Page News & Courier
Heritage and Heraldry
The Stoneberger Family of Page County
Article of November 8, 2001
Believed to be the progenitor of the Page County
Stonebergers, Frederick Johann Stoneberger
(Steinberger) was probably born ca. 1730 in Germany.
After arriving in Philadelphia in 1750, Frederick is
believed to have married �Mary.�
In all, Frederick and Mary are believed to have had
between five and seven children. According to the
research of one descendant, two Steinbergers are
listed in DAR records (Jost and Lorenz) that were of
the right age and location to be children of
Frederick. However, they served in Pennsylvania units
and there seems to be no census information that helps
solidify the possible link. Lorenz is recorded to
have lived to the ripe old age of 106!
Of the five known children of Frederick there were
Lewis, Christina, John, Dorothy, and Frederick, Jr.
The Frederick Stoneberger family appears to have
settled in the Shenandoah Valley near the family of
John Christian Nauman. In 1775, sons Frederick, John
and Lewis Stoneberger joined and served with Captain
Michael Reader�s short-lived company. Lewis is the
only son known to have later received a pension for
his service.
Lewis Stoneberger�s widow, the former Mary Ann Finter,
applied for a pension in Page County on January 22,
1844 (�under provisions of the Act of Congress passed
July 7, 1838, allowing half pay to widows, etc.�).
According to the pension affidavit, apparently after
service in Reader�s company, Lewis may have belonged
to the same company as Andrew Keyser. In the same
statement, his wife also recalled (at ninety years of
age) that he had served for three years, marching from
Shenandoah County under the command of Captain Peter
Printz. After service in the Virginia Militia �at the
taking of Cornwallis at Yorktown,� Stoneberger�s
company marched, oddly, to Wheeling, where he was
discharged.
A few years after the war, on August 10, 1785 Lewis
and Mary were married in Shenandoah County by �one
Paul Hinkle, a minister of the gospel.� Lewis died in
Shenandoah (Page) County on October 20, 1828.
Remarkably, Mary Ann was still alive in 1845 when her
pension was reviewed. At that time (and at the
remarkable age of 105!) she was residing in Warren
County, Missouri. Already receiving a �hefty� $70 per
year from the pension, she had reapplied to receive
the bounty land �to which she may be entitled under
the act approved of March the 3rd, 1855.� Children
John and Mary Ann Stoneberger affixed their seals
beneath that of their mother, perhaps prepared to work
this new bounty land.
The DAR Patriot Index lists John Stoneberger
(1760-1821) as a private in the Virginia
Army and that he married Elizabeth Norman (Nauman).
Over a decade after Yorktown, early records reveal
that the St. Luke's Church at Alma, near Stanley
(known as the Stoneberger Church) was signed over by
Frederick Stoneberger and Matthias Friarmood to John
Nowman (Nauman) and Daniel Snyder, trustees of the
congregation. According to Harry M. Stricker, this
church replaced an earlier one that �stood on Stony
Run near where the Honeyville Road crossed the stream,
about two miles east of Alma.�
Of the Stoneberger daughters, it is known that Dorothy
married Jacob Judy and Christina married Johann
Christian Nauman.
By 1860, Stonebergers remained heavily concentrated in
Alma, but could also be found throughout the county in
Grove Hill, East Liberty, Marksville, Valleysburg, and
Cedar Point.
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