Leaves & Branches

This week I had the honor to receive an album of information, newspaper clippings, letters, and photographs related to the Dudley family.  This family documentation was apparently compiled by my great-grandfather, Jesse Dudley with the assistance of his eldest child, Charles.  After Charles' death, the information must have been passed on to his brother, Clarence.  One of Clarence's step-grandsons was kind enough to send the information to me.  One of the pages in the album reads as follows: These records was set forth by the hand of Jessey Dudley in the year of our Lord Dec-9-1922 and to him goes the credit for their keeping to the best of his knowledge, his records were handed down to his first born son Charles Henry Dudley who has faithfully kept them to the best of his knowledge.  And they will be kept and handed down to all the Dudley progenitors to come.  In God we trust.  Amen. This family record answers a lot of questions, but also raises a l...

After a few years of limited interest in what I consider my primary hobby, I became active and interested in genealogy again in 2009.  My accomplishments: I started putting my family tree on Ancestry.com I have made a lot of progress in organizing the family photographs and documents I have obtained over the years. I have met some distant and not-so-distant relatives with whom I have been able to exchange information. Sharing information with my heretofore unknown relatives has been rewarding.  I had shied away from sharing my research with others because of a bad experience in the past when I shared a great deal of information with a distant cousin who didn't as much as acknowledge receiving it. However, I had reached the point in my research where having only a few facts and maybe a photo or two wasn't enough.  I wanted to know more about the personalities of the people I have been researching for years.  To do this, I needed to network with people who had th...

Let me begin by saying that this blog post is not about St. Mary's church in Arnheim, Ohio. I was hoping that this title would catch the eye of someone who attends St. Mary's and might be able to offer assistance because of the strange thing that happened to me today. At work, I spoke to a woman in another department about a couple of business matters. She then said that her next question had nothing to do with work. Although I have known this woman for a number of years, she and I have never had a personal conversation and I have never told her about my family or interest in genealogy. She asked if I had any relatives in the Sardinia, Ohio area. I told her I might, because my grandmother was from the Sardinia area. She explained that she has a vacation home in the Sardinia area and visited over the weekend. When she visits, she attends services at St. Mary's church and she said there is a woman who attends St. Mary's and looks exactly like me. Now, if she had mentioned...

A couple of months ago, I received a letter from a distant relative, who found a family tree chart I sent to the Brown County, Ohio Genealogical Society over 15 years ago. We are both researching the Ogden family of Brown County. My paternal grandfather, James Quincy Davis, was the son of James Ulysses Davis and his wife, Rosa Ogden. A few weeks ago, my distant relative was kind enough to send me copies of grandpa's school pictures from 1916-17 and 1917-18. He attended the Shiloh School, a one-room schoolhouse in Brown County. He would have been 10 to 12 years of age in these pictures. Even though one of the pictures contains a caption indicating which child he is, I didn't think it was him. I have a picture of him when he was around 14 and I know what he looked like. Also, my mom looked at him and was doubtful because he didn't have the "Davis ears" (large and protruding). I was disappointed. Then, last week a friend allowed me to borrow his copy of the ...

One family heirloom in my possession is " Detsie's cup." I don't know anything about this cup, except that it supposedly belonged to Detsie Ballein (pictured at right), the eldest child of Elma and Hite Ballein and the sister of my paternal grandmother, Jennie Esther Ballein . It's just a small metal cup with a little handle and some engraving on it. Perhaps it was a gift from first time parents to their little girl. Detsie was born January 10, 1897 and died on August 27, 1899. It occurs to me for the first time that I don't even know where Detsie is buried. A little lost life; one of many in the days before advances in medicine. And, sadly, a life often forgotten in the course of genealogical research. My maternal grandparents, Mary and Edd Donaldson, also lost two children. Ernest Mitchell Donaldson, known as Mitchell, was born in 1922 and died as an infant on January 8, 1923 from pneumonia. I don't believe I have ever seen a picture of Mitchell...

I'm frustrated and I need help. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I have been searching for the parents of my great-great grandparents, Thomas Dudley and Iva Lettitia Tankersley Dudley for several years. I have chosen to pursue Lettitia's parents, guessing that researching a less common surname might make my odds better. And, if I can find Lettitia's parents' names, maybe it will make it easier to find Thomas' parents. Although I continue my own research, I am also hoping that someone out there will someday read this blog post and contact me! Iva Lettitia Tankersley was born around 1811 in Virginia. She married Thomas Dudley on 11/17/1830 in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. Marriages of Pittsylvania County, Virginia 1806 - 1830 by K. B. Williams lists her name as "Malitia Tankersly." The marriage bond was posted by Nicholas Dillard, a teacher in Pittsylvania County. Soon after their marriage, Lettitia and Thomas moved to Ohio, settling in Clark Townsh...

"We have a relative named Lulu? Sweet!" These were the words of my niece when I mentioned that my blog post would be on my great-great-grandmother, Lulu Dunn Wardlow. I first learned of Lulu when I found her obituary in my grandmother's Bible. I asked my dad if he knew her. He said he did and that "she was a nice old lady." He couldn't tell me much more, except that he remembered his grandmother's family discussing Lulu's walking a half mile across a field to her daughter's home . . . at the age of 90. Lulu Dunn was born to Robert and Elmina Shaw Dunn on August 20, 1854 in Sardinia, Ohio. She married John Reese Wardlow on August 3, 1873. They had nine children, the second of whom was my great-grandmother, Dora Elma Wardlow. John Wardlow was a farmer. The first picture I saw of Lulu was the one below, of a family gathering, probably in the early to mid-1930s. Lulu is second from the left in the back row. I had a hard time picturing this unassuming...