they would turn in their graves

William and Catherine (Bussard) McEowen Catharine Bussard, my 2 nd   great-grandmother, was born in 1853 in Ohio, the third child of Joshua and Rebecca (Riegel) Bussard. Joshua and Rebecca were married in 1846 in Ohio, and in 1848 Joshua paid $211.49 for 157.83 acres of “Miami Canal Lands” in Brown Township, Darke County, Ohio, land that he and his family would live on for the rest of his life. In 1850, Joshua, Rebecca and their eldest two daughters Mary and Elizabeth were living in Brown Township, Darke County, Ohio, Joshua was farming. The 1860 census located Joshua, Rebecca, Mary, Elizabeth, Catharine, Martha, Susannah and Loretta still residing in Brown Township; Joshua was still a farmer. The early 1860s must have been particularly difficult for the Bussard family, as Elizabeth, aged 11, died in November 1860, Susanna and Martha, aged 2 and 4 respectively, died in December 1860, and Mary, aged 15, died in October 1862. Cincinnati and southern Ohio were particularly affected by...

Ozora Ann (Bunger) Clay , with her fancy show chickens Ozora Ann Bunger, my 2 nd   great-grandmother, was born in 1873 in Ohio, the second child and eldest daughter of William and Lydia (Michael) Bunger. William, a veteran of the Civil War, and Lydia were married in 1868 in Ohio, and in 1870 they were living near El Dorado in Monroe Township, Preble County, Ohio, where William was employed as a farm hand. When the census was taken in 1880, Ozora was living with her parents and three siblings in Butler Township, Darke County, Ohio. At that time William reported he was a farmer. Still living in Butler Township, Darke County, Ohio when the census was taken in 1890, William reported that he had served with Company L of the 12 th   Indiana Cavalry during the Civil War. Because of a fire in the United States Archives, only the veterans’ schedule of the 1890 census survives, and so we cannot know what members of William’s family were living with him then. Ozora was married in 1893, w...

Sarah Elizabeth (Layman) Glander with her family about 1898 from left: daughter Mary Savilla, husband John Henry, son John Albertus, Sarah herself holding son Andrew Glen, daughter Della Dora Sarah Elizabeth Layman, my 2 nd   great-grandmother, was born in 1861 in Ohio, the eldest child of John and Savilla (Wells) Layman. She was born just over twelve months after her parents were married, in Union County, northwest of Columbus in central Ohio. The prior year when the 1860 census was enumerated, John and Savilla were living in Millcreek Township, Union County, Ohio, near the town of Watkins. John was a farmer. In 1870, Sarah, her three younger sisters and her parents were living in Owl Creek Township, Woodson County, Kansas near Neosho Falls. John was still farming and reported his land was worth $500. Sarah was married in 1880, when she was nineteen years old, to John Henry Glander (aged twenty-four), also an Ohio native, in Miami County, Ohio. Just a few months later when the 188...

Sarah Jane Smith Byers Sarah Jane Smith, my 2 nd   great-grandmother, was born in 1859 in Indiana, the eldest child of David and Polly (Miller) Smith. In 1860, Jane (she went by her middle name her entire life) with her parents was living in Milan Township, Allen County, Indiana. Her father was a farmer. While I didn’t make a note to remind me who told me, it was said that he voted for Lincoln. During the Civil War, David served with Company G, 152 nd   Regiment. The 1870 census located Jane, her parents and three younger siblings still residing in Milan Township, Allen County, Indiana; Jane was attending school. Jane was married in 1874, when she was only fifteen years old, to William Andrew Byers, aged twenty-one. When I was fifteen, I was learning geometry and playing soccer. Sure, “it was a different time,” but what a tragedy that for millennia women were pigeonholed into marriage, childbearing and “women’s work” before they were even mature enough to comprehend all that w...

Margaret Darlene Hindsley https://www.dalewoodwardfuneralhomes.com/obituaries/Margaret-Darlene-Hindsley?obId=23703736   https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/family-of-murdered-florida-grandmother-remember-her-as-happiest-and-kindest-person   https://www.wesh.com/article/couple-shoots-kills-elderly-woman-ponce-inlet/38698935   https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2024/05/02/caregiver-to-be-sentenced-in-ponce-inlet-shooting-death-of-89-year-old/   Margaret Darlene (Burnside) Hindsley was my French teacher in high school between 1987 and 1991. I studied French all four years in high school (including a two weeks’ spring break trip to France in 1990), continued the study in all four years of college (and one summer study abroad program at Université Laval in Québec, and taught French four of my five years of teaching. I took two groups of my students to Québec in 1998 and 2000, have visited Québec with my own children and have traveled in France with my husband twice, in...

Edith (Dellinger) Hartzell Hollopeter Back in April I wrote about Sylvia Elizabeth (Freeman) Hollopeter, my great-grandmother. Because Sylvia died in 1943, seven years before my dad was born, he never knew her and, in his childhood, he thought of Edith, Bert’s second wife, as his grandma. Both widowed in the 1940s, Albert E. and Edith were married in 1951 in Ohio. I have no idea how they met, and I have a query in to my dad to ask, but I suspect they met in Florida. After Albert and Sylvia’s son Frank was killed in the Philippines during World War II, as compensation Albert was offered a small parcel of land in Dunedin, Florida, where he then spent twenty-three winters. Albert was living in Florida when the census was taken in 1950, about a year before he married Edith.   Edith G. Dellinger was born in 1885 in Ohio. In 1900, she was living with her parents, farmers in York Township, Sandusky County, Ohio, and her three siblings, Charles, Earl and Elva. At the age of twenty in 1905,...

Calvin & Betty Coffman, ca. 1970 Today is Flag Day. We attended a No Kings protest event in Grand Rapids this morning, and the organizers (Indivisible Greater Grand Rapids) righteously saw fit to turn the American flag upside down – a “traditional signal of distress or extreme danger”.   I grew up next door to a veteran of the First World War and his wife. Calvin Coffman was born in 1893. He was only twenty-three years old when he enlisted on 25 January 1917. He served with Company H of the 148 th  Infantry his entire time in the Army. He was at Meuse-Argonne, Ypres-Lys, and then part of the Defensive Sector. From 23 June 1918 until 28 March 1919, he was with the American Expeditionary Forces. He was honorably discharged on 21 April 1919. When I knew him in the 1970s and 1980s, he was more than half a century removed from his time in the service. He  still  had trench foot and visited his podiatrist once a week. He had some unknown (but large) number of buckets o...