Episode 8 of Let's Talk Clermont. We take a break from the news to welcome new listeners and talk about what the podcast is all about. We then sit down with Paige Craig, president of the Clermont County Genealogical Society, to talk about genealogy and how it connects us to local history. Stick around after the interview for a lineup of upcoming events and a unique take on giraffes.
[00:00:11]
Unknown:
We've been living in sin so long. All Hello, and welcome. This is the eighth episode of Let's Talk Clermont. As always, we appreciate you listening. We're gonna do something a little bit different for this podcast as I was, you know, googling around like I normally do looking for interesting news stories or things going on, up in Columbus at the State House. I didn't really find I didn't really find anything too interesting. And I realized we're getting a lot of new the podcast has been doing well, so we've been getting a lot of, new listeners. And when I sent this the podcast to someone, they got a little confused when they didn't immediately hear an interview. So I thought it'd be good to, you know, welcome you if you're new, and just kind of go back to basics and let you know who we are, what we're doing, and what you can expect from this podcast.
So my name is Patrick Ventarello. A lot of people call me Pappy. And when I say a lot of people, I mean, like, teachers in high school thought my name was Pappy. So if ever I interview somebody who who knows me well, you'll hear them probably hear them call me call me Pappy. I for work, I I work in marketing, specifically content marketing, and I freelance. And what that means is is I do a lot of writing for a lot of different people. I do some search engine optimization stuff. I do some strategy, but it's it's mostly a lot of writing, which I love because I love to write.
So, why are why did I do this podcast? Why are we here? There seems to be a real lack of good information, news for local markets, essentially. Over the years, larger, media organizations have gobbled up local newspapers and radio stations and things like that. So it's it's really tough to find good information about what's going on in in your locality, in the in the county or in your township or your municipality. So that's that's what we're trying to do here. And we're also trying to to, you know, meet interesting people doing interesting things around the county. And I've said it before and I I say it a lot.
I I really firmly believe that if we all want to live in a better world, then we have to know what's going in our backyard. And I'm I'm trying to do this so you can know, what's going on in your backyard. So what can you expect from these podcasts? And I've structured them and it's all subject to change because I'm still figuring this out. In the beginning, for maybe ten, fifteen minutes, we go over news. We go over what's going on in the county, what's going on in townships, municipalities. We look a lot at developments because they're, you know, we're growing And, I'm concerned about development. I think it's great to develop, but I I want it done in the right way.
And so we'll we'll talk about stuff like that. And then we get to the interview. And it's just gonna be, you know, eventually, I'd like to talk to village council members or county commissioners or, you know, people like that. But outside of that, we're just finding interesting people doing interesting stuff. That's that's pretty much it. And we put episodes out every Thursday, and you can follow us, on our Facebook page, Let's Talk Clermont, podcast. But we're also on all podcast apps. You can find us on Apple Podcasts. You can find us on Spotify, Amazon. We're we're pretty much if you've got a favorite, podcast app, then we're probably on it. So you can follow us there.
And I talked about this a little bit in the last episode, but we're trying to do a value for value model with this podcast. So what that means is is if you find if you get value from this show, all we ask is that you give us a little value back, and that can be in the form of time, talent, or treasure. So, you know, if you wanna give us money, that's great. You can email us and we'll figure out a way to do that. I'm certainly not gonna say no to that. But talent and treasure are just as important, if not more important. If there's something you can do that can make the podcast better, please let me know. And similarly, if you have information or you know people we should be talking to, or I haven't been talking about something and you think I should, or I've been doing something wrong and you wanna tell me about it, let us know.
Like I said, we've got that Facebook page. You can also email us at info@let'stalkclermont.com. So that's that's all we've really got for the the preamble. I did want to give you a pork chop update because I, I got that pork chop last week from Sarah Eisen at Flourish in Rome, from one of their Berkshire hogs. And I have to tell you, it's pretty amazing. And nobody's paying me to say that. It's it was a really amazing pork chop, and I would highly recommend. I'm sure all of their meat is delicious, but, man, probably the best pork chop I've ever had in my life. So if you're looking for some some good pork, I would definitely check out Flourish in Rome and see what they have to offer.
Alright. So let's talk about, our interview today. It's with Paige Craig from the Genie, Clermont Genealogical Society. Again, I always say this and I always mean it. It was a great interview. We talk a lot about genealogy and how to do genealogy. We talk a little bit about the history of of Clermont County. And I, you know, I I really think it's interesting to learn about, you know, just the history of where where you live. And she was able to give me a lot of names of people that I'm hoping to get on, and we'll talk more about, the history of our county.
So it was a great, great interview, and I really hope you enjoy it. So we are we are recording. Okay. And I always like to start everything with just tell us who you are and and what you do. Sure.
[00:06:23] Unknown:
My name is Paige Craig, and I am the president of the Clermont County Genealogical Society. And the genealogical society, probably the best thing to do is to start with the mission. Mhmm. And it is to collect, protect, and preserve the records of Clermont County's past residents that their stories and family histories can be shared with this and all future generations.
[00:06:52] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:06:53] Unknown:
So that's a a good in a nutshell. We're a five zero one c three organization. We're completely volunteer led. We have a board of 14 volunteers, and a lot of those volunteers have specialty jobs that they do for the society. So some of them, I'm gonna highlight a few of the jobs, I think, because they're really important to our members. Not that all the trustees aren't, but some of the jobs are particularly helpful. We have a librarian, and her name is Marcia. And Marcia makes sure that all of our collection at the which is housed at the Clermont County Public Library at the Batavia branch, Make sure that it's managed, curated, kept ready, and waiting for the public. It's, non lending materials.
We have about 1,700 titles there that belong to the society. But again, they're at the Batavia Branch Library, so they're open to the public all the hours that the library is open. Okay. On top of the 1,700, those have, like, local history. They have some places where our ancestors here in Clement County might have come from. So you'll find immigration from New Jersey and Maryland and Virginia and all over. And then you'll also find just general genealogy topics, anything you'd want to look for as a a new or an experienced genealogist and how to do some of the research. Then on top of that, we have 500 family notebooks. And the family notebooks are pretty cool because they've been donated over the years by genealogists who are local to Clermont County. So they've researched their family, and then they have written their stories and put that in our library. So they're not published works and they're amateur genealogists, but boy, there are some interesting stories in there. So it's literally like a workbook that somebody did. Exactly.
Exactly. And the stories are just really great. Where they came from when they came to Clermont County, where they moved to. One of the things Clermont County and this whole Southwest Ohio area is kind of known as as being the crossroads of the nation because we were the Western frontier in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. And then a lot of times, our families, decided they wanted to have a little more elbow room and they moved a little further west. Mhmm. So we're kind of the crossroads here in in the Midwest. We also have, I think, like, seven or eight file cabinets full of family files. Same thing.
People over the years have donated all that great material as they have found something that was really cool and interesting to them. They've donated that, and then we've put it in files that are alphabetical order by surname. And so, again, if you're looking at your surname from Clermont County, you can go look at our surname files and see if there's any information that might help you in your genealogy quest.
[00:10:09] Unknown:
I'm sorry. How far back do these do these, records go? We were founded in 1977.
[00:10:15] Unknown:
So nearly fifty years, the society has been, collecting and protecting all those different pieces of information. We have bible records. We have a photograph collection, which I'll talk a little bit about more if that's okay. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Projects when we get a little further into things. Yeah. So that's just Marsha's job to take care of those things along with all the rest of us. But then we also have an archives, which is housed at the Clermont County Records Center. And we have an archivist, Judith, and she takes care of the there are over a 30 boxes of records at the archives.
And the cool thing about them, a lot of them are, again, the same type of, histories, but a lot of our our books at the library might be old out of print. Well, for genealogy, it doesn't matter how old. Right. That's always I imagine sometimes the older the better. Exactly. Exactly. Because they might be rare and out of print books, you won't find anywhere else. Yeah. I just Out of print books are impossible to find. They are. So if we have a duplicate copy, we can put it at the archives, so we've got a backup. And it's also in an off-site location.
God forbid there was ever any kind of a disaster, but, you know, you like to have a backup of all of the things in your collection. And Yeah. So that's part of that. And then there are other things that are very, fragile that are really not able to be out in the public. So those can be we can make an appointment with our archivist and go and see those items too. We've got our complete inventory. Everything we have in our archives is on our website. So So it's all digital if I if I wanted to go and look at No. Just the inventory of it. Just okay. I'm sorry. Yes. Well, eventually, that's another future project. We love to digitize everything. The other thing you'll find there is, the society has been doing lineage society applications for nearly that same fifty years. So if you trace back your ancestor in Clermont County, then you have to to prove that you can be accepted into our lineage societies.
