December has been a busy month of celebrations and milestones for my family. Not only do we have Christmas coming soon, but we celebrated my mom's birthday, my stepdaughter's birthday and my parents 50th anniversary. We took my parents out to an anniversary dinner a few weeks ago and it was a good celebration as they had all three of their kids there and most of their grandchildren. Dad & mom recounted the stories of how they met and dad surprised mom with an upgraded replacement engagement ring. Apparently, she had lost the original years ago and it had never been replaced. It was an emotional time and mom was so surprised and happy.
Mom and dad were married December 7, 1967 in Muncie, Indiana. From the Muncie Star of November 26, 1967:
Muncie Teacher to Wed OrdLeMaster of Portland
The engagement of Miss Gloria Jean Wright to Ord Weldon LeMaster is announced by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. William Wright, Alexandria. Mr. LeMaster is the son of Ord W. LeMaster, Portland.
Miss Wright is a graduate of Alexandria-Monroe High School and received a B.S. degree in elementary education from Ball State University. She is a third grade teacher at Roosevelt Elementary in Muncie.
Mr. LeMaster is a graduate of Portland High School and Ball State, where he received a B.S. degree in history and geography. Attending Ball State graduate school, he is a history teacher at Dunkirk High School.
It was good to be able to celebrate this milestone with my parents.
Sunday was my birthday, the one before the mid-century mark. The one that makes me realize I'm getting older and closer to end than the beginning.
Sunday was also the day of the time change, when we now roll our clocks back in an attempt to save daylight. An hour of extra sleep that somehow never comes.
As a Hoosier, I grew up not having to mess with the time changes other than being annoyed that TV shows changed schedules twice a year. I'm still mad that we started observing Daylight Savings Time and are on Eastern. Being closer to Chicago, we should be on Central, but no one asked me.
This year Eileen made sure that I changed all the clocks -last year I didn't change the one in the living room above the couch and it was showing the wrong time for six months. I guess that was my way of showing some defiance.
Dad told me stories of Ohio time where he grew up, you can look it up, Indiana has had an interesting relationship with DST.
It was my "Birthday Weekend", as I like to say, and I had a good one. My coworkers treated me to a card and some treats on Friday, including a bag of donut holes. To say I was on a sugar high would be an understatement!
Saturday I went to dinner with the in-laws and eldest daughter and son-in-law, my mom was sick so my folks held out for later plans. Went to Kokomo and one of my favorites, Half Moon. Sunday, had breakfast with the youngest and birthday text from the middle daughter and received Birthday greetings from friends on Facebook. I truly appreciated the gifts and well wishes.
Sunday afternoon was some " me time" spent in Fort Wayne at the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library. Truly one of my happy places. They have Sunday hours but I always seem to be too busy to get up there to research.
Managed to find some tidbits of information that I'll post about later - my trip was not well planned and was more of a shotgun approach. Found a little bit on both sides of my family and something from Eileen's as well.
Monday I took the day off and Eileen and I spent the day shopping. We visited the new IKEA in Fishers, which seemed as big as the one in Cincinnati. Ate at Portillo's, which wasn't as enjoyable as I thought it would be and then hit Duluth Trading again. All in all, we had a good time together.
Not much in the way of genealogy in this post, but a few tidbits about my birthday for future generations.
Spent last weekend with my mom on a trip to the Brown County, Ohio area where her Wright and Wardlow families originated. My plan was to visit the Brown County Genealogical Society library in Georgetown and if possible, visit a couple of family cemeteries.
The trip to Georgetown is about three hours and we left early in the morning with plenty of time to spare before the museum opened at noon. Not knowing how long I might need at the museum, I hoped to see if we could locate the Wardlow and Wright cemeteries in Washington Township, Brown County, Ohio and see what shape they were in.
Both of these pioneer cemeteries are already posted on FindAGrave, so I had already seen the tombstones of the family, but I wanted to get a feel for the area. Looking on topographical maps, I programmed by Google Maps to take us straight to the Wardlow cemetery first, where my 4th-great grandfather, John Wright (1814-1890) was buried.
As we came into Ohio and were nearing our destination, I saw the sign for historic Williamsburg and we made a slight detour to check it out. I knew that our Wright family had been in Williamsburg from some of the early deeds in Clermont County.
Driving around, we found Harmony Hill, where William Lytle had his home and land office. He was an early surveyor and settler in the area. Their museum wasn't opened yet, but we took a few pictures and planned to come back if we had time.
We headed towards the Wardlow cemetery first, which I knew was near Sardinia and with the GPS we were able to get into the general area. Then it became a game of watching the road for the cemetery. We found a few roads that had familiar names, including Wardlow Road, which we turned down and found an abandoned house that looked like it was not somewhere we wanted to be stuck.
We didn't find the cemetery until mom pulled it up on her phone and Google maps was telling us to turn on "Cemetery Road", except the road didn't have a sign. There was man outside at the house next door, so we stopped and verified that the cemetery was down that gravel road. He told us we should be ok to go down there, but did tell us that the owner might come down and see what we were doing.
