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Arona Belle (Hoye) Cole |
Arona Belle (Hoye) Cole, sometimes referred to as "Ina" or "Lona," was born on Feb. 11, 1875 in Oakland, Garrett County, MD, the daughter of John J.P. and Louisa (Minerd) Hoye Sr.
Courtesy "Ancestor Searcher"
Little of her life is known. When Arona was about five years old, she moved with her parents and younger sister to the booming industrial town of Dunbar, Fayette County, PA.
The federal census enumeration of 1900 shows her at age 25 sharing a home with her widowed father and younger siblings in Dunbar. She had no occupation at that time. Their next-door neighbors were Arona's uncle and aunt, Jacob and Mary (Minerd) Cole. Within the next few years, she migrated into the City of Pittsburgh.
Circa 1916, at the age of 41, with both residing in Pittsburgh, she wed Sherod B. Cole ( ? - ? ). News of their marriage license was published in the Pittsburgh Press.
The marriage apparently did not endure. Just six years later, in 1920, when the United States Census again was made, Arona was working at age 44 as a servant in the private home. Her employers were finance counselor William H. Walker and his wife Valerie, who lived on Stratford Avenue in Pittsburgh's 8th Ward.
Sherod's fate is not yet known.
In the winter of 1920, at the age of 45, Arona became deathly ill with bronchial pneumonia and influenza. She was treated at Passavant Hospital in the city's 3rd Ward. She died in the hospital on Feb. 11, 1920. Her brother John J.P. Hoye Jr., visiting from the state of Washington, traveled to Pittsburgh to take charge of her remains. The body was transported back to Dunbar for the funeral, held at the home of her sister Anna Bunting. Officiating was a distant cousin, Rev. David Ewing Minerd. Brief obituaries were printed in the Connellsville Daily Courier, calling her "Lona Belle Cole," and her brother John was the informant on her death certificate. Burial was in Franklin Cemetery.
In 1942, Arona was remembered in the newly published book, The Hoyes of Maryland, authored by Capt. Charles E. Hoye, a distant cousin.
Copyright © 2005, 2014, 2022, 2026 Mark A. Miner