You have to have documents to prove that you were accepted into our lineage societies. Okay. So, again, if you have that same line as someone who else has already researched it, then you can go back through that same line and find all the documents that they had to prove that ancestor. And when you prove an ancestor, you try to look at their, date of both date of birth Mhmm. And location of birth, date of marriage, and location of marriage, and then date of death and location of death. That's kind of the gold standard that you're trying to look for. At least those few facts. Okay. Because I was gonna ask you, like, how do you what is the actual work of a genealogist? Sure.
Yeah. Maybe I started more at the, advanced, and we should start take a couple of steps back and go back to the beginning. But, anyway, that those are the kinds of things we have at the archives, and that, space has also the Clermont County Records Center has all the old records that are it's just really a cool place to go. If you wanna look at the common, please, records from Clermont County in eighteen o two, You can find them there at the record center. So you can look up like old court cases. Old court cases. Bob Smith is on my land and I don't want him anymore. That's that's got Yes. Yes. Have you seen any kind of fun ones that Oh, there are so many of them. Well, I have a couple. I've gotta go go for my experience, but the really so this one brought me to tears. It's I won't say it was particularly fun. No. But I have an ancestor who his name was Jesse Swimme, and he would fought in the revolutionary war.
One of the things when they decided to offer pensions, to the revolutionary war soldiers, they had to come in and do affidavits for why they deserve their pension. Okay. They had to talk about where they, fought and who they fought under and what battles they fought in. Well, at first, when the pensions were offered, they had to prove that they were also poor. So he listed all of his beehives and his 40 acres that were untillable and, you know, his hogs. And then he listed his children that were at home that he was still supporting in their ages. So when you're reading that, you think this was done in 1818, he was giving his affidavit at our Clermont County Common Police Court.
It just it's really impressive. It Yeah. It's a really great great record. So That's gotta be a really cool thing to to feel to read that connection to an ancestor. It that one brought me to tears. I gotta tell you. So, so that was really a good one. There's another one that's a a court case, and there's a history book that we'll talk about the history of Clermont County. And it listed this one particular individual, Jacob Alre, listed all of his children. Well, I thought for sure that my third great grandmother was one of his children and I couldn't find it anywhere. And it it wasn't she wasn't one of they listed nine children and she was the tenth child and she wasn't listed in the history book. Well, dig on it if I didn't find a supreme court case in Clermont County where they the children as they became adults were being sued for the land that that belonged to their father Mhmm. And someone had wanted to purchase the land. But anyway, she was listed in that list in that in that court record. So along with the other nine children. So it was a very cool thing to find. But
[00:15:54] Unknown:
do you wanna go back to a little bit about beginning genealogy? Yeah. Just kind of, you know, what I guess because I I don't know a whole lot about genealogy. I mean, I know it's about family histories and marriages and Sure. You know, my mother loves to look at our family and go back, but I just don't know what the work actually is. Like, how do how do you actually what kind of documents do you use to prove these things? Well, and the most important thing is when you're starting, you start with what you know.
[00:16:21] Unknown:
And you take the time to interview any parents, aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandparents, whoever you have living, that's where you start. Okay. And that's something I wish I didn't start doing this until I retired. Mhmm. So it wasn't something that I was smart enough to do when I was younger. And so I'm fortunate. Of stuff that we're not smart enough to do when we're younger. That's for sure. There's tons of stuff I wasn't smart enough to do when I was younger. Yeah. But there are so many stories I wished I would have asked my grandparents because I think they could have answered some of the questions that I still struggle to try to answer just by finding records. Yeah. So it's a lot better to get those personal experiences, and you can write them down or you can record them on video or you can, you know, record them as a podcast, however you wanna do it. But whatever the stories from your family are the best place to start.
But then you start looking at, all the records, the types of records that you use to go back. So ideally, you wanna start with your parents and then go back to your grandparents and keep going a generation at a time until you get back as far as you can, and then you move on from there. So it's easier the longer they stay in one area, the less you have to go all over the country to do research. Right. But as we move around, we know that we're going everywhere to do all kinds of research. But the big thing is that you start it step by step. And and you don't try to jump four generations back when you're in generation one or two. You really try to go systematically one generation at a time. Yeah. And then, census records, where they've just published the 1950 census within the past couple of years.
So those are and that's the most the most current one that's been published because of privacy. That's how far back they go when they publish those. So they don't they don't publish censuses from I didn't know that. 1950 is the most recent published census right now. Yes. Yes. So you That's interesting. I'd have figured that they would publish
[00:18:31] Unknown:
since they've been doing censuses.
[00:18:32] Unknown:
Yeah. No. Not you can't no. You can't find those published because they're protecting people's privacy because, I mean, you have questions on their different questions. Your you have your census records from The United States are every ten years. Yeah. So, I just have for the first time, my parents are now on a census for the first time, and they're, like, nine years old. So it's it was really neat to see them for the first time on a census with their parents. And so they tell who their parents are, you know, it'll say whoever's in the household and that were what relationships those are. So you might not know for sure that this person was a cousin or an uncle, but when you see that on the census, it tells you what the definite relationship is. Okay. So those are really good way to start.
You keep going earlier and earlier in time, you get less and less information. I was gonna say it probably gets a little murkier the further back you go. It does. So the 1880 census is the first time that they tell you what relationship someone is in the household. So before that, at least starting in 1850, you started to get everyone named who was in the household. And you could kinda guess if this person was 30 years old and there was a three year old, it was probably their son or daughter, but you didn't know for sure. Yeah. You don't know. You didn't know for sure. So, you know, you but at least it was a clue, a good place to start. So I liked starting with census records first. I got started doing, my genealogy because my two sisters and I went together for my dad's birthday about eight years back, and we got him a DNA kit to test his DNA. Like the 23 and me type thing. Yeah. This one was ancestry, but 23 me works too.
But they, so the main reason we wanted was to find out his ethnicity. And we really we didn't know anything about our family history. My dad, God love him. He he told me the whole time I was growing up that my ancestors were a bunch of horse thieves.
[00:20:41] Unknown:
So I found one cattle thief, but no horse. No horse thieves. No horse thieves. No horse thieves. And he wasn't convicted. So And he got off. So he was a good horse thief. He was a cattle thief. A cattle thief. He got off. Yeah. He was a good cattle thief. I think his dad bought off the judge. That's just my opinion. But
[00:21:03] Unknown:
but but anyway, so so that really got me started because one of my friends said, well, you've got your dad's ethnicity. Now why don't you start tracing your family tree? Mhmm. And so that's like I said, the the census has really got me started quite a bit. But and you've got, birth and death records. So but they're still pretty recent. So birth and death records weren't really required in Ohio until nineteen o eight. Wow. That's that's pretty recent. Seems pretty recent to me as well. There were some some spotty, birth and death records before that, but this was when they were required by law in Ohio is nineteen o eight. Okay. So those, you can go to our local Clermont County health department and you can get a copy of a birth certificate of anyone born in Ohio if you have the right information.
So you just really need the person's name, their date of birth, and a parent's name if you've got it, and they will give you a certified copy of a birth certificate. As far as death certificates go, you have to figure out the county in Ohio where they died. Okay. So sometimes that can be a little bit tricky, especially when you get, so sometimes in, like, Cincinnati, you might have the city of Cincinnati will be one area and then Hamilton County, the those records will be kept in a different courthouse. Okay. So or or records place. Yeah. So sometimes the the jurisdiction you have to it's a little bit trickier to find where you're looking for. Clermont County, we're pretty much at our health department if they died. Like, for example, even the Clermont County the local hospital at Clermont County. So so those are death records, birth records, marriage records.
This is another really great place to visit is Clermont County probate court. I know only a nerd like me would really wanna go visit there, but you can find Listen. The world runs with nerds. I know. That's who runs the world. So
[00:23:02] Unknown:
there's nothing wrong with being a nerd. Well, I can tell you that,
[00:23:06] Unknown:
so if you go to probate court, all the marriages since Clermont County was formed are at probate court. So you can find those marriages and those are fantastic. Again, the more recent marriages have more information where the re they recorded where their or who their parents were. Earlier ones, they didn't have to say who their parents were. But again, those date back to, like, eighteen o three, I believe, here in Clermont County, those those marriages. And we're lucky because, again, Clermont County hasn't had any big courthouse fires. Oh. Imagine when there's a courthouse fire, you lose those records. Yeah. They're gone. And I imagine they were more, like, in the past, probably more prevalent to have a fire. Absolutely.
