Noted
events
His beloved wife, Elizabeth Moore, died Sept. 23, 1825, two months after their
son Thomas Moore Hess was born.
John Moses re-married in
1830, then again prior to 1839 to Elizabeth Grayliss.
They had three sons and one daughter.
Elizabeth Grayliss Hess died
in 1851 when their children were 12, 10, 7, 4.
John Moses Hess died in 1856 and it is unclear from the US Census if all four
children went to live with their, then married, step-brother Thomas Moore
Hess and
his wife Ann Amanda Kinnear Hess OR if only James lived with them and
the youngest 3 children went to live with a neighbor, the Andersons.
More
information gathered:
Since finding
the (above quoted) Centennial History book written in 1901, I have acquired
a copy
of 'History of Balser Hess 1747-1806 and Descendants' compiled by
Frank E. Hess of Goshen, Indiana in 1950.
From the Hess book, a more comprehensive history of the Hess family is understood
and
it serves to correct some information that was given in the Centennial History
book.
From the Frank
E. Hess book:
John Moses Hess
was the 9th child of Balser Hess and Mary Eve Hensel Hess, born Sept. 22,
1799 at Hopetown,
Ross County, Ohio. He was the only child born after the family left Bedford,
Pennsylvania. At the age of two he was
taken by the family to the Franklin County home near Columbus, Ohio. Here
his father died when he was seven years old
and he grew to manhood under the care of his mother and oldest brother Daniel,
who remained at home with their mother,
a widow, and reared this family of orphans and did not marry till after his
last sister, Susan, was married to
Israel Carpenter in 1817.
Under his father's
will he was to receive the homestead at his mother's death, but due to the
fact that she lived nearly
fifty years as a widow, John Moses did not receive actual possession until
January 26, 1855, just eighteen months
before his death.
On July 25, 1824,
he married Elizabeth Moore, a daughter of Thomas Moore a farmer living on
the Olentangy River
north of the Hess home. She was born in 1801. They had one son, Thomas Moore
Hess, born July 11, 1825 at the Moore
home. The mother, Elizabeth, died September 23, 1825, never having recovered
from the birth of their son.
In the fall of
1828, in company with his brother Balser, John Moses made a land prospecting
trip west through Indiana and Illinois.
It was on this trip that he helped pick out the Indiana home to which Balser
II moved the following spring, and which
became the Indiana homestead.
On November 10,
1830, John Moses married Mary Ann Peoples and they had one daughter, Mary,
born October 8, 1831;
however, both mother and daughter died the same day. He was a widower for
a second time.
In 1833 he went
with the Henry Cryder family from Delaware County, Ohio, to Grundy County,
Illinois.
Mary Ann Cryder was his oldest sister. Here he helped with the long hard trip
and stayed till the family was well established
in their new home near the present site of Morris, Illinois. In 1834 he returned
to Ohio by way of his brother Balser's home
at Goshen, Indiana.
On July 12, 1838
he married Elizabeth Grayless, daughter of Nathaniel Grayless and Sarah LaCompt.
Elizabeth Grayless was
born October 25, 1819 and died May 25, 1851. His third marriage lasted only
thirteen years. He was left with four small
children, namely: James Hermes Hess, Charles Wesley Hess, John Moses Hess
and Maria Louisa Hess. During this last marriage
he devoted his entire time to farming and improving the land on which his
mother still lived under her life lease.
He died July 25,
1856, leaving the four half-grown children, who now had neither mother or
father. His son, Thomas Moore Hess,
by his first marriage, was grown and assumed the responsibility of the younger
children. It was a task Thomas was well prepared
for as he had been an orphan from birth.
John Moses Hess
had lived a short fifty-six years and was buried in Union Cemetery just a
few feet west of his father and mother.
A twelve foot shaft marks the graves of him and his wives.
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