Leaves & Branches

"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...

In honor of Halloween, in this post I will share a frightening experience I had at Troutwine Cemetery in Lynchburg, Ohio. Several of my Dudley family members are buried at Troutwine. My great-grandparents, Jesse (1847-1925) and Mary Shaper Dudley (1861-1947) are buried there. Jesse's sister, Jane Dudley Setty (1845-1901) is buried at Troutwine. Two of Jesse's and Mary's sons, Lewis (1880-1906) and Thomas (1890-1940), are buried there was well. My uncles Everett (1918-1924) and Mitchell Donaldson (1922-1923) are also buried at Troutwine Cemetery. The day we visited, the cemetery was sun-drenched. It was a bright day and there weren't any trees in the cemetery to obstruct the sunlight. There were some wooded areas surrounding the cemetery. The grounds were well-maintained, not overgrown and neglected. As cemeteries go, this was a pleasant place. Or so I thought. I was exploring the cemetery and walked toward a section that bordered a slightly wooded area. I was...

A couple of years after beginning my family history research, I decided it was time to compile my findings. At that point, I was somewhat perplexed over the Lamb family. Other than the basic information I found on censuses, I didn't know much about them. My grandfather, Eddie Earl Donaldson, was the son of Mary Cordelia (Molly) Lamb. Molly was the daughter of Nathan and Anna Lamb. When I first compiled my research, I didn't know Nathan and Anna's parents' names, Anna's maiden name, or when they died. One day I was perusing Wabash County, Indiana cemetery records when I found an entry for a Nathan Lamb at the Friends Cemetery. Initially, I thought it might have been a different Nathan Lamb or that he might have been buried in a Quaker cemetery even though he hadn't been Quaker. After all, my mom had never heard anything about Quakers in the family. I decided to pursue the possibility that the Lambs were Quakers, first looking in William Wade Hinshaw's Encyclo...

On Memorial Day weekend 2003, my family travelled to Washington Township, Brown County, Ohio to visit the Wardlow Cemetery. My dad was quite weak by that time, due to the disease that would take his life less than three months later. We brought a lawn chair for him to sit in because he was so weak and standing was painful for him. However, he struggled to his feet and managed to walk around the cemetery with my eight-year-old niece and me to visit the grave sites of five generations of our family. We walked to the rear of the cemetery to the oldest gravestone, which belongs to Samuel Wardlaw. Samuel and his wife, Elizabeth Nesbitt Wardlaw, moved from Virginia to Ohio with his parents Robert and Janet Wardlaw, and his brothers and sisters and their spouses. They were among the first settlers in this area and once owned the land where the cemetery is located. Samuel died in 1848. A foot stone marked EW was the only marker of Elizabeth's grave. Samuel and Elizabeth's son, Levi, an...