He married Margaret Lynch, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When she was young, her parents moved to Wheeling, Virginia, now West Virginia, and she grew into a beautiful young woman there. Her father was a Union man when it cost something in Virginia to be a Union man, as was her husband. At the commencement of the Civil War, when only nineteen years old age, Dovener raised a company of loyal Virginians and served in the Union Army during the entire war. It was when he came to Wheeling to be mustered in that he first met Miss Lynch, then a beautiful young girl of seventeen. They corresponded until the close of the war when they were married. Their younger son, Robert, died in his twenty-second year. Their elder son, William, was a talented lawyer, like his father.[1]
He served as a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1883 and 1884. His candidacy for election to the Fifty-second Congress was unsuccessful. In 1894, he won election as a Republican to the Fifty-fourth and to the five succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1895 - March 3, 1907). His candidacy for renomination was unsuccessful, and he returned to his legal practice in Wheeling. He retired to Glen Echo, Maryland, until his death on May 9, 1914. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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