Go West, Young Man!!

I’ve got so many things to write about in this blog, I’m having trouble knowing where to start. Someone once said, “Start at the beginning ….” but it’s not that easy to figure out just exactly where that beginning is. So I’ll start at what I think is the beginning for the Haldeman family in Ohio.

From what I can gather, my great-great-grandfather, Jacob Haldeman (Sr.), was born in Berks county, Pennsylvania in late 1783 to Christian Haldeman and Barbara Shelhorn.  Jacob seems to have had seven brothers and sisters (Catherine, Martha, Christian [Jr.], John, Elizabeth, H. Harter, and Barbara. All  eight seem to have ended up either in Ohio, mostly in the Richland or Morrow county areas, or passing through on their way further west.

I’m not sure what the impetus was to leave Pennsylvania and move into an extremely young state, but move they did. Jacob at least seems to have been in Ohio and in the Fredericktown, Knox county area, between 1807 and 1810. In “A History of Knox County, Ohio, from 1779 to 1862 Inclusive” written by Anthony Banning Norton and published in 1862, there is quite a lengthy part on Wayne Township in Knox County. It starts:

 “ONE of the first townships was named for the distinguished, brave General Wayne, more generally known by the sobriquet "Mad Anthony" ….

“Fredericktown, the principal mart of business for the farmers of the north western portion of Knox was laid out in 1807, by John Kerr [who had] his choice of 50 out of 4,000 acres … if he would settle upon and build a mill there. Accordingly, in the fall of 1807, he constructed a dam, raised a little log house …[and] on this 50 acres the town was laid out … W. Y. Farquhar was the surveyor, and the name of Frederick in honor of the old home, in Maryland, was given to this town in the wilderness. [Farquhar] erected and occupied the first cabin in Fredericktown ....

“The next family to pitch their habitation within the plat was that of Mrs. Ayres, and her sons, David and Abner …. John Milligan and Jeduthan Dodd, from Ten Mile, Pa., came shortly after, with their connections, John and Jacob Cook and Jacob Haldeman.”

Jacob, however, wasn't the only one on the move. In the "History of Knox County, Ohio, Its Past and Present"  compiled by N. N. Hill, Jr., Albert Adams Graham & Co.; Publishers, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 1881, it states on pg. 542:

“June 4, 1810 John Young, jr., William Evans, Jacob Young, John Haldeman, William Mitchell, Andrew Kilpatrick, John Young, sr., James Lewis, Aaron Young, Matthew Young, Adam Hand, Calvin C. Lawrence, Ephraim Lyon, and Charles Cooper petitioned for a road from Douglass' mill to the Young settlement. William Gass, Henry Haines, and Joseph Walker were appointed viewers, and John H. Millikin surveyor. The view was returned July 9, 1810, and approved September 1810.”

And on pg. 565:

“The fourth of July, 1817, was duly commemorated at Anson Brown’s in Fredericktown. Daniel Beers was chosen moderator, and Anson Brown, clerk. The committee of arrangements consisted of Christian Haldeman, Job Allen, Munson Pond, Joseph Talmage, Jacob Young, and Henry Markley.”

All right, through historical books (which aren't known, I know, for their absolute verisimilitude), Jacob, John, and Christian have all been tentatively established in the Knox county area of Ohio, sometime between 1807 and 1810. If this is correct, Jacob would have been about 24, his brother John would have been around 20, and if the Christian named was his father, he would have been about 54 in 1817; if it was his brother, he would have been about 33. I don't think they all stayed in this area. Perhaps Jacob wanted land to establish his own farm/homestead and didn't feel the Fredericktown area was what he wanted.

In the “History of Morrow County and Ohio” by William Henry Perrin and J.H. Battle, O. L. Basking & Co., Historical Publishers, 1880, pg. 507 it states:

“[Jacob] Haldeman settled in this neighborhood [Troy Township, first mostly in Richland and then in Morrow county] about 1826-27. He died many years ago, and lies buried in the little cemetery at Emanuel Church. His son, Henry, lives on the old homestead.”

And that, finally, puts Jacob in Ohio in the area where I believe he made his family’s home. More about this area, Emanuel Church, and Jacob in my next post.

The 'Lost' Are Found

Yes, it's been a long time since I posted. Genealogy research intruded, as did life. But, I'm back. And do I have something to report --

I FOUND them!! The twins!! For more than 100 years, my family has known our grandparents had 10 children, but two of the children -- said to be twins -- had vanished from family records. Vague snippets of information came from long-ago relatives: the two were said to be twins, a boy and a girl; maybe named Paul and Pauline; they were thought to have died of whooping cough, probably before they were two. But no one knew for sure and since all their brothers & sisters were gone (including my father) & given the fact that they were born, probably before 1900, little hope was held out to find out much about them. Especially since any of us delving into our family history lived more than 500 miles from where the family lived and where records were kept.

This is where matters stood for more than fifty years. Talk about cold cases and brick walls.

