Alfred Pence
One of the first settlements in Adams County outside of the Stockade at Manchester was made by Michael Pence his son Peter Pence, and their kinsmen, the Roush family, together with the Bryans and Cooks, in 1796, at the "Dutch Settlement" in what is now Sprigg Township. These families were "Pennsylvania Dutch" and had originally settled in the Shenandoah Valley, and in the year 1795 came to the Three Islands, at Manchester, to make their future homes in the Northwest Territory. The first year of their coming to the Three Islands, they cultivated a crop of corn on the lower island which was then partially cleared.
Michael Pence, the pioneer, was drowned in the Ohio River in 1807 while attempting to cross with his team at the lower ferry. He had pur chased one thousand four hundred acres of land in the Hopkins Survey in Sprigg Township and was a wealthy farmer for his day in Adams County. He is buried in Hopewell Cemetery. His son, Peter Pence, who married Susan Roush in the Shenandoah Valley previous to his coming to Adams County in 1795, had among other children, a son, Aaron, born in 1798, who married Elizabeth Moore, and who was the father of the following named children: Nathan, David, Daniel, Jacob, Francis S., Peter, Harriet, who married Dyas Gilbert, and our subject. Alfred Pence, the oldest child, who was born May 17, 1823, on the old Michael Pence homestead, which he now owns and where he resides, near Maddox Postoffice. He married Hannah Evans in 1847, and has reared the following children: Elizabeth, who married Zenous Roush; Ruth, who married Robert Brookover; Dyas, who married Ada Parr; Rufus; Mahala, who married Lafayette Roush; and Ida, married to Rev. A. D. Foster.
From History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900