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"Aunt Hovey" - - Mary Ann "Polly" Truby Hovey

Mary Ann "Polly" Truby Britzious Hovey (1775-1868) and her second husband, Dr. Simeon Hovey, brought back to Western Pennsylvania the baby Mary Ann Marshall and her older Rohrer half-siblings, Betsy and Frederick. Indirect evidence indicates that they also made a home for the child Samuel Marshall. All this, after her sister, Catharina Truby Rohrer Marshall (1763-1806) and husband, John Marshall (about 1761-1806) died suddenly of a fever in New Lancaster, Ohio. The Hoveys made a home for the children at Happy Retreat in the extreme northwestern tip of Armstrong County, in what is today Hovey Township. "Aunt Hovey" died at age 93, having lived through both the Revolution and the Civil War. She survived being captured by Native Americans as a child, the deaths of two husbands, and the early, hard years of life in the wilderness along the Allegheny River. Although she bore no children of her own, she truly is MOTHER to many descendants of Catharina Truby Rohrer Marshall. She lies buried in the Presbyterian Cemetery of Parker, Pennsylvania, in the Hovey-Robinson Plot, near four of the six children: Elizabeth Rohrer Robinson, Samuel Marshall, and John Marshall. Mary Ann Marshall Bailey, her godchild whom she reared from age two, is buried across the street in the GAR (the Old United Presbyterian) Cemetery.

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