Abraham Houser ^{1 2}

  General Notes:

Abraham Houser emigrated from Germany with his two brothers, Jacob and John in 1760 and married Nancy Rhorer in 1770. They had 9 sons and 3 daughters, all born in Washington County, Maryland. The entire family moved to Jessamine County, Kentucky and the town of Nicholasville, Kentucky in 1795. Abraham was a miller and also a Dunkard preacher. He ran a grist mill which had a whiskey still attachment. The whiskey was sold to pay for church expenses and for church good deeds.
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"Grandfather and Grandmother Howser and Some Friends: Their Lives and Times", Compiled by Martin Luther Houser, Peoria, Illinois 1926:
Abraham Houser came from Germany in 1760 and settled in Washington County, Maryland. He was a Dunkard preacher, a miller, and a distiller. It is claimed that he preached without pay, as was customary in that church, ran a water mill for a livelihood, and devoted the profits from his still to charity. In 1770, he married Nancy Rhorer; and to them were born twelve children, nine boys and three girls.
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"Genealogy of the Houser, Rhorer, Dillman, Hoover Families", W. W. Houser, 1910:
Abraham Sr.'s mill was at the fork of the two Jessamine Creeks. They manufactured flour for home and foreign markets. He died at the home of his daughter, Nancy Houser Hoover and Joel Hoover.
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"Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 years of Religion in America", Martin E. Marty, Penguin Books (1984 New York):

A tiny German Baptist group known as the Harmless Tunkers (Dunkers), today's Church of the Brethren, presented two faces [during the American Revolution]. The best known family among the fifteen hundred adults were the Sauers, a clan of printers who suffered under the Stamp Act and spoke out against it. Yet as Dunkers they could not in conscience support the use of force or pay disrespect to the Crown. Christoph Sauer III was a vigorous Loyalist, though not a fighting one; he claimed that he and his father one night had to hide from rebels who wanted to tar and feather them. In December of 1777 the Americans captured him and the British exchanged him for an other prisoner. Such bargaining showed that they valued him highly for the appeals he published to Germans in the colonies to support England.

His father suffered even more when the revolutionaries decided that he was a traitor and plundered his estate worth ten thousand pounds. While this was an illegal act, in true Dunker fashion he stood by in silence, believing it wrong to use the courts to defend himself. He spent the next six years using his meager earnings as a bookbinder to pay off debts. When war came to Dunker communities like Ephrata in Pennsylvania, the sect won new friends by caring for the wounded. One officer accidentally spent a few days with them and came away convinced that pure love still existed. Their garments were uncouth, but they were beautiful: 'Until I entered the walls of Ephrata, I had no idea of pure and practical Christianity After the war this sect retreated further into the woods in an effort to remain a set-aside people of God.
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Source: LDS Pedigree Resource File CD30 (Austin Condon):
Abraham migrated as a young man from Germany to America with his two brothers (Jacob and John) and settled near Hagerstown, Washington County, Maryland. They came on Ship Crown from Rotterdam, with a Jacob Rohrer, landing in Philadelphia on August 30, 1749.

In 1794, the family left Washington County, Maryland for the new state of Kentucky. Their route is reported to have been across the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River, then down river, on boats or rafts they built, several hundred miles to the mouth of the Kentucky River. They then followed the Kentucky River upstream to Jessamine County, Kentucky. They settled near what was eventually to become the towns of Nicholasville and Wilmore.

They bought a large tract of land from the government. It is told that he was so anxious to have neighbors for himself and his family that he offered a German friend 160 acres of land provided he would bring his family and live near him - which he did.

An interesting story is told of Mr. Houser. He was a Dunkard preacher, and he refused to accept any pay or remuneration for his service as a preacher of righteousness, saying that the gospel is and must always be free. At the time he owned and operated a grist mill which had a whiskey still attachment. That mill was located on Town Branch on Short Shun Pike. It was the relief custom of his church to provide a charity fund for the relief of their members who needed assistance. One of the methods for providing funds for this purpose was for the members to contribute corn, which Abraham Houser would grind and distill, making whiskey which he would sell and put the receipts into the charity fund.

They built a grist mill and distillery at the fork of the two Jessamine Creeks. He died at the home of his daughter Nancy Hoover, in Clermont County, Ohio.
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  Noted events in his life were:

• He worked as a Miller and distiller, and Dunkard Preacher. ¹

• He has alternate birth date of 1752 and a birth location of Germany.

This birth year is based on his age at death of 77 years as appears on his gravestone. Based on various family stories and documents which describe his immigration into the United States in 1760 as a young man, this birth year would have made him only 8 years old at the time. Therefore it is doubtful that his birth year was 1752 and the year of 1740 as proposed by several other researchers would seem more likely but no source citation has been provided to support the year of 1740.
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• He has alternate death information of 1825 and Clermont County, OH. ^{3 4}

• He was buried after 4 June 1829 in the Mount Olive Cemetery in Felicity, OH.

Find A Grave Memorial #18094391
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Abraham married Nancy Ann Rohrer, daughter of Unknown and Unknown, in 1770 in Hagerstown, MD.¹ (Nancy Ann Rohrer was born in 1756 in Germany,^{4 5} died in 1813 in , Jessamine County, KY ^{3 4 5} and was buried in 1813 in , Jessamine County, KY ^{1 5}.)