Phillip and Hannah Dugan

Hannah Stumbough was born October 3, 1838 in Highland County, Ohio. She was the fourth of seven children of George Stumbough and Elizabeth Bennet. In the middle 1840's George got an ailment, which he tried to cure by drinking hot pepper,  using it as a medicine. It killed him.

After his death Elizabeth married Jacob Wisecup in Hillsboro, Ohio. They had four children during their marriage. Around 1853, when Hannah was about fourteen, her mother and stepfather moved the family to Boone County, Iowa.

Phillip Dugan, a son of William Dugan, was born somewhere in Ohio. Phillip and Hannah married on November 30,1855. Their first son, William, was born about a year later. Their next child Louis born in 1860 only lived a year. Their next son Daniel born in 1862 only lived four years. We can only imagine their suffering at the death of two small children

During the Civil War two of Hannah's brothers and a brother-in-law served in the Union Army. A few years before the War, her brother's Joshua and James had moved to Ohio, apparently living with their Stumbough uncles. When the Civil War started, they joined the Ohio Voluntary Infantry. They remained in the army throughout the war. They moved back to Boone County after the War.

In 1865 Phillip and Hannah had another son, Henry Thorton Dugan, my grandfather. After that they had two girls, Lydia in 1867 and Rosalia in 1871. Their last child Walter was born in 1875.

When Inez (Dugan) Ploof, the youngest daughter of Henry and Lillian Dugan, was a little girl in Iowa, she and her family use to visit her grandparents, Phillip and Hanna every Sunday. Her grandparents had a large parlor that they only used on special occasions. The parlor contained a pump organ that Hannah used to play while Phillip, who had a large full beard, pumped on it with his cane. They were fun people and not domineering at all. Maybe because they were the youngest children Grandma and Grandpa Dugan babied them.

Inez's other grandparents, Abner and Mary Brown were "staid" people and always seemed more formal. Abner was a streetcar conductor. They didn't see as much of the Brown's because the Brown's lived in the town of Boone and the Henry Dugans lived on a farm near Woodward. What we now consider a short drive was a long drive in those days.

Phillip and Hannah lived on a farm about two miles from Woodward in the direction of Madrid. During the harvest season Grandma Dugan (Hannah) cooked three meals a day for the harvesters. Inez also remembered that in those days they slept on feather beds because they didn't have mattresses.

When Inez was about nine, her father Henry Dugan, tired of trying to make a living as a farmer, moved the family to Deer River, Minnesota. Not long after that Phillip Dugan died on December 3, 1918. He was 83 years old. Hannah lived almost nine more years before dying on October 15, 1925. She was 87 years old. They are buried at Pleasant Hill Cemetery at Bethel Church which is about eight miles north of Woodward. Their final resting place is not too many feet from Hannah's mother Elizabeth's grave and the graves of their infant children.

Sources of biography:

family records,
Boone County courthouse,
Pleasant Hill Cemetery,
Inez Ploof conversation 09,1995