that followed in the decades after were likely due to phonetic interpretations.

See the notes for her husband, John Jacob Stuver Sr.