[00:23:50] Unknown:
Absolutely. They were. So Clermont County has never had? No courthouse fires. Really? Yep. No courthouse fires. I mean, I I guess I don't know the statistic about courthouse fires, but it it does seem more likely. Brown County has and,
[00:24:02] Unknown:
a lot of their records were saved, but a lot of them were definitely singed and burned. And Hamilton County's had a couple of really big courthouse fires. They you'll find, if you look researching in Hamilton County, you'll look they'll they'll call them the reconstructed marriage records because they had to go back into court and reprove your marriage, etcetera, etcetera. So it was it got a little little tricky in Hamilton County because of those fires. So, we're also, lucky because Clermont County has been really generous with its records. Okay. So there are a lot of paid sites, but, the Latter day Saints have done a lot of the records and digitized them and put them online for the world.
[00:24:48] Unknown:
And Clermont County has allowed many, many of their records to be digitized and put online. I I know my my mother and sister, they went to Salt Lake and they have, like, a whole huge thing of this genealogy.
[00:25:01] Unknown:
Yes. Yes. It's kinda wild. I don't know I don't know why they decided to do that, but it's It's it's a mission for them, I believe. And it's really great because it's just it so benefits all the rest of us. So those same marriage records and they the date that they go back to on the on the, online is kind of a moving target just like copyright and everything else as and the and the census records as we get further in the future, then they will publish more and more records that don't affect people's privacy of people who could be living at this point. Yeah. It's funny. I never even thought about the privacy thing. Like, you certainly don't wanna be putting people's information out there if they're still alive. Right. You know? Right. Right. Right. Well, and, you know, even for security, we used to ask all the time, what's your mother's maiden name for a security question. So Yeah. You just have to be yeah. That's why we store our, like, our lineage society applications. We store those in the archives because we don't wanna put them on the shelves at the library because, you know, people are doing their applications all the time. And Yeah. So yeah. So that's that's you have to really think about privacy and taking care of people's records.
[00:26:11] Unknown:
So So why this is gonna be more of a personal question? Sure. What is it about genealogy and history that that really draws you in?
[00:26:21] Unknown:
Well, I I really wasn't. I was a good history student, but I didn't really care a lot about history until I started doing my genealogy. And once you start looking back, for me, part of it's a a puzzle, a detective, sort of a race to get to who who my fifth great grandfather was. So, you know, it it's just a really interesting, thing for me. But what really and I get really involved in the history of the period that I'm researching and the location. So whether it's a historical fiction or whether it's a history book or whether it's just searching something on Wikipedia, I will look at everything I can find out about that time and that location because I wanna know about that ancestor. I don't wanna just know here's where he was born and died and married. You know? I wanna know more about the details. You want the whole story. I want the whole context of his life. I do. I do. So when you fit the two together, I just think it it really gives you a little better sense of yourself.
And for me, it very, very much inspires me when I see some of the things that my pioneer ancestors did.
[00:27:34] Unknown:
I'm inspired. I think if they could do that, what could I do now in these day Yeah. You know, in this day and time. Driving here even, you know, you you drive through the roads and you see the, you know, the forest and everything, and then you just think this used to be wild untamed land. Yes. Dangerous dangerous land. Yes. It was. And people just put their stuff on a wagon and said we're going. Absolutely.
[00:27:57] Unknown:
Absolutely. And they had really tough journeys. Most of mine came from, to Clermont directly to Clermont County from, oh, usually New Jersey, Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania. So they had to travel, across Pennsylvania and the Appalachian Mountains are were I'm sorry, the the, mountains were just absolutely treacherous, not the Appalachians. Anyway, I'm escaping me. What which mountains I'm coming through. I'll
[00:28:30] Unknown:
I'll smack myself. I actually used to work in those mountains and I don't know the name of Yeah. Yeah. But I'd I'd like I used to work on oil rigs in those mountains. Oh. So you know that I know that they're they're not easily traversable even by car. By car and there's no car, no rail. So they would come through the mountains
[00:28:47] Unknown:
of Pennsylvania and then come down to the Ohio River and then come, by flat boat then on to down the Ohio River to Clermont County. So that's, you know, that's that's a big migration trail. And then a lot came through, like, Virginia and
[00:29:04] Unknown:
then Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and then up into Ohio. Yeah. So Could you imagine being on a because a flat boat is just kinda like a skiff. It's not a big boat. I can't imagine. And the Ohio River because at at that time, there were probably still rapids on the Ohio. Yes. Yes. I mean Yes. Yes. Some parts yes. The bravery you have would have to have, especially just to take your whole I'm sure some of them had young kids. Yes. Yes. They did.
[00:29:28] Unknown:
Well, and you've got to go back and unfortunately, the the conflicts with the native Americans, that was tough on both sides. Yeah. Just completely tough. That's the era that I really would like to come back to to see. I wouldn't wanna live there, but I'd like to come back to You could just have like a little bubble that you Exactly. Yes. I just wanna see it because, you know, that was just really incredible. So you think back, I guess there were, of course, mound builders, which that's not my area of expertise. I don't know much about that. But you've had the mound builders, but then you had the French explorers that came through. And they were mostly fur traders. Right? Yes. Yes. And then, allegedly, Clermont means clear mountain Mhmm. In French.
And that's allegedly where Clermont got its name from those French explorers even though it wasn't until much much later that it was named that. Right. But then you think of, like, the North we were the Northwest Territory, part of that in the, like, 1787. Mhmm. So that was long before there were states here. It was after the American Revolution, but before there were states. Trying to remember my Ohio history. It was at eighteen o eight or 1818, something like that? We were founded in eighteen o three. Okay. But Clermont County was formed in 1800. Okay. So we were actually a county from the Northwest Territory.
And so that and the whole reason I have a history book here that was written is called the history of Clermont County, and it was starting in, like, 1795. Well, there's a reason for that 1795 because in 1795, that was the Ohio history, the Treaty of Greenville when the American the Native Americans ceded this area. This was their hunting area. Okay. So that's why because they let because after the Battle of Fallen Timbers, they signed this treaty and they moved further west. And that was the reason it was then safe for our pioneer ancestors to move here.
So lots of conflict, lots of battles, led to that. But before that, it was, there was actually the Battle of Grassy Run was fought here in Clermont County in Jackson Township in 1792. So and that was a battle between Native Americans and between our, pioneers, that they were living in Kentucky at the time. And they followed the Native Americans who they said stole horses from them. And then it was, Tecumseh, who was the great Shawnee chief, and then the pioneers were led by Simon Kenton, the explorer and Kentucky settler. And, that's one that I, you know, really find interesting. And I think that's the main, documented battle here in Clermont County between the Native Americans and and, the the pioneers. And they moved then. They went further. They went back to Kentucky, of course. And Mhmm. And again, things really didn't start settling here until after 1795.
And then, Williamsburg was the first settlement in Clermont County. And it was settled here in, like, 1797 or '8.
[00:32:40] Unknown:
It was the date. What was the main thing people were, coming here for?
[00:32:45] Unknown:
Land. Land. Just just land. I think land. I think land and a opportunity for elbow room, that sort of thing. So this is also considered the Virginia Military District.
[00:32:56] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:32:58] Unknown:
There were, like, 4,000,000 acres set aside for the men who fought in the American Revolution in the for the, colony of Virginia. Okay. And they were given land and it was the land was based on their rank and their amount of service. So it could have been 50 acres, could have been the I think it was 20 something thousand acres that George Washington got here in this area. Oh, I I actually didn't know George Washington. He got land here. He did. He he gave it away or he didn't didn't settle here, but he, but he got land here. So different colonies in the American Revolution rewarded their, soldiers, their veterans differently.
For example, in New Jersey, they got depreciation pay because they had extra pay because the continental, dollar went down down down down down. So to compensate the colony of New Jersey, which was then the state of New Jersey, paid them what they call depreciation pay, extra money. Yeah. So, again, different areas. I'll tell you, I'd take the land.
[00:34:02] Unknown:
Yeah. I Especially now. Those Virginia guys are so lucky. Yeah. They're they're being in New Jersey. They're all right. Money's fine. I know. I'd rather have a thousand acres. Exactly.
[00:34:11] Unknown:
Exactly. But, and that's why we've got two, if you I don't know, some deeds around here still, you'll see have the boundaries from the Virginia Military District. They did what was called meets and bounds surveys. So instead of getting this square of land, you got this horseshoe bottom of land, or you got the it went from this creek to, this tree on the top of the hill. Mhmm. And so it was a square I'm sure that didn't cause any land disputes whatsoever. You that's what so many of our court records are. Yeah. Land land land disputes. Yes. And, William Lytle, who founded Williamsburg, recorded a lot of those lands.
Some things didn't the paperwork didn't get done quite as well as it should have gotten done. So, again, lots of land disputes, but that was and so a lot of the, military servicemen came here and a lot of them sold their land. So, you know, she they just stayed back east. Anyway, what did land even go for? Like, how how would you even price that? Yeah. I have found some that was at the beginning, I have one ancestor. His, land says Aaron Leonard from the Northwest Territory. So it was it was before we were a state. Okay. And it was like a dollar an acre. Wow. Then I mean, obviously, it's not today's dollar. No. But I mean Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. It would have been worth a lot more. But but that's the earliest I have found. And then, you know, they keep going up $2, 5 dollars. You know, you just keep seeing it go up and up and up as you come forward in time. They're now where it's like $10 an acre. Exactly. Exactly.
Yeah. So, so anyway, that that's kind of the I I really think that was the biggest motivation. But, you know, people came for lots of reasons. So I I mean, we've seen,
[00:36:07] Unknown:
sometimes people came just to work as teachers where it's it's, you know, me. I imagine it's very similar to today. It's like, how do you find yourself in a place? It's like, well, I had a job. I had a job there. Opportunity there. Mhmm. Time to go. It's just my cousin was there, and he said, I got there's great land here. Come and help me work. And Yeah. Yeah. So it's just back then it was wilderness. And today, you know, you can get an apartment.
[00:36:28] Unknown:
Yes. Yeah. Yes. But those are good clues too. If you find some people in the same neighborhood, you know, that's how you do part of your research. You think, okay, well, did he come here with especially if you see them in a town back in Maine, and then you see them in Clermont County in, Williamsburg, then you kinda have an idea that they might have come here together. So, you know, which is that's a that's when you're looking at the old records to try to trace those. That those are some great clues that you you use as a genealogist
[00:36:58] Unknown:
as well. So today, how many and I'm I'm obviously, we don't wanna infringe on anybody's privacy. But
[00:37:06] Unknown:
are there families in Clermont County today that have been here since the seventeen hundreds? Holy moly. Yes. Really? Okay. So, another thing that we have so our lineage societies, those are, I'm gonna go through them. The first one is called, first families. And those are people that came to Clermont County before 1820. Okay. And if you look on our website, you'll see there are about a thousand names, between a hundred and thousand names on there of these are documented people that that their ancestors documented that they came here to Clermont County before 1820.
So they were able to place them here in Clermont County. And a lot of those people are members of our own society now that live here in Clermont County. Okay. So I am pretty thrilled. I have proven 26, different first family ancestors that came here to Calamity County before 1820. So That's gotta be kind of exciting for the people you do it for. I am so thrilled. You probably have family stories of, like, we've been here since the Indians, and then you finally get proof of it. It. Well, and here's one of my okay. I gotta I'm gotta tell you, I'm I'm very pleased and proud. One of my new ones this year is Isaac Ferguson, and he was documented as being at that Battle of Grassy Run. Oh, really? So I'm pretty pretty excited that he was one of the family members. But, you know, you lose the names that the the names change so much because you've got the wives mixed in there and you've got, you know, the since they don't keep their names, a lot of times those main names are really hard to come across. If you don't find the marriage, you know, if the marriage record wasn't turned in like it was supposed to be, then it can be a little tricky finding out who belongs to who. So so that's a really interesting one. But we have lots of those families right now.
In our society, we, just did a survey recently, and I think, like, 90% of the members that responded to the survey had Clermont County ancestors. It doesn't mean they lived in Clermont County, but they're interested in being the Clermont County genealogical society because they have Clermont County ancestors. So we've got a lot of our members who are just general genealogy, and that's great because we do lots of education. We don't just focus on our our programs don't just focus on Clermont County. We have a lot of that information, but we also focus on whether your ancestors wherever they came from or whatever kind of, records you're researching.
Again, whether you're researching, immigration, just you name it, and we we talk about it. So, like, our next program in June, we're going to be talking about, African American burial sites because you can imagine that those records are tougher to find. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, you've got the whole pre civil war and Yeah. Very tough to find. Yeah. So Imagine they didn't document that particularly well. Right. Right. So those are those are, you know, always tricky. So, again, we've got, we just did one that was very popular this year with, Scottish immigration. Oh, sure. Yeah. Because we got a lot of I mean, there were a lot of Scots. There were.
[00:40:16] Unknown:
There were. I imagine it was a lot of Scots and Irish and Yeah. Germans.
[00:40:20] Unknown:
You know, you can't talk about Cincinnati without Germans. Yeah. I know. So of my, for particularly my four grandparents as an example, one of them, he was well, my mom is, like, 50% German. So he his family came direct from Germany. The the other three of mine were, like, English Yeah. Bread you know, British, Scottish, Wales because they were here early, and that's where they came from. That's my maternal grandmother and then my dad, both of his parents. So they're so they're the early ones from Clermont County. I was always when I was looking through the deeds and records, finding a lot of them, I'd every time I'd go back another generation when I was first starting, I'd cross my fingers and say, please don't let mom and dad be cousins because there was I guess that's probably a whole Yeah. Because there were not that many No. Families, you know, when you first started, you married someone close to you. Yeah. But I found so many records where my father's one of my father's ancestors signed as a witness on one of my mother's ancestors' deeds or pension affidavit or something like that.
So that was really interesting doing that kind of research. So As an Italian or part Italian Yes. I'd I have to ask you about the Italians in Clermont County and and what kind of history they have. Unfortunately, I don't know a lot of Italians from Clermont County. So There's not I don't think there's many of us. I can't I can't I don't wanna say I'm the only Italian. No. No. No. And and there are way more now than what there would have been in the early settlement. Sorry. Clermont County. So that's why they're they would be more recent. And and that's that's great because you've got more recent records to deal with. So then you're gonna be look you're able to look at, obituaries and those those more recent records, which are really helpful because in obituaries, you know, so much of the time they name every child, every grandchild of the person.
So that's great. So, again, I don't have a lot of information.
[00:42:23] Unknown:
I just thought I'd ask. That was kind of a flyer question. Yeah. But I but we do have we do have several who are in or who are researching their Italian ancestors.
[00:42:33] Unknown:
So I can tell you there are plenty. I just don't know as much about them because that's not my story. Yeah. So I don't know as much about them. Well, and there were much more I mean, I'm sure there were Italians that came over earlier. Yes. But, I mean, that's mostly the Ellis Island. Yeah. And yeah. And and people tended to settle. We had a program recently that was very interesting and that I found this as a real interesting statistic. She said that when people came from Europe, and this is even more recently, and big more than still more than a hundred years ago. Right. Right. They came and they settled in a climate in The United States that was very similar to their climate in Europe. Yeah. So I think you would probably find more Italians maybe in, Florida. Yeah. Because it's a it's a warmer climate as far as I know. And We actually we went to Fort Lauderdale on a vacation.
Mhmm. And I didn't really there are Italians, like Yeah. Italian. I'm just came from Italy Italian Yes. In Fort Lauderdale. Yes. Yes. Now I know there were an awful lot too. We're in the early New York City and, you know, and because I have a lot of Well, New Orleans. A lot of people don't realize a lot of Italians came into New Orleans. So that so that all made up that all played a part. And when you think of, like, Cincinnati, it's really very similar to the climate in Germany. Yeah. So, you know, it's not always it doesn't hold a %, but you think of like, Scandinavians maybe up in the Minnesota. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. And it there's it's a bit of a stereotype, and it's not always true. But it it definitely there there is I mean, if I was used to Scandinavian weather, I certainly wouldn't wanna move to Florida. Right. That's what they that's what they said. That would be awful. That's what our speaker said. That's what that was she what she observed. And I thought I thought that was just a really interesting observation.
[00:44:18] Unknown:
So So I think you touched on it a little bit, because I'm kind of hoping for
[00:44:23] Unknown:
just kind of a general history of Clermont because Sure. Frankly, I don't know much about the history of Clermont. Sure. There you know, I think what colors your own history again is your family story if or where you live. So for example, I grew up here in the Williamsburg area, and I knew, from a very young age that the, John Hunt Morgan came through as a raider Morgan's raider during the civil war because I knew that he burned the bridge at Williamsburg. That was a big to do. So that was something that I knew about because it was local to me. When I think of my dad, the nineteen thirty seven flood in enrichment made a huge impact on him.
His mother was displaced and so came to stay in Williamsburg while the flood waters cleared and met my grandfather here in Williamsburg for that reason. So that, again, nineteen thirty seven flood. But when you go way back, we talked a little bit about the, 1795 is when things were opened up for settlers. Eighteen o one or 1800 end of eighteen hundred was when Clermont County was founded. Ohio became a state in eighteen o three. But, Clermont County actually has had three different county seats. So we started with Williamsburg because Williamsburg was in the center. We're like, Williamsburg is really kind of on the East Side of Clermont County now. Well, in 1818, Brown County was formed from part of Clermont County and part of, Adams County. Okay. So a big part of Clermont was split up. So as more and more people populated the area, more and more counties were formed.
So again, people used to go to Williamsburg to go to court. Mhmm. For one short year, it moved in 1823 to New Richmond, and they thought because it was like a quote unquote port city Yeah. That, the county seat was gonna stay in New Richmond and, oh, there are lots of nefarious dealings which which, the the Clermont County Historical Society has a a great talk. Cindy from our our board is also on the Clermont County Historical Society. Okay. And she wrote a great article about that that you can find in one of our newsletters. But then it moved to Batavia and has has the county has been in Batavia since 1824.
[00:46:47] Unknown:
I love the local you know, I say that I guess I say this a lot, but, you know, you get wrapped up in national politics, but you don't realize that there's the same dirty deal that's happened at the local level. There's all kinds of stuff. There's all kinds of, you know, backroom deals. Yeah. Like,
[00:47:02] Unknown:
apparently, some records disappeared from New Richmond and found their way to Batavia before Batavia was was the official county seat. Like I said, Cindy does a really good job with it. And there's nice articles about that. So, you know, I think there are just so many different high points that you can you know, it's hard to pick your, you know, day to day history all the way through. We did start out with just, five townships. So, again, as townships got more populated, then you had, more townships were formed. We started out with one called O'Bannon, and that was kind of the original where Miami Township is now. And the people that played a big part in getting Clermont County settled were the surveyors because they were the land surveyors. Yeah. So there was a John O'Bannon, and that's where O'Bannon Township was named from.
Ohio Township, you know where it is now. And, again, parts of it were carved away, but it was one of the original townships. We also had Washington Township and Williamsburg. Township was, again, one of the original settlements. And then Pleasant Township, and that part's the part that's all kinda carved away now, and now it's part of Brown County. Okay. So those were our original five. And and, again, through the years, things changed. That 1818 was, again, an important date when Brown County was formed. So, you know, those are early, you know, the early years and, more recent history.
The book that I have was written in 1880, and it's a history book of Clermont County. That's an old book. It's an old book, but that's got a lot of the pioneer stories in it. And, again, I'm probably a little biased and stuck in that part because I was gonna ask you what you're and I think it sounds like your favorite time period. Yeah. It has to be that pine. And and there's a whole section a chapter in that book about day to day life for a pioneer. It talked about the spinning wheel and how, they were, you know, they wore the homespun and the leather and, you know, all the different things that you see in the old pioneer movies. It really talked about that in that 1880 book. And, of course, then it was, it still was, you know, recording eighty years of history. But they had a lot of people there that they could actually interview Yeah. Who had So there's actually first hand interviews. There are first yeah. There are first hand accounts in that book too. First hand accounts are always Yeah. I mean, I I don't know much about history, but I imagine you want the first hand accounts. So I guess what you're after. It's helpful or sometimes they were a little colored. It might have been, you know, by okay. Well, this is my great grandfather, so you say a little bit nicer things than maybe you would have. Right. But it's still it's certainly based in fact. And a lot of that history book used the property records and the tax records to record who was where in, like, 1823.
[00:49:54] Unknown:
It's a common thing to have for a county, a a book that was written at that time that details the history of the that seems like a it would be kind of rare for somebody to do that. It's in a lot of counties, but in a lot of places it's not. So we're really fortunate to have it here in Clermont County. So yeah. So it you know, I think you can find it in some places, but not in others.
[00:50:13] Unknown:
The the pioneer records are not as good, as far as recording births and and those and deaths because they weren't required. So you've got your cemeteries. And so we have so many we have over 200 cemeteries in Clermont County. I didn't know that either. Yeah. Well, you couldn't go to all of them because many of them are on someone's private property. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you'll have the big ones, and then it gets really confusing because you have cemeteries that are controlled by the villages and managed by the villages and then the townships.
So you might have cemeteries again in the same geographic area, but it might be in the village of Williamsburg as opposed to in the township of Williamsburg.
[00:50:55] Unknown:
And then again, you've got so many of them that are on private people's homes. Right. You know, on their private property. So and they're yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead. I need to finish the thought. No. Go ahead. Because I'd I'd love to know if what are some of the, like, really good historical cemeteries that people can go to? Well, we we just had a,
[00:51:15] Unknown:
my daughters of the American Revolution group just did a grave marking ceremony at the Union Cemetery. And Union Cemetery is on, Branch Hill, Guinea Pike in Miami Township, and it is it had burials from, I believe, 1818 to 1884. So there definitely were people that, like, fought in the revolution and fought in French and Indian war and things like that. In those yes. So That's wild. Yeah. So those people are and then it's been active or inactive ever since. But it's talked about in that in that very same history book. And it talks about Miami Township and, keeping it beautiful and as along with its other cemeteries.
So, there are a whole list on our website. So I would encourage anybody to look at them. We've got, when we know it, a GPS location. If we've got a picture, if we have a if it's a public cemetery that's easy to go to, you'll see a picture of a sign, and then we'll have the address on there. So, some of them, we just have a a location. Back in the nineteen fifties, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Beech Forest chapter went around and recorded the what was the inscription on every tombstone of everyone they could find who died before 1900.
[00:52:31] Unknown:
Wow. So that was a huge major undertaking. But that is a big project. Imagine. So you went to every single headstone? They went to every headstone and wrote down what the inscription said. And Were there any do you know of any of the inscriptions? Were there any clues?
[00:52:45] Unknown:
Well, most of them had, like, the person's name Mhmm. And the date that they died. And then it would say, like, age eighty four years, four months, three days. Okay. And so then you have to calculate when they were born. Some of them had more detail. Some of them had the detail where the person came from. There are some in Clermont County. I don't remember which cemetery, but they're they're in German. Oh, really? Yes. That's kinda cool. Yeah. Very that's very cool. So that that's I think that's a really neat aspect of it. There was a social lodge. You you know, just like we have social media now. We had social lodges back then. And there was the independent order of Oddfellows.
So they had a lot of cemeteries that they took care of in their heyday. And they've since been turned over a lot of times to townships. But a lot of them one of the independent order of Oddfellows was to bury the dead. Okay. And that was their one of their goals, one of their tenants. So because of that, they had cemeteries throughout the county. And you'll see IOOF sometimes on the top of the cemetery. And that means that they were they took care of those, people that were buried there. So, that's that's another those are great old cemeteries. So I every township and every village, I believe, has at least one, two, three, public places where you can just go and walk around and and see the history. I mean, it's it's it's just amazing the history that you can find there. My parents have a a place in
[00:54:18] Unknown:
on a lake in Tennessee, and there's a nature preserve across the lake. And you can go there, and there's just these old cemeteries, and you can see, like, fought in the civil war. Yes. So Yes. And then again, you can find a list of this on the website. Right? You you can see the cemeteries, the actual burials.
[00:54:37] Unknown:
You, we have, like, 45,000 listed and there's way more than that. So But you can find the cemeteries that you can go to? You can find the cemeteries you can go to. Yes. It'll talk about that. And that's www.ccgs0h.org. C c, Clermont County, 0 h, Ohio. C g s, genealogical society. So that's that's the where website. Sometimes we'll have, Facebook pictures that we'll post for different gravestones or that sort of thing.
[00:55:06] Unknown:
So So outside of, graves Mhmm. You know, I I think everybody knows about Grant's house and things like that. Are there any other kind of historical places in the county that people might not know about that are really interesting? I'm glad you said that. I am on a committee in the county,
[00:55:22] Unknown:
which is, America two fifty, and it's being, spearheaded by Discover Clermont. And one of the things that they're putting together together is called the passport to museums. And so this passport is going to list all of the museums, and I believe there are 14 participating in this passport. So, for example, at Williamsburg, there is Harmony Hill, and that Harmony Hill Museum has a, land office that was recently reconstructed, rebuilt, but it's furnished in that period that where, William Lytle was, you doing all of his grant recording and his his survey recording and land records. So there's, Promont House in Milford. And again, I don't wanna you know, I want people to look and see because when you see these passports, they're gonna be distributed at all the Clermont County, libraries. Okay.
For It'll be it'll be like a password that you get to get to the And you can Anywhere. Yes. And you can and you can get a stamp, and it will tell you a description about each of these different, locations. There, there's the Bethel Historical Society and then the Clermont County Historical Society. So, again, lots of different places and different things you can research at everyone. The Clermont County Historical Society has a a great display of clay pipes and they're and also points, which when I was a kid, we call them arrowheads, but they have those. So and they have the different hours when each museum is open. So they're all over Clermont County, and they're just really great places to go. We have in our our collection, besides having the research type items, we have some maps people might be interested in looking at at the Clermont County Public Library. I love maps. Yeah. People like maps. Yeah. I really like maps. And so we have maps. We have, the, like, the WPA, the Work Progress Administration in it was, like, 1935 to '43, somewhere in that range.
They went around and, did plots of the cemeteries around Clermont County. So there's, like, a 40 that they did back that far ago. Yeah. So they have maps of those. We have a book with maps. And,
[00:57:34] Unknown:
how far back do your maps go? Just out of curiosity.
[00:57:37] Unknown:
Well, let's see that. Well, that's when that one was produced. We have one that we actually sell on our website, which is it's called an Indian Trails at More Roads map. Okay. So it says it's 18 o '5. But so and then but it would have those trails that would have been there at the time that were what the Native Americans would have used. We have a, set of all 14 townships, and I wanna say 1870 and in 1890, somewhere in that range. So those are some of the older township maps. And those township maps, they have it's a a map of every property owner and where their property was at that time in each township. Okay. So I think that's a really interesting one if you're looking at that time frame. So and, besides maps, we have a photo collection, and we're really pleased we received a grant from ConnectClairemont to, digitize our photo collection. It was donated in the nineteen nineties by a man named Richard Disney, and he donated it to Clermont County. And it's five volumes in at the Clermont County Public Library at Batavia branch.
And we are digitizing those because we only had them in the notebooks there that were the original pictures. Mhmm. So the pictures go in Clermont County from, like, 1885 to the nineteen nineties. What are what are some of your favorite pictures? I imagine The one. Well, the one that I thought was very cool, there was an 1885 train wreck. Okay. And I thought that's pretty cool. I think it was in Pierce Township. So each of the townships, there are a lot of old family barns, old family homes, teachers, a lot of teachers from the earlier days. Yeah. And, again, these were taken you you you can't just publish them on the website. You have to look at copyright. You you know, you're I think it's, like, I think we're up to about 1929 before that's in the public domain. After that, we can't publish things. But we're going to make it available to researchers once we get everything digitized.
If they email us, we're gonna put the index. So what the subjects of the pictures on our website. So then if someone wants to request a picture, we'll send it with a disclaimer. You can't publish this. Right. But here it is. If it's your family, my goodness. We want people to have a copy of it. Have you found old photographs of your own family? There were some of mine in that that collection. I have, families, Lindsay, and they weren't direct ancestors, but they were cousins. Okay. So they would have been, you know, cousins. So It must be kinda neat to see. It was. It was so neat going through and say, oh, I know that last name. I know that last name. So it was neat. Again Did you did you look at anybody and go like, oh, no. That's dad. Like, that looks just like that. I didn't have the opportunity to do that, but but they were definitely my my ancestors, my relatives. So it was very cool. But I think other people are gonna find that. And especially imagine if yours was, you know, if you had a great great grandma that was a teacher here at, you know, somewhere in,
[01:00:42] Unknown:
Olive Branch Mhmm. In the nineteen thirties. I just think that would be very cool to have. I've done that with my own family photos where it's you know, I think we have one of maybe my great great grandfather or something. And you look at him and I go, oh my gosh. That's my dad. That you did. Yeah. And me, by extension. Like, that looks exactly like me. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So what kind
[01:01:04] Unknown:
of how much time does it take to to really do a good genealogy of your family? I mean, I imagine it it takes a lot of work. Yeah. It does. You you and you you get out of it what you put into it just like anything else. And so sometimes, I'll go down a wrong path, and I'll think it was my family. It might be someone else with the same name. And we have so many times when a father named his children after his brother. So he might be John Smith. He named his son James Smith. Well, James Smith was his brother too. Yep. And you kind of put him in the right generation. And so you really have to look carefully at location and generation Yep. And, you know, every detail you can get about someone. So that takes a lot. And you can go down a wrong trail and be really messed up. I'm sure sometimes it's not it's not that bad to go down a wrong trail. Because imagine it's still interesting. It's still it's still fun. And you still wanna look at the
[01:02:00] Unknown:
the history of that time. And, again, that's that's what really makes it interesting to me is that extra history that, you know, the what what you hear, what you find. Yeah. I know in my family. So I'm my first name is technically John. Uh-huh. My father's first name is John. We have different middle names. Uh-huh. The my mother always tells a story when they got married. She just put John Ventarello on the wedding invitation, and she said and my dad told her, no. You you can't do that. There's so many Johns. You have to put my middle name Right. Or else nobody's gonna know what John this is. Right. It's it's just funny how and my son is now John Dominic. Yeah. Yeah. See that? And that's that's your family pattern for naming. And once you find that pattern, though, you can find other you know, that's a clue to go back a generation that you may not know who that generation was. You start looking for that. The kind of patterns are, like, lead to success in genealogy? Because imagine it is a lot of noticing patterns and It is. It is. It's,
[01:02:58] Unknown:
like, a lot of it is the other family members, acquaintances, and neighbors that are in the same area, like we talked about a few minutes ago. It's it's knowing who because they came in groups together. Sometimes many families would come together, Or you would see someone come from a certain area of, let's say, in Hamilton County, from a certain area of Germany, and you'll see a whole group of people from that same area back in Germany. So you that that come and settle. So they they didn't come all at the same time. They came in waves, but they came obviously because somebody wrote them a letter and said, come here. This is a great place. So so those patterns, trying to think other family again, you'll see a lot of times where, a child will be named, like, John Stephen Smith. Not not Stephen, but Stevens.
Well, Stevens could well have been his mother's maiden name. Oh, yeah. So that's a good clue too. Location names, you know, again, we we talked about John O'Bannon. And so, you know, O'Bannon's in that area. There's a very good chance they might have come from John O'Bannon. I would certainly look at his family if he didn't have a clue Right. Where else to look. So place names do kinda make a difference too. What kind of the opposite side of that coin, what are some common mistakes that people typically make when they're doing genealogical research? The worst thing you can do is just copy.
You you say, okay. I'm a DNA match to this person, and I'm just gonna copy this whole branch of their tree. Because there are a lot of nuances to DNA matches. And whether it's your fourth cousin or your third cousin or your second cousin once removed, Believe it or not, if you just copy a whole branch, you're probably copying a whole lot of wrong information. So you need to do your research before you copy a whole bunch of other people's
[01:05:02] Unknown:
great research. Because their research might be right, and your research to a point might be right, but that doesn't mean you're connecting the two properly. Okay. So you gotta cross reference. You really you really need to do your 23 and me. Like, I'm good. I know exactly everything that's going on. Everybody
[01:05:18] Unknown:
no. You can't do that. You really need to do your genealogy step by step research. And, you know, sometimes you might be able to fudge. You might be able to jump a generation, but usually, you really wanna know who's this one's parent is and who's this one's parent is. If you do DNA, you might wanna be prepared to find surprises too. Because sometimes we have surprises because, there might be someone on a sentence that it says he's your son, that their son. Mhmm. But really, he wasn't. He was a neighbor and their and his parents died. And they just kind of adopted. And they adopted it, but there was no official adoption until, you know, more recent. Where else to go. Exactly. We were friends. Exactly. And they they gave them they the family said, well, we're just gonna give you our last name and or whoever filled out the census, like, it could be the, you know, the census taker said, oh, well, he's, you know, one of the Smith kids, so we'll put him down as, you know, Tom Smith, but really, he's Tom Jones. Right.
So those, that can be confusing, but it also can be a clue if it's like this doesn't you don't match anybody else past this certain generation. You're you're probably gonna look at someone who maybe, you know, lived close or, again, came from could have even been come out on an orphan train. You know, you have we had a,
[01:06:42] Unknown:
speaker that talked about the orphan trains, and that was really interesting. Yeah. Like, I know what an orphan train is. I have no idea what an orphan train is.
[01:06:48] Unknown:
They were in orphanage orphanages in the East, and they were, becoming overcrowded. And so the people at West, said, well, come here and you can live on my farm. Well, they also worked on their farm too, usually. Kinda like a hen of Green Gables type thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We need somebody to Yeah. Smoke the cows. So So come on out. And, you know, sometimes they were you know, it was a childless couple. And so so they were displaced and people from DNA have found that their ancestors were they trace them back to New York City or some place out east, and then they find them suddenly almost
[01:07:27] Unknown:
transported to Kansas. Well, they were. Yeah. They were literally put on a train to Kansas. They were. Yeah. So I didn't know they did that. That's kinda I mean, it makes sense. Yeah. You know, certainly. Well, that's why we Yeah. I imagine there's tragedies when successes with Oh, yes.
[01:07:41] Unknown:
Yes. And and, you know, I I don't have any of those stories, but I found it so interesting. And I and imagine if you have a family that that's part of your story, you're gonna become an expert in that area. So then just again, do they just keep connect you just connect to those Well, like you said, it's kind of a puzzle. Like, it's a you gotta be a sleuth and you gotta It is. Go back to the records. It it yeah. It is. It is. I had a lot of fun. I did a project with, my cousin, John, and we worked together because we it's a lot easier when you've got two people's DNA than just one. So I had my mother's and she was his first cousin. When we united the DNA, we found more matches together, And then we were able to look and say, okay. Because we had one, there were records.
One place said her last name was Flannery. One place said was Flam Youth. It it was like so many different last names. We had no idea. Well, by the time when we finally figured out all the matches together with other and Slammuth was f l a m m u t h. We traced her back to Germany to her hometown. And once you this was in '18, I think, '39 or so. She was born in Germany. But that was because of being able to use his DNA, my DNA, and then other people who really knew their ancestry. And usually, it was the male line that we were able to match with, and and then we were able to find that last name. But it But it's probably a little easier with the male line because the name stays more consistent. Yeah. But I love, the German records that I've, had to the the fortune the good fortune to search through because they started in, like, the
[01:09:18] Unknown:
fifteen, sixteen hundreds from through the church. I was gonna ask you because, you know, there's a lot of Germans. So once you get back Yes. Here's one of my families. How do you get over the ocean? Yeah. Well, when you once you get across there, which we were when you're able to find a hometown in Germany, they stayed put a lot of the time because they were I imagine some families in Europe that have been there for probably thousands of years.
[01:09:42] Unknown:
Mine were poor, and so they were not slaves, but they might as well have been Serves. I mean, they were tied to the land. You know, it's funny whenever you hear somebody, you know, like, oh, in a past life, you were a prince or something like no. No. You were probably a servant. Yeah. Mine were servants. You were probably some guy that just, like, baked bread or something. That's probably who you were. Exactly. Yeah. So, but when you get there, the the family stayed there for so long, you know, that you get generation after generation. And then in the baptism records, clear back that 1516, '17 hundreds, they were naming the parents and the grandparents and the godparents. And so you get just
[01:10:20] Unknown:
so many names on God record. Know those those baptism records, they still keep them. Yes. We when we got married, we actually I had to go back because I was born in Columbus. I had to go to the parish in Columbus and get my baptismal records. Uh-huh. So I imagine that's probably pretty fruitful for Virginia. Very, very, very. And so mine were mostly Lutheran, but sometimes then you would lose track of one. You're like, where'd this one go? Well, they might have married someone who's Catholic. Yeah. And then you have to switch over and find the Catholic record. So it was really interesting. It was unusual, but it Yeah. I imagine, especially in the fifteen hundreds, I imagine. Yeah. I can't remember when the reformation was, but Yeah. That's I imagine there wasn't too much, like, oh, I'll just go be Lutheran now. Oh. No. No. Not so much. Oh, that's not what happens in the fifteen hundreds. Not so much. Not so much. A little more common today. Right. Right. Right. Right.
[01:11:10] Unknown:
So, anyway, those are those are great records when you can, you know, work on that project. But, again, if we hadn't had DNA to get that name and then when you got the uncommon name and you found the town, then the records went
[01:11:24] Unknown:
back, back, back, back, back. So So I know you talked a little bit about your favorite history book. If people are interested in just the history of Clermont or Mhmm. Genealogy or anything. Mhmm. What what are some of the books that you would recommend to people to Well to check out and read? We have,
[01:11:39] Unknown:
I'd almost call them the Reader's Digest version. We have collections of, stories that were submitted by Clermont County Genealogists. We had a an eight a 1980 collection and a 1990 collection. And, again, this isn't a super big long collection, each one of them. Mhmm. But your family name might very well be in there. And then there's a story. It might go on for a page, a half page, two, three pages about many different families. If there are pictures, we have pictures in there. So those two are ones that we have on our website today, and you can find them at any library. So at any And you can check them out. Right? No. No. You cannot. Okay. Most of our things are non lending. They're reference I wasn't sure if that was They're reference. But you can buy the ones too. If you if you find your family, you know, then it might be worth buying a book that's got your family name in it. So that's pretty cool. We have marriage records. Even though those marriage records were written, there's, a lot of detail, that are they ours go from, like, the 1800 to 1875.
That, again, we have the genealogical society did they used to do what we call indexes. The way that, genealogist work has changed tremendously over the year. We used to do books and books were the most common. Now you tend to find things online digitally. So you've got those digital collections. So the same thing that that history book that was written in 1880, you can find every word of it online for free. Oh, okay. So they're all so most and so, again, you're looking in that it's in public domain. So most of the time, different colleges, if you look around for your own, area where county where you're from, if there's a county history book, it's likely digitized, and you can just read it online. Or you can, you know, get the book at the library too. So, again, that's one of my favorites. There's one that was written in 1913.
That's the history of Clermont and Brown County where they kinda married the two together. Because, again, they were when they were originally settled, they were together. Right. So you'll find that one. That's a good one too. And, again, that's now in public domain. So there are so many things, again, you can find. And we have all the links to the, different, museums are on our website. There's a section a tab that's called research resources. One of them has Clermont County links. And so so you'll see the link to that history book is in those Clermont County links. The links to the different museums are in that Clermont County links. So you have a lot of different, places where you can do research or in those Clermont County links, and those are all public on our website.
We do have some paid sections of our website. The detailed burials, all the headstones that we have and inscriptions that we have, those you have to pay for your membership, which is $17 a year. It's not it's not a real expense. It's certainly not gonna break the bank. It's not gonna break the bank. But, again, if you go to the Batavia library, she'll log you in and you can do it all for free. The library has a lot of great online, so the family search, I would encourage everybody to have a family search account because that's free. Okay. And, ancestry is a paid account. But, again, the library has a subscription, So you can go log in and use the library's ancestry, information and so you don't have to pay for the account.
So and, we have the Ohio Genealogical Society, which has all they have several digital resources from each of the 88 counties in Ohio. Okay. And, again, you can go there into the Batavia library, and they will log you in to look at that as well. So, you know, again, that's a there's a paid membership to go with it. But if you don't have that paid membership, don't wanna pay for the membership, just wanna see what's there, at least you could go to the library and log on to one of their computers and the librarians will help you. They're really, really great at the Batavia branch library. There are several that specialize in genealogy there.
[01:15:40] Unknown:
So you mentioned the Ohio, Genealogical Society. Mhmm. I did wanna ask how the Clermont Genealogical Society kinda plays in
[01:15:48] Unknown:
what kind of role it plays in the larger Sure. We're we're considered a chapter of the Ohio Genealogical society, which means they can refer things to us. We can refer things back to them. We don't have a, you know, we don't pay them anything. They don't pay us anything. There's no they're both nonprofit organizations, but we certainly can have them as a resource, which is really wonderful. They're really great with that. The other thing is we have a lot of, we have a membership of the National Genealogical Society. Okay. And that one, you know, I'm not as familiar with because I don't do as much work with them. But that's another important and individuals can have memberships to both of those as well.
We have a lot of partnerships, like, again, the Clermont County Historical Society, we work really closely together. So we have our meetings on at the Batavia Library on the first Saturday of the month from one to three. And the historical society has theirs on the third Saturday of the month from one to three. And sometimes the programs for the two, their people are interested in both places, and they're all free to attend. So you're always welcome. Everyone's public's always welcome to attend our meetings. Oh, cool. So so just as a Anybody can come in. Nice. Yeah. It's always open. It's not just members. It's anybody come in. And then if you have questions, that's a good time to ask questions. We have a lot of people there before and after the meetings. As you can imagine, if you've been researching in Clermont County for thirty years, you might be able to help point somebody in the right direction to find a record they're looking for.
[01:17:26] Unknown:
So you meant if we can kinda switch gears a little bit. Sure. You mentioned the Daughters of the Revolution. Yeah. And I'm sorry to say I've heard of the name, but I don't know much about it. Do you wanna talk a little bit about the Daughters of the Revolution or what they do?
[01:17:39] Unknown:
I'm in the Clef Valley chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and that means that I can trace my lineage back to someone who fought in the American Revolution. Okay. Now, again, I've I've gotta say I'm pretty pleased because I've got my Jesse Swann from Clermont County. I also have Nathaniel Dunham from Clermont County, Isaac Ferguson. You know? So so I've got those folks that are Clermont County ties as well. I kept saying when I was researching, I was never gonna get out of Clermont County with my research. But, anyway, the the Daughters of the American Revolution, it, they're a service organization. Okay. And again, a woman has to trace her lineage back to someone who served in the American Revolution. That might be someone who fought or someone who might have been a woman who raised, food for the troops Okay. Might have been a taxpayer, someone who paid taxes at, you know, at the time of the American revolution to support the troops could have been someone who served in office. Okay. And, again, we our our important goals are to make sure we foster historic preservation, patriotism, and education. So you can see how that does kind of follow along Yeah. With a genealogical
[01:18:50] Unknown:
society. Imagine if you've done all the work to prove that Yeah. You have an ancestor in the revolutionary war, your next step is like, well, hey. Here I am. Yes. Might as well just join the school.
[01:18:59] Unknown:
It is. And and it's but it's, we have a lot of different areas. We do a lot with literacy, and we have, different schools that we help. We have, a lot that we do with, veterans and with, active military. Again, it's a service organization. And, again, we have programs monthly to the at Cleft Valley. And in Cleft Valley is, includes, like, Anderson Township and, different parts of Cincinnati. The members can really be from anywhere, but we have a lot of Clermont County members at Clough Valley. So, we just did a grave marking ceremony of a revolutionary war soldier Isaac South who came here from New Jersey. He was one of the guys who had to buy his land. Oh, poor guy. Buy it for a dollar an acre. Yeah. But I'm not crying for him too much. Say when he left New Jersey, he had eleven and three quarters acres. He got came to Miami Township in 1817, and he bought a 40 acres. And he died in 1826, and he left his kids 600 acres.
So Wow. He added in, you know, just Sounds like he did well for himself. He did well for himself here. Yeah. So Are there
[01:20:08] Unknown:
this question just popped in my head. Are there people who can trace the roots back to the, like, the founding of Clermont County who still own that same land?
[01:20:18] Unknown:
Now that's a good question. I don't know of any, but I bet money there are. Okay.
[01:20:24] Unknown:
Who are the big predominant names that own Oh my goodness. You know that?
[01:20:28] Unknown:
There are so many. I worked a lot on the the cemetery project. We updated it from, having pictures on, c old CDs Okay. To a database to go on our website. So, golly, there are names, that just keep let's see. Well, I have to some of my own are Lindsay, Ferguson, Snyder, but you've got Lytle. You've got oh, gosh. There are just so many. Each township has its own, folks that were really important in the township. Right. Washburn, that's another I mean, they're just names. There's so many of them. But if you look in that history of Clermont County book, every township is listed separately.
So then you get an idea of the families that were there from the beginning and they had large, large acres of land. Yeah. I think of another grave marking ceremony we did was, Thomas Paxton. He was a real important person. We have, well, really, you've got, you know, Ulysses s Grant's family was he was born in Point Pleasant. You've got, trying to think, governor Pattison was born in Milford. So, you know, you just I just recently realized that he he was a governor. Right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And then so I drove by Pattison Park. After I learned that, I'm like, oh, well, that makes That makes sense now. Park. Uh-huh. And and you'll again, a lot of those old family places, that's where the names came from. Yeah. So there's still O'Bannon Creek. There's, you know, so many of the creeks were named after the earth. That's gonna be a cool thing to to to look back at the genealogy Yes. And then go back to the familiar places that and it's like Old O'Bannon Creek, Watson Park. And I can't tell you the number of people that come here from out west and visit where their family was back here when it was the frontier. Yeah. They're just as thrilled as us as those of us who live here right now. They're they're just as happy to see where their ancestors were Yeah. As what, you know, is what we are as as we are proud of them here now. Yeah. So because imagine some people this was just a way station almost. It was. Well, and it's the same thing if you had your hundred acres and you had 10 kids.
Well, they didn't really wanna settle for 10 acres when they could go out west and get A hundred. A hundred for their own. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you had maybe the older couple, you know, maybe the the daughters might have stayed because they married and the older son might have stayed. But then you had some that moved on west so they could get their own property and their own land. That must have been a really wild time. Just the whole land of the best destiny and Wouldn't it have been Yeah. Just very cool. Yeah. Like you said, it would have been really it'd be fun to go back
[01:23:07] Unknown:
if you had if it was just like a television screen or something like a bubble. Like, I don't I don't wanna fight Indians. I don't wanna I I think I would have been eaten by wolves for sure. Yeah. I mean, again, it's like a like you said, we talked about in the beginning. It's just especially, like, you talk about Pennsylvania when you drive through those hills.
[01:23:25] Unknown:
Allegheny Mountains. There it is. Allegheny Mountains. Finally. There it is. Goodness sakes. Sorry. I know I studied geology, and we went there on field trips. Yeah. I know I should know the name of those. Yeah. Well, but, you know, but but then they came down to Pittsburgh, and that's when they Yeah. Got on the river and came on west. But, oh, I was gonna smack myself in the head for not remembering Allegheny. But, no, you you you look at that wilderness, and it's Yeah. You know, from a car window, it it just looks like pretty mountains. But then you get into them. Oh, man. How would you have liked to have climbed those? And most of the time, the wagons were not for riding in. The wagons were for carrying your stuff and you walked behind the wagons.
[01:24:05] Unknown:
You didn't get Imagine a a wagon in mountains. Yeah. I mean, like like I said before, it was tough enough with a car, four wheel drive. And how many times they would have broken the axle and the wheel? Oh. Yeah. It's really And I mean, I imagine a lot of times if you break an axle or wheel, that's kinda game over. It's either you figure out how to survive where you are or you get eaten by wolves. Uh-huh. You better hope you have a carpenter with you. Yeah. Exactly.
[01:24:29] Unknown:
Which is, you know, obviously, probably why people came out in waves. The Coopers. Just one person. That's right. That's right. Coopers. I actually know what a Cooper is. Coopers and a lot of, the well, the mills, those are the most important, you know, because you had to feed whether you ground corn for corn meal or whether you ground your wheat for flour, you had to eat. So the mills were important. Tanneries Yeah. Those were important. And, you know, glass making. Believe it or not, glass making was important along the Ohio. So later and, you know, earlier, I'm sure they I mean, they didn't have glass for their windows, but later they did. So We even glass for just
[01:25:04] Unknown:
things. I mean, not just windows. I mean, I think people I think people probably take a lot of things for granted. Yeah. You know, glass being one of them. Yeah. You know, you can go to the grocery store, get a Yeah. Glass mug or something. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, a hundred years ago, somebody had to blow glass like that. There's a reality show on Netflix and my wife and I watch it about glass blowing. Uh-huh. It's hard work. Yeah. And tanneries, I mean Yeah. I don't know firsthand what they smell like. Yeah. I don't think they smell great. No. I haven't. And I mean, there's some nasty chemicals that you have to use. Yeah. It's just that life was just rough. We had, when you think about there were a lot of, ferries. Because you you you know, you couldn't travel seven miles to get to a bridge.
[01:25:49] Unknown:
You know, so there were ferries every couple miles. So there were more people, especially between, you know, Ohio, Kentucky back and forth. The other thing we haven't really touched on at all, but when you talked about history, so I do wanna mention this, is what a fantastic place Clermont County was for underground railroad stops. Oh, I yes. I I almost forgot to Yeah. And I I I have one that I keep thinking, oh, maybe he was part of the, you know, one of the abolitionists, but I haven't been able to prove it. So but that would be a very cool ancestor to have that was responsible for that. And and that would just be very, very cool. Did a lot
[01:26:25] Unknown:
of I mean, I I know this was a very prominent stop on the underground railroad. Mhmm. Were there a lot of African Americans that just
[01:26:33] Unknown:
stayed? Yes. There were because they were welcoming to that, community. And there were, you know, they they came and, so when they were leaving if they were leaving somewhere in Kