John Hoover of Licking County, Ohio

If you recall from my post Hoover Families in Licking County, Ohio I was especially interested in John and Barbara Hoover of Franklin and Newark Townships. John was of interest to me because the census information indicated that he was of the appropriate age to be my John2 Hoover (Andrew1). A review of the Revolutionary Pension files revealed, unfortunately, that this is not the case. The following is a summary of the information I found on John Hoover in his pension file.

John Hoover, a.k.a Johan George Huber, of Licking County, Ohio was born possibly in 1752 in Germany. He claimed in his pension deposition on 28 Apr 1834 that he emigrated from Germany, arriving in Philadelphia in 1775 (he thinks) and was for a short time indentured to Jacob Huber of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in order to pay off his travel expenses. In the fall of 1775 or 1776, he enlisted in the army at Lancaster. He did not speak English and could not—at the time of his deposition—clearly remember the details of his service or his command, except that he was in the battles of Germantown, White Plains in New Jersey, Brandywine, Princeton and Monmouth. He claimed that he was injured by a musketball in the neck, lost one of his eyes, and was taken prisoner in Philadelphia then transported to New York where he spent the rest of the war.  ¹

Barbara Hoover’s deposition for his pension in 1838 states that they were married about 1784 in Chester County, Pennsylvania about 29 miles west of Philadelphia near the Red Lion. She states that her marriage information was written down in a Bible her husband owned—alongside the ages of his brothers and sisters, but that it was destroyed by “a little puppy dog when she was out of the house having given it to one of her children to keep it quiet while she was out.” ² John Hoover died in Newark Township on 8 Oct 1834. John and Barbara had fourteen children, the eldest of whom was “fifty-three years of age on the 27th of March [1838].”³

Charles Hoover also appeared and made a deposition. He states that John and Barbara Hoover were husband and wife, and also his father and mother. He also states that he has one older brother and sister, and eleven other brothers and sisters.⁴

Footnotes:

• Category: Brick Walls, Research