Samonia Catherine Pitts

PITTS, SAMONIA CATHERINE (1839 ~ 1917). Samonia Catherine Hoffer Pitts, born Samonia Catherine Smith, July 10, 1839 was the daughter of Alexander Smith of Virginia. Raised in Paris, Texas, her family was of Scottish descent.

She married John Mead Hoffer, of Swiss descent, between 1855 and 1860. They had one son, John Nunnelly Hoffer, born on February 4, 1860 in Bonham, Texas. In 1861, only a year later, her husband died at the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, Texas. His body is buried in Bonham.

In 1864, Samonia Hoffer married William A. Pitts, a quartermaster in the Confederate army under General Henry E. McCulloch. In 1865 they moved to Marshall, Texas and then to Indianola, on Matagorda Bay, in 1866.

After a series of storms that eventually destroyed the town, the Pitts family moved to Austin, Texas where they remained until their deaths. Samonia C. Pitts lived at 2816 Rio Grande Street until her death on September 28, 1917.

She was buried at the Texas State Cemetery September 30, 1917 by Cook-Walden Funeral Home, Reverend Briggs officiating.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Family Biography of John Nunnelly Hoffer, received from descendent Eugene Scanlon of Boca Raton, Florida, 1996.