Ancestors
Lewis Jasper Risenhoover
1908-1987 · Alton MO
Born 1908, Alton, Oregon County, Missouri
Died 1987
Father: George Washington Risenhoover
Mother: Mary Elizabeth Clapp
Children include Delbert
Lewis Jasper Risenhoover was born on 29 May 1908 at Alton, the county seat of Oregon County, Missouri, in the Ozark hills along the Arkansas line. He was the third child of George Washington Risenhoover and Mary Elizabeth Clapp, and the census taker of 1910 found him at a year old in Piney Township, entered as Jasper L., the names the other way round from the order he used all his adult life. His grandfather Jasper, the old Confederate who gave him his second name, was living in the next township.
The family left Missouri when Lewis was a boy. His youngest brother Harvey was born in Arkansas in 1919, and by 1929 the Risenhoovers were in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. There, on 29 June 1929, at Chandler, Lewis, twenty-one, married Helen Faye Smith, sixteen, the daughter of Orville Smith of Osage Township. In April 1930 the young couple were living in Osage Township with Helen's father, a widower, in the house with them.
By the family's account they left Cushing, Oklahoma, for Colorado in 1930 in a Ford Roadster with a large box built on the back for their belongings, and had seven flat tires on the road. Their first child, Darrel, was born in Oklahoma in 1931 by the censuses. By 1933, when Mary Alice was born, they were in Colorado, where Lewis's parents and brothers had already settled at Cahone in Dolores County, and where Helen's own father had farmed when she was small. In 1935 the family was in rural Dolores County; in April 1940 they were farming in the Ruin Canyon precinct of Montezuma County with Darrel, Mary Alice, Rachel and the baby Delbert. On 16 October 1940, the first day of the peacetime draft, Lewis registered at Dove Creek and gave his sister Manda Kirkendall as the person who would always know where he was.
The 1950 census found him, forty-one, farming in Montezuma County with Helen and seven children, Darrell, Mary, Rachel, Delbert, Donald, Margaret Helen and Carol. Donald had been born in Utah about 1943. His daughter-in-law Ruth later remembered the Risenhoovers running a gas station south of Cortez, but that was Delbert's venture, not his.
He lived to seventy-nine and died on 21 December 1987, with his last address at Cortez. Helen outlived him by eighteen years. They lie together at Cahone Cemetery under one red-brown granite stone, LEWIS J. 1908-1987, HELEN 1913-2005, near his parents and her father.
Sources
Find a Grave, memorial 12842433 (Lewis Jasper Risenhoover) and memorial 12842442 (Helen Risenhoover), Cahone Cemetery, Cahone, Dolores County, Colorado; photograph added 2014.
United States, Social Security Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT), 1936-2007, entry for Delbert Raymon Risenhoover, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6K7H-FDYL.
United States Census, 1940, Colorado, Montezuma County, Election Precinct 13 Ruin Canyon, household of Lewis J Risenhoover, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VR62-B6K.
United States Census, 1950, Colorado, Montezuma County, household enumerated 4 and 5 April 1950 (indexed under Margaret Helen Risenhoover), FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6FMJ-XSMG.
Colorado, World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1940-1945, Lewis Jasper Risenhoover, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QKVM-38B8.
Oklahoma, County Marriages, 1890-1995, Lincoln County, Lewis J Risenhoover and Helen Smith, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2Z5-LZR5.
United States Census, 1930, Oklahoma, Lincoln County, Osage Township, household of Lewis J Ruenhoover (indexed under Donald A Williams), FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XCW3-P4F.
United States Census, 1910, Missouri, Oregon County, Piney Township, household of G W Risenhoover, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M2B2-95S.
United States Social Security Death Index, Lewis J Risenhoover, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JT7S-2M6; United States Social Security Numerical Identification Files, Lewis J Risenhoover, FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6KWL-NNXQ.
Obituary of Helen Faye Risenhoover, Ertel Funeral Home, Cortez, Colorado, published 27 March 2005, https://www.ertelfuneralhome.com/obituaries/helen-faye-risenhoover.
Colorado WWII draft registration, Lewis Jasper Risenhoover (FamilySearch 1:1:QKVM-38B8); Social Security Death Index (1:1:JT7S-2M6) and NUMIDENT (1:1:6KWL-NNXQ); Oklahoma county marriages, Lincoln County, Lewis J Risenhoover and Helen Smith (1:1:Q2Z5-LZR5); 1910 census, Piney Township, Oregon County (1:1:M2B2-95S); 1930 census, Osage Township, Lincoln County (1:1:XCW3-P4F); 1940 census, Montezuma County (1:1:VR62-B6K); 1950 census, Montezuma County (1:1:6FMJ-XSMG); Find a Grave memorial 12842433 with a photograph of the stone; obituary of Helen Faye Risenhoover, Cortez Journal, March 2005; obituary of Helen Faye Risenhoover, Ertel Funeral Home, Cortez, March 2005
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Cite: Heirology, "Lewis Jasper Risenhoover (1908-1987)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lewis-jasper-risenhoover-1908-1987-b59a52.