Yesterday, the Ides of March, I was idly checking Family Search when I found the birth record for my father, including a photo of the page in the record book for Marion County (Ohio).  That got me thinking and I quickly began checking the photos of the pages in that record book. I focused on the couple of years our 'lost' twins could have been born & began searching the photos, page by page. After much hunting, I found birth records for a Lillie P. and Sidney P. Halderman [my last name is Haldeman but often spelled with an "r"]. These two children were born on the same day, in the appropriate time span & place and -- to me, the clincher -- their first names were the first names of my grandparents! The twins were born in the correct city, to the right parents and the "P" in their given names written in their birth records helped confirm family lore. I'd found them! 

Now -- when did they die? Armed with their full names, I was able to turn up a burial record for Sidney, only 14 days after his birth. Poor little guy. Ancestry.com has a pretty great cache of historical newspapers, including the daily papers of my and the twins' hometown. Armed with the date Sidney died, I was able to find the paper and went through that issue inch by inch until I found the notice of his death -- as well as where he was (probably) buried. Then I found the issue announcing their births, but no notice of little Lillie's death. I went through EACH issue of The Marion Daily Star from the 13th of November 1898 until a few minutes ago when I found little Lillie's death notice on the 7th of March 1899. HUGE sigh of satisfaction. Finally. The children of my grandparents are finally all known and listed and remembered. Even the two little ones, born in that terrible winter of 1898-1899 where temps all across the Midwest to the east coast were in the double-digits below zero & the Hudson River froze over completely. The family is complete.

I haven't found what the cause of death was for either child, but I haven't given up. I found there were MANY cases of the 'grippe' (influenza) that winter in Marion along with scattered cases of typhoid fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, scarlet fever, and even smallpox in Columbus, O., only 45 miles away. I also don't know for sure where my aunt and uncle were buried, but I strongly suspect they were buried in the Haldeman Cemetery (established by the grandfather of their father in 1818) in Morrow county, Ohio. That cemetery was still in use then (and up to 1965) and was located on the Haldeman homestead near Johnsville in Morrow county. Sidney's body was transported to Morrow county via train after his death, and Lillie's notice said her remains were to be "taken to Morrow county for burial." 

I have a jumble of emotions -- triumph, satisfaction, and sadness. While I'm proud to have solved this mystery, I can't help but think of two small babes that my grandparents loved enough to give them their own names and who didn't live more than three months. The nearness of death in those days is breathtaking. Yet my grandparents had three healthy children before these two and five more followed. I think people living in those days were definitely hearty folk.

What I hope anyone reading this takes away is this: brick walls aren't always insurmountable. They CAN be broken, sometimes even when you don't even leave the comfort of your chair in front of your computer!! So, today I'm definitely doing my happy dance!

Who knew ...

Who knew that my genealogy cravings would start when my grandfather died? It didn't matter that I was barely four years old and was more worried about what was for supper than I was about who my great-great grandmother was. Those cravings were there. Planted by my mother.

You see, my mother wrote a letter to her brother and sister-in-law four months after my grandfather passed and in it she asked my uncle -- my father's brother -- if he was the one who had gotten the family Bible with "the family history" in it. If he did, she wondered, could he copy it for her? She had run across some faded obituaries written about my grandfather's great-grandfather and great-grandmother in the "old Bible" she and my father had inherited. In it, she'd found that long-ago Haldeman couple -- Jacob and Anna Maria Minech Haldeman -- were one of the first 10 families who had founded the village of Fredericktown, Ohio. Considering my parents and I had moved to that still small village just after my grandfather's death, that was a pretty important question for her. Neither my mother nor my father had known about that Haldeman connection before their move. When Fredericktown had had its Centennial in August of 1950 & barely after we'd settled into our apartment (oh, I'm really dating myself!), Mom had found the name Jacob Haldeman in the town's souvenir program. The program stated that Jacob had come to the village somewhere between 1807 (when the first houses were built) and 1812. Intrigued by this information, my mother decided to try and find out more about the family she had married into.

She had lived with and taken care of my grandfather while my father served in World War II and had come to feel quite close to him. She had listened to him talk about the old days so many times that when she ran across this information, she felt compelled to gather up what she could and make some kind of record of it. She even talked of assembling it in "book form," including pictures if they were available, and then making "photostatic copies" of everything so she could share with the rest of the family. This -- in 1950!

Mom went on to tell my uncle that another one of the reasons she felt so compelled to learn about her husband's side of the family was that "I don't have one single blessed thing that belonged to my mother or father, or any family history on my side, and sometimes I just feel like Topsy ... just hatched." (She'd lost her mother when she was 12 & had been raised by a just newly-married older brother & his wife. As the youngest of thirteen, she wasn't told much by her older siblings.) Considering I was only four at the time of this letter, you're probably wondering how I can have such clarity of recall. Easy. I have the letter she wrote. It was given back to her when my uncle died.

Mom's good intentions were defeated by getting sidetracked by raising a child, being a wife, working as a secretary, and taking care of our house. The fact that she was a few years ahead of the Internet and online digitalization didn't help. But she planted that seed of wanting to know with her daughter. It didn't fall on deaf ears, it just took a long time to sprout.

So, who were these Haldemans? More later.