Andrew Hoover Sr., the immigrant, Quaker ancestor of President Herbert Hoover, arrived from Germany in 1738, at age 15, and lived initially in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Soon after his marriage, c1746, he took his bride south to Carroll County, Maryland, where most of their thirteen children were born. Nearly two decades later, he acquired land in the southwest corner of Randolph County, North Carolina, on the Uwharrie River, where the town of Farmer is now located, and re-settled his family there in the early 1760s. After the death of his parents, Andrew's son, David (our ancestor), who had prospected land in the Northwest Territory, led a renowned Hoover migration to Montgomery County, Ohio, in 1801-2, following disastrous Uwharrie floods. David's wife was then Mary Mast, daughter of pioneering John and Barbara, who both died just prior to the trek. When Mary died in Ohio four years later, David married Elizabeth Curtis (our ancestor), a daughter of James Curtis, Sr. and Mary's sister, Nancy. With her teenaged children and Mast siblings, widowed Nancy had joined the wagon train to Ohio. Our Shoaf ancestors, who lived in neighboring Davidson Co. and married into the Beck/Hisler/Livengood/Sink/Sprecher families, migrated to the same area of Ohio in the early 19th century.

Skipworth, in the case of our ancestors, was a surname adopted by later generations of a particular Skipper family. James Skipper moved from Virginia to Bertie County, North Carolina, in the 1720s, where he patented land, but later went south to Craven County. In 1758, he began buying property further south, in central Onslow County, where the town of Jacksonville is now located. His son, Joseph, purchased additional land in that area, as did Joseph's son, Nathan, after that father and son fought together during the American Revolution. Many years later, about 1815, Nathan migrated with several members of his family, including son John, to Maury County, Tennessee. John (our ancestor) had married Lucretia Hawkins, whose parents, Allen and Esther, moved also, probably with the Skippers, to Maury County.