Summit County?

A map of Summit County, Ohio with the municipalities and townships labeled.

I’ve been looking for the birthplace of my great-great grandfather John Conner for a very long time now. Someone using the site Ancestry has added it to their family tree: Summit County, Ohio.

I’ve looked through the sources for this, but can’t find anything to back it up. Whether or not, John was born in Summit County I don’t know. I have found any evidence either way. I’m recording it here, so I have some sort of log of it.

What makes me a bit cautious is the name of his wife. The person has it as Mary Ellen Catherine Lint. I have never seen Ellen C. Lint referred to as Mary Ellen. Perhaps two people are being confusingly merged together into one. I’ve seen it happen before.

For example, Martha Ann Marsh, who married Henry N. Hill, and Martha Ann Hill are two distinct individuals, but sometimes get confused.

Ellen’s birth date is recorded as August 6, 1848 in Story County, Iowa. In fact, she was born in Pennsylvania on August 20, 1850. This is well documented. I’m not sure why there are so many errors on this particular family tree.

But I will be following up on the reference to Summit County to see if I can find any documentation linking the family there. Summit County is centered around Akron.

ajh

Dustsucker!

A friend of mine is thinking about volunteering in Switzerland next year. Despite living there as a kid, she wants to brush up on her German.

On Facebook today, she was asking if anyone had a copy of the Rosetta Stone language program, German edition, something I’d love to have myself. Since my grandfather’s parents emigrated from Germany and the family tree is full of German ancestors, I want to learn the language.

Years ago, I discovered a poem, the Hymn of Pomerania, and wanting to translate it, I contacted the man who taught German at my high school. I never took a class with him. He had since retired, but his wife worked at the college I was attending, so we met there.

He went through it line for line, word for word with me, translating it. He introduced me to the concept of words being melded together to form extremely complex and long compound ones.

But since then, unfortunately, my cursory German studies have been overwhelmed, by duties and obligations and life. I really wanted to take some classes in college, but it was only offered every other year, and then outright eliminated during a round of budget cuts. Instead, I took two terms of French.

My friend’s post has inspired me again. I started poking around online, looking for German language learning resources. The BBC has some material.

“German is considered a difficult language to study by English learners, with its long and winding words . . . ”

It’s those compound words again!

“German is a very descriptive language. Nouns, especially, often combine the object with the activity.”

Look at the word for vacuum cleaner: der Staubsauger. It consists of the noun Staub, meaning dust, and the verb saugen, meaning to suck. Thus, the literal translation of the word is dustsucker! Reminds me of Sergio Leone’s Duck, You Sucker! Gotta love any language that merges words with such aplomb.

I still want to study German in a class setting. Makes it so much easier. So, here’s to me learning German, the language of my forefathers.

ajh

Clear Creek Township

A map of Jasper County, Iowa from an 1895 atlas.

Some of my ancestors lived in the northwesternmost part of Jasper County, Iowa. It’s known officially as Clear Creek Township. Years ago I discovered these maps at the Iowa GenWeb project pages for Jasper County. Whoever has been working on that site and these maps is doing a great job.

A map of the townships and towns within Jasper County.

Rarely does one find such wonderfully simple, yet informative modern township maps. All of my family connections trace to Clear Creek Township. I don’t think relatives ventured anywhere else within Jasper County. The same families did, however, have connections with townships in neighboring counties: Washington Township in Polk County and Indian Creek Township in Story County.

A map showing landmarks within Clear Creek Township.

Many of my forebears, including my grandfather, are buried in the Graham Cemetery just northwest of the town of Mingo. On some family census records, Clyde¹ is listed as the post office where folks would go to pick up and send mail. It’s nice to see these locations pinpointed precisely on the township map.

ajh

1. I will probably write more about Clyde later.