Preston County, West Virginia Biography of ADOLPHUS R. FIKE This biography was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: ********************************************** ***The submitter does not have a connection*** ********to the subject of this sketch.******** ********************************************** This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, pg. 554-555 Preston ADOLPHUS R. FIKE is an undertaker and embalmer at Terra Alta, and has been a citizen of that town since October 2, 1907. Mr. Fike is a man of many gifts and versatile accomplishments, has been a farmer, merchant, carpenter and contractor, and has administered some public offices with credit and efficiency. This versatility has been a decided characteristic of the Fike family during its various generations in Preston County. The members of the family have been distinguished for their steady industry and also for the devotion that is the out- growth of deep religious impulses. The first American of this family came from the Province of Hanover early in the eighteenth century. His grandson, Christian Fike, married Christina Livengood. Their five sons were Christian, Jacob, John, Joseph and Peter, and their two daughters, Mrs. Elizabeth Lichty and Mrs. Barbara Shrock. Of this family Peter Fike was born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, November 3, 1794, and in 1851 removed to Sang Run, Garrett County, Maryland, and in 1854 to Preston County, West Virginia. He spent the remaining years of his life as a farmer and cooper in the Eglon community where he died November 28, 1871. In 1818 Peter Fike mar- ried Magdalene Arnold, daughter of Elder Samuel Arnold, of Burlington, West Virginia. The children of their union were: Samuel A., David, Moses, Aaron, Susan, who mar- ried John Snider, Mary, who married Phenis Miller, Christina, who was the wife of Jacob Weimer, Annie, who married Jeremiah Miller, Lydia, who married Henry Speicher, and Magdalene, Mrs. John Weimer. All the sons were farmers, and three of them, Samuel, Moses and Aaron, were ministers of the Church of the Brethren. They gave little attention to politics, and Moses only was a militia soldier during the Civil war and is the only survivor of the ten children, his home being near Eglon. Elder Aaron Fike, father of Adolphus R. Fike of Terra Alta, was born April 25, 1840, on Indian Creek in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, was reared in Garrett County, Maryland, and after the age of fourteen in Preston County. He made the best possible use of the limited educational opportunities that came to him. He lived and reared his family on a farm, and farming was always his chief vocation. After his mar- riage he and his wife lived for a year with his father, and during that time he employed his mechanical skill in making furniture, and continued that until he had sold enough to equip his own home for housekeeping. On June 3, 1861, he was elected to the ministry of the Church of the Brethren, after having been a member of the organization one year. He preached four years and was then ordained an elder and thereafter much of his time and energies were given to preach- ing and to ministering in church affairs. He went about these duties with singular disregard of his own comfort and hardships entailed in riding horseback to distant congrega- tions. As is the custom of that denomination, he did all his ministerial work without compensation. The intervals between his church duties were diligently employed on his farm and in providing for his family's comforts. He rode about over the country in all kinds of weather, preaching, baptizing, and frequently rode back a distance of fifteen miles. On two Occasions he reached home frozen to his saddle and had to be helped from the horse, his hands and feet being thawed out in cold water. He paid little attention to swollen streams, fording or swimming them on his horse. Once he tried to urge his horse into Cheat River when it was high, but his faithful animal refused to make the venture, and later he discovered that the stream had washed a new channel ten feet deep at that point. During his younger years he endured the hardships easily, but later an affliction came upon him which made it impossible to travel on horse- back, and he then walked to his appointments. His son Adolphus occasionally accompanied him, they walking together eight miles to the services and then walking back. Adolphus as a boy once accompanied his father twenty miles away to fill an appointment, and they made the dis- tance on foot on Saturday, and after preaching on Sunday they returned home together. Aaron Fike's health began failing him at the age of thirty-five, and during the remainder of his long life he suffered much pain and inconvenience, without ceasing his labors. For forty years he was assistant elder in charge of the German settlement congregation, and then became elder in full charge. Aaron Fike reared a numerous family of healthy children, ministering to their physical needs when sick in some homely way and never spending more than five dollars for doctor's services while they were growing up. Affection and love for his children was one of his predominant characteristics, though he was positive in exacting obedience from them, and he always set them an exemplary deportment. Aaron Fike passed away on a Sunday in December, 1916, and his funeral was preached by Elder Jonas Fike, his nephew. On March 29, 1860, Aaron Fike married Rebecca S. Rudolph, a daughter of John Rudolph. She was born near Eglon January 7, 1841, and died March 29, 1916. The chil- dren of this good old couple were: Matilda, wife of John Vought, of Eglon; Tabitha, who married Charles P. Jones and lives at New Windsor, Maryland; Amelius, a farmer at Eglon; Adolphus Roland; Lucinda, who married Dennis Biser, of Eglon; Phenis L., of Peace Valley, Missouri; Emra, a farmer and minister near Eglon; Lorenza lives at Ked House, Maryland, and, like his brothers Phenis and Emra, is a minister of the Church of the Brethren; Elimina, died at Eglon, wife of Bertis Bucklew; Celesta, Mrs. Joseph Livengood, of Salisbury, Pennsylvania; and Hurley W., of Myersdale, Pennsylvania. Adolphus R. Fike, whose history is now taken up after reviewing his honorable ancestry, was born at Eglon October 19, 1866. As a boy he attended the Slaubaugh School, worked for his father on the farm, was employed on public works, and also in the lumber woods for the J. L. Romberger Lumber Company. About that time he married and began farming. He lived on his farm at Hebron for seventeen years, and supplemented the income from his farm by car- penter work and by undertaking. He kept a stock of under- taking goods at his home in the country, and his hearse was the first one in that locality. Mr. Fike sold his interests at Eglon in 1907 and removed to Terra Alta, where he has since been a leader in the under- taking service. For seven years he did carpenter work as a side line. He also put in a furniture stock, and after six years he made an exchange with his competitor, turning over the furniture to him while he concentrated on the business of undertaking and embalming. Mr. Fike bought and brought to Terra Alta the first automobile hearse in Preston County, in 1917. He has also been a dealer in harmess, and to some extent still carries on his trade as a carpenter and contractor. Mr. Fike was for four years a member of the Council of Terra Alta and for one year mayor. He is a republican and has served as a deacon in the Church of the Brethren. On September 28, 1890, he married in Preston County Miss Mary Ann Wiles, who was born in Eglon July 12, 1867, daughter of Abraham and Sarah (Stemple) Wiles. She was the only child of her mother, but her father had children by his two other marriages. Mr. and Mrs. Fike have four daughters: Delia Frances is the wife of Reed F. Martin, of Washington, D. C. Olive Ruth is a graduate nurse of a Uniontown Hospital in Pennsylvania, and is now super- intendent of Fricks Hospital in that city. Violet May is a teacher at Cayford, West Virginia. Lula Z. is teacher of music in La Plata Institute in Maryland.