Jemima Hannah Stevick was born in 1849 in Pennsylvania, the younger of two daughters of Jacob and Hannah (Snoke) Stevick. In 1850, Jacob, Hannah and their small daughters Mary and Jemima were living in Mifflin Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania; Jacob was a farmer. Jemima’s mother Hannah died at the age of only twenty-eight years in 1853. Jacob was married a second time in 1854 to Catharine A. North, and when the census was taken in 1860, Jemima (aged 13) was living with a widow, Eliza Keeper and her two small children in Letterkenny, Franklin County, Pennsylvania – about seven miles from her father’s residence in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. Jemima was attending school. Her stepmother Catharine died in 1862, and her father Jacob was married a third time in 1865 to Elizabeth North. Sources disagree on when Jacob took his family to Indiana (Robert Robertson’s 1889 History of the Valley of the Upper Maumee River says “…in 1859 he came to Indiana…” but the 1860 census locates Jacob and his family residing in Shippensburg, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania), but they were certainly settled there before Jemima was married in 1865 to Israel Hollopeter. Israel had finished his three years of military service with Company E, Indiana 11th Infantry Regiment less than a year prior to their marriage. He was twenty-four years old, and Jemima was sixteen.
In 1870, Israel, Jemima and their two young children Ida and Elmer were living in Cedar Creek Township, Allen County, Indiana. Israel was farming then, and throughout his working years. The 1880 census located Israel, Jemima, Ida, Elmer, Hiram, Charles, Anna, Mary, and Alfred living together in Eel River Township, Allen County, Indiana. Jemima and Israel’s eldest daughter Ida Cora May (Hollopeter) Kirkendall passed away in 1895, when she was only twenty-eight years old. She had been married less than a year and had no children. Israel, Jemima, Zend, Arthur, Albert and Herschel still lived in Eel River Township when the census was taken in 1900. In 1905, Jemima sold some land in Cedar Creek Township to her sister Mary Hollopeter (Mary had married one of Israel’s brothers, Matthias) for $1000. Interestingly, Mary then sold the land (immediately, as far as I can tell) to John E. Manning for $1100.
Israel and Jemima’s second child, Elmer Jacob Hollopeter, died at the age of forty years in 1909. His obituary told: “Mr. Hollopeter was a farmer…and had been in ill health for several months. During his illness he submitted to several surgical operations.” Elmer had one daughter, Eva Mae, who was only nine years old when her father died. In 1910, Israel and Jemima were living in Perry Township, Allen County, Indiana; they had retired. The Fort Wayne News published several gossip items involving Jemima in the nineteen-teens:
1913: “Mrs. Israel Hollopeter has been on the sick list for a few days but is better now.”
1914: “The Willing Workers society met at Mrs. Israel Hollopeter’s Thursday. Mrs. J. S. Heffelfinger and daughter Evadna were Fort Wayne callers this week. Mrs. Emma Hollopeter and daughter Mary Jane are visiting her mother, Mrs. Tilden, near this place.” [Mrs. J. S. Heffelfinger was Jemima’s daughter Anna; Mrs. Emma Hollopeter was Jemima’s daughter-in-law, wife of her son Herschel, and Mary Jane was Herschel and Emma’s daughter, Jemima’s granddaughter.]
1915: “Mrs. Israel Hollopeter was a Friday guest of her daughter, Mrs. Barney Heffelfinger.”
[Mrs. Barney Heffelfinger was Jemima’s daughter Mary.]
Israel Hollopeter died at the age of seventy-five years in 1916.
1916: “Card of Thanks. We wish, in this manner, to express our heartfelt thanks to our friends and neighbors for their kind assistance and sympathy in our sad bereavement in the death of our husband and father. – Mrs. I. Hollopeter and children”
1917: “Real Estate Transfers, Country: Jemima H. Hollopeter to Theron V. Hatch, part of lots 41, 42, and 44 original plat of Huntertown for $1300.”
I have never been able to find Jemima in the 1920 or 1930 census. In the 1922 and 1923 Fort Wayne and Allen County directories, Jemima’s address is listed as 712 Lawton Place, the same address at which her son Arthur was residing at the time. This address is still on the north side of Fort Wayne right next to the Saint Joseph River. However, in 1920 Arthur (a merchant in a general store) was living in Putnam County, Ohio, and in 1930 he was living in Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana and working as a traffic manager for a glass works. So it appears that she lived with Arthur for a short period while he resided in Fort Wayne, but not before or after that.
Jemima Hannah (Stevick) Hollopeter passed away in 1933, when she was eighty-four years old. Her obituary in the Churubusco Truth told: “Mrs. Jemima Hollopeter, well-known pioneer matron, passed away…at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Sherman Heffelfinger, in Huntertown. A facial stroke caused her death. …The Hollopeter family is widely known, and sympathy is extended to her family by a host of friends.” At her passing, nine of her eleven children were living, including my great-grandfather, Albert Eugene Hollopeter. All of Albert Eugene’s grandchildren (including my dad) were born after Jemima passed, and so there is no one in my family still alive who remembers her. My dad’s sister, my aunt Rose, looks very much like Jemima (her great-grandmother), at least as she appears in surviving photographs.
I really don’t know anything about Jemima. In all the photographs I have of her, she appears very serious and imposing. Because of the standard of photographic paper used in her time, however, people were told not to smile and to hold very still, and so almost everyone in old photographs looks serious and imposing. Jemima lost her mother when she was only four years old, and in 1860 when she was only eleven, she was living with another family seven miles from her father’s home. Whether this was because she chose to do so to attend school, or because her father’s new wife didn’t want his older children living with them, I don’t know, but it seems a tender age to be separated from her remaining parent and sister. She moved from Pennsylvania to Indiana as a child. She was only sixteen when she married and had eleven children from ages 17 to 39. Two of her children died – in adulthood, but still before their parents. She was a widow for more than seventeen years. Through all of that she managed farm work, household work, land purchases and sales, raising children – and probably grandchildren.
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