Nancy Ann Stenhouse Stewart

From "House of Clark":

Nancy Ann Stenhouse Stewart was the seventh child and third daughter of Katharine Carson Hitch and the Rev. Clark Berry Stewart, founders of the House of Clark. She was born in 1858, the first of their children to be born in the Fairview community near the present town of Fountain Inn, SC. The family had just moved to the community from their first home in the area, near 2 John Stewart’s sawmill about eight miles northeast of Fairview toward the Clear Springs community.

One of their new neighbors in the Fairview community, Mrs. Adam Stenhouse, was the midwife when little Nancy was born. Said her father in his journal:

October 7, 1858. Thursday, 1:30 A.M. Katharine gave birth to a girl child; large size, Weighing 11 1/2 lb Hard Case in Labour

Mrs. Adam Stenhouse (Midwife)

No fee!! May the Lord Bless her in her office

May 1, 1859 Sunday. Had our Infant daughter Baptized by Holmes.

Called her “Nancy Ann Stenhouse.”

The midwife’s grandson and little Nancy’s future husband, Adam Stenhouse Peden, was baptized in the same church - Fairview Presbyterian just the year before, among the first group of babies to be baptized in the new church building (still standing in 1982). Baby Adam’s parents, Betsy Mooney Stenhouse and James Scipio Peden, returned the Clark Stewarts’ compliment to their family by naming their next child Stewart Peden - born June 20, 1859. (See 3733 John Taylor Stenhouse Peden, son of Stewart.)

Nannie graduated from Erskine College in Due West, SC and taught school there for a time. In 1882, at age 24, she came back closer to home and boarded with the David Templeton family for a time, not far from the school at New Harmony Presbyterian Church, where she taught for some months. In 1883 she married Adam Stenhouse Peden.

Nannie and Adam Peden lived in the village of Fountain Inn at 507 North Main Street for many years, where they reared a family of two daughters and a son. Adam Peden was an early Fountain Inn merchant and served as one of the town’s first mayors. He was one of the founders of the Fountain Inn Oil Mill in 1891 (later Smith and Brooks Co.).

After Nannie’s death in 1913 at age 54, Adam Peden married a second time to Mamie J. Ballentine (born 1879), a teacher in Fountain Inn. At his death in 1930, he was buried in the old Fountain Inn Cemetery, as was his first wife Nannie Stewart.

Nancy married Adam Stenhouse Peden, son of James Scipio Peden and Betsy Mooney Stenhouse, in 1883.¹