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.
So, who were these Haldemans? More later.