We headed down the gravel road to the cemetery, went through the gate, and began to look for the graves of John & Anna (Wardlow) Wright. We found them pretty easily, as their marker was one of the tallest in the cemetery, and the only Wright buried there. I was able to get a couple of good photographs of mom with the markers and took some video. We were there just before noon, so the shadow effect on the marker wasn't the best.
Mom next to inscription for John Wright
Mom next to inscription for Anna (Wardlow) Wright
Just as we were leaving the cemetery, a lady came up on a Gator and asked us what we were doing. Fortunately, she could tell we weren't there to cause trouble, and I gave her one of my genealogy calling cards and explained our relationship to the Wardlow clan. She was not a Wardlow, but her sorority sister, who lived across the road, was a Wardlow descendant and the owner of the property. Unfortunately, she wasn't home, but her friend was able to tell us a bit about the land and the history of the place. Seems they had to take down the "Cemetery Road" sign as they were having too many people 'partying' and dumping trash, etc. on the property and the cemetery. Such a shame because the property was so peaceful.
I was able to take a brief video of the cemetery that will give you a feel for the place. A nice final resting place for my ancestors.
We spent some time talking and the lady showed us a tour of the Wardlow barn, which had been on the property since 1805. The barn had been moved from its original spot closer to the road, and obviously had been refurbished, but some of the original hand-hewn beams were present. We signed our names on the wall of the barn, where other guests had done.
We were invited to come back by later in the day, but explained that we were heading to Georgetown to the museum, and depending on how our day went, we might not be able to visit. We mentioned that we were also going to see if we could find the George Wright cemetery, which we also knew was on private property, and she was familiar with it and able to give directions. Apparently, enough of our distant cousins have visited in the past and had asked for the same directions. We headed down the road and around to try to locate the Wright cemetery, again using GPS. Fortunately, I had already checked it out on Google maps with a satellite view, so when I saw the property that I was sure it was near, we were able to stop. Once again, we were fortunate as the owner of the property was home and was willing to talk to us about the family plot. She was not a Wright descendant, but told us a story about how when they bought the property some 30 years prior, an old woman came knocking on their door and told them they would be cursed if they didn't restore the iron fence around the Wright family plot! She said there were a lot of snakes back there, and that her husband would be home shortly and that he could take us back. Her son actually came by after a few minutes, and was gracious to take us back to the woods where the family plot was in his Gator. As we walked back through the woods and the deer trail, it was obvious that very few people had been back there in some time. The son told us that one of the markers had disappeared and was across the creek and on another property now. We were able to find George Wright and his son Samuel's tombstone standing upright. Samuel's was broken and leaning against a tree. Mom was clearing some leaves and found Elizabeth's tombstone laying down and partially buried. We did not find the marker for Rebecca, Samuel's wife. The iron fencing was partially visible though the brush.
George Wright (1780-1853)
Samuel P. Wright (1816-1859)
Elizabeth (Robins) Wright (1781-1857)
Condition of Elizabeth's stone
How the cemetery looks in the woods
We were so thankful for the kindness of these strangers who now owned the family farms of our ancestors and were willing to allow us to view their final resting places. After later looking at the maps of the pieces of land, it appears that the George Wright farm and the Wardlow farm butted up against each other in a triangle type pattern - which helps explain why George's son, John, married the neighbor girl - a Wardlow. It was just getting close to noon, and we'd already had an outstandingly productive day. Not knowing how long we'd need to be at the museum, I was taking a chance by looking for the cemeteries early and was able to strike pay dirt. These visits made the trip worthwhile. We went into Georgetown and visited the Brown County museum and spent some time looking through their vertical family files. Searching the Wright family file, I found a copy of a letter that I had written to them back in 1990!
It is good to know that they keep materials! I will have to send some updated research notes to them to add for future researchers. I was able to make a few copies of some of the files on the Wright, Wardlow and other families I knew of in Brown County. Being my first time at the museum, my research plan was not as well thought out as I would have liked. Now that I have a lay of the land, I will be able to plan a return trip and do more digging. On our way back towards Indiana, we stopped back in Williamsburg at Harmony Hill and spoke with their museum folks and the Clermont County Historical Society as well. I purchased a book on the Virginia Military District land grants that contained some information on Robert Wright, and picked up some materials for future research.
While at Harmony Hill, I mentioned that our John Wright was an early settler in Williamsburg with William Lytle, and the lady mentioned that the local cemetery had a marker to all of the Revolutionary War veterans. Not knowing for sure that John was a veteran, nor knowing where he was buried, we took a chance and went to the cemetery on our way out of town. We searched the old section but didn't find any markers that had the Wright name. We did find the marker placed by the local SAR, that did not list any family names of ours as veterans buried there.
Not only did I have a good time researching mom's family history with her, but visited some beautiful areas of southwest Ohio. I'm already planning to make a return trip to do more research.
