Note: THE JOSEPH MOOMAW -- MARY STOVER FAMILY
by Patricia Prickett Hickin (June 2000)

A faded professionally-made photograph of 1874 shows Joseph with his wife, Mary, and their youngest child, Lillie. Clearly, for these people, life is serious business. At 58 Joseph (b. 5/23/1816) is white-bearded and gray-haired; his cheeks clean-shaven, the beard just around the edges of his face. He is wearing--as befits a good Dunkard farmer in his Sunday clothes--a dark rumpled suit and vest, and worn, sturdy, unpolished shoes. On his left, sitting close against him is his stolid wife, Mary (b. 9/30/1819). A close-fitting white cap, which ties under her chin, circles her flat round face; a short dark cape tops the shoulders of her plain dark dress. Leaning against Joseph on his right is 11-year-old Mary Lillie, her hand on his. Her hair is parted in the center and pulled back behind her ears; she is wearing plain high-topped shoes with thick white stockings;. But the cut of her slender high-waisted dress gives a hint of stylishness and the ribbon around her head is colored scarlet.

In 1874, Joseph and Mary (m. November 1840) have brought 12 children into the world. They live in the center of present-day Daleville, probably in his father's home place, across the road from the Dunkard meeting house (built 1851). Two of Joseph's four brothers have died, one has moved to Indiana and the other, Benjamin F., lives in Bonsack, where he is a prosperous farmer and outstanding Dunkard leader. Five of Joseph's six sisters have died or moved away; the other lives nearby.

His wife, "rugged in health, never . . . having had the aid of a physician," has given birth to 7 boys and 5 girls. Regular as clockwork they had come along: every other year as summer turned to fall, a new baby arrived - the first in October 1841; by 1855 Mary had borne 6 boys and 2 girls. Then the rhythm and the gender changed: all but one of the last four babies arrived in the spring and all but one were girls. The baby boy (born 1859) died before he was eight weeks old. Two weeks later their second son, eleven-year-old Edward, died "of unknown causes." Joseph and Mary had already lost one other son: little Matthew (b. 1851) had died at age 4 of croup.

Of the four sons still living when the picture was made, the first-born, Calvin, who married his cousin Sarah Moomaw in 1866, was living in Delaware Co., IN, with his growing family. The second, Cephas (b. 1849), who married Sarah Elizabeth Manges in 1873, was well on his way toward becoming a self-educated lawyer, a leading attorney in Southwest Virginia, judge of the 20th Circuit Court of Virginia, and the popular mayor (1913-1915) of the booming young city of Roanoke. George, barely 20, and Simon, still in his teens (and with a bad foot and one leg much shorter than the other) were probably still at home, helping their father on the farm.

Of the five girls, two had married soon after the Civil War ended. Lucy moved with her new husband, farmer Lewis Joseph Hooke, to Ohio (and would later move to Indiana); Maria Elizabeth had married Charles Elisha Pobst, blacksmith of "Big Lick." Both girls were busy raising families. By 1874 Maria had already borne 5 of her eventual 13 children (though in the 1870s three of them died under the age of 3 of whooping cough and a fourth, a twin, died at birth); Lucy had 2 of her eight. The other three girls, still in their early teens, were still at home, no doubt busy helping their mother with chickens, gardens, cooking, sewing, housework .

As their children mature and move away, Mary and Joseph are finding new interests, or spending more time with long-time interests. Joseph, a deacon in the Valley Meeting House, the principal Botetourt congregation of Dunkards (or German Baptists as they were now styling themselves), has always turned down requests to preach. He has a high regard for education and declares that he does not know enough to give sermons. But he also has a high regard for Scripture and he is concerned that young Dunkards (perhaps including his own daughters) feel tempted to attend churches of other denominations, which have Sunday Schools for young people. Joseph will bend Dunkard tradition in two ways that are still remembered. He will begin to teach a Sunday afternoon Bible class. Though open to all ages, it was aimed chiefly at young people. (From the Valley church the Sunday School movement spread throughout the district.) And he will allow Lillie to join the church at age 14 (1877). Never before has the Botetourt church admitted a non-adult to membership. In fact, Dunkards usually expect young people to be married before joining the church -- and hence, less likely to succumb to the wiles of the "devil."

Mary has always had a bent for nursing, both in caring for her own family and in looking after neighbors. Now that the last of their family is reaching maturity and leaving home, she is finding more time to do what she loves best -- to serve her church as "a leader upon Communion occasions" and to be "first and most faithful at the bedside of the sick in the community."

At the turn of the decade comes a spate of new marriages: George to Julia Bushong in 1879, Simon to 17-year-old Annie Slusser in 1881, Minerva (b. 1860) to William E. Thomas of Catawba in 1883, and Sarah (Sallie, b. 1857) to Benton Painter of Haymakertown in 1885. All of the men were farmers.

More marriages and more babies mean that Mary's services as a loving caretaker are more needed than ever. George falls ill a year after his marriage and dies in 1880, three months before the birth of his only child (Georgia). In June 1888 Simon loses his young wife Annie, age 25. That same summer a neighbor falls ill with typhoid, and Mary, trusting her own strong constitution, lends her services to his care.

But this time she is over-confident. For the first time in her life she becomes ill and requires the services of a physician. She has contracted typhoid. She does not recover.

Her husband's nephew, T.C. Denton, wrote the obituary. Mary was not quite 69 when, "from the bedside of the sick, . . . she took her bed to sleep in Jesus. She whiled away her last hours without a murmur. What a monument to Christianity! How consoling to her devoted husband and believing children to know they have a wife and affectionate mother waiting and watching for them over there."

At the time of Mary's death, only one child remained unmarried: Lillie, now teaching in a nearby school, was engaged to George W. Layman (see George Layman-Lillie Moomaw Story). They postponed their wedding to observe a year of mourning and plan for the changed circumstances. In the summer of 1889 Simon married Annie's cousin Sarah and moved his family to Indiana to farm. In January 1890 Lillie and George married and Joseph, now in his seventies, made his home with the newlyweds. In 1891 Maria moved closer home, to Cloverdale, where her husband had bought a farm for the family, and where Maria would run the farm and bring up the children alone. In 1892 she filed for divorce.

Joseph lived to see the birth of Lillie and George's first child, Louis Moomaw Layman, in February 1893, and to help observe his first birthday. He died of "old age" in April 1894, at the age of 78. The following September his eldest son, Calvin, died in Indiana, and Maria died a decade later. The other two boys and four girls died between 1915 and 1946.

Though we have little recorded information of the character and temperament of Joseph and Mary Stover Moomaw, we can infer a great deal from the character and personality of their son Cephas, who died suddenly in 1915, while he was still mayor. The Roanoke Times described him as "a man of the utmost probity in public and private life," and commented on his "integrity and Christian character," his "kindly manner and genial humor," and his "courteous and considerate dealing with his business associates."

The first Moomaw to settle in Botetourt was Joseph's grandfather, John Mumma/Moomaw (m. Anna Barbara Ranck), who brought his family into the county (probably by Conestoga wagon in the late 1780s) from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Joseph's father was John's oldest child, Christian (married Catherine, daughter of Peter Snider, 1800).

The Mummas, who came to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1732 from Germany, were probably of French Huguenot ancestry and became Dunkards some time after moving to Botetourt County, Virginia

Mary's family, who came to Pennsylvania in the middle of the 18th century, may have come from Switzerland. Her great-grandfather settled at Antietam in southern Pennsylvania and became an elder in the Dunkard congregation there. Her grandfather, Dr. George Stover, married into the Price family: Johannes Preisz, one of the earliest Dunkards in Germany, came to Pennsylvania in 1719 with the first group of Dunkards to arrive in the colonies.

The Stovers were settling in southern Botetourt by the 1780s, and Mary was born at Botetourt Springs (now Hollins College). Like Joseph's father, Mary's father, John Stover, also married a Catherine Snider, the daughter of Matthias Snider. The two Snider families are not known to be related.

Additional information on the family is on deposit at the Botetourt Historical Museum and the Virginia Room of the Roanoke Public Library.

SOURCES:

Botetourt County. Court Orders, Deeds, Wills, Deaths, Marriages.

United States Census. 1850, 1870. Botetourt County, Virginia.

Pauline Layman Prickett Papers. Genealogical notes, family pictures, newspaper clippings, 1874-1988.

Patricia Prickett Hickin, Joseph Kinzie, Jr., Virginia Kinzie Visser. Recollections.

[Daleville Church of the Brethren]. Historical Sketches of Botetourt Congregation, 1851-1912. [Daleville, VA, 1912].

Denton, T.C. "Mary Moomaw," Gospel Messenger, 1888, p670.

Fretz, A.J. 'A Genealogical Record of the Descendants of Henry Stauffer and other Stauffer Pioneers'. Harleysville, PA, 1899.

Ikenberry, B.R. "Pobst, Maria E. Moomaw," Gospel Messenger, 1904, p431.

McMillan, Lucille R. and Katie Westman, 'Nine Roads from Cloverdale . . . Pobst . . . Moomaw'. Baltimore, 1988.

Moomaw, Robert, compiler. 'Moomaw, Mumma, Mumaw , Mumaugh Genealogy'. Houston, TX, 1990

Mumma, Doug. Mumma Family Database. Website: www.mumma.org. 2000.

Sappington, Roger E. 'The Brethren in Virginia'. Harrisonburg, VA, 1973.

Wanger, Geo., comp. 'Descendents of Rev. Jacob Price'. Harrisburg, PA, 1926.

The Brethren Encyclopedia. 3 vols. Philadelphia, PA, 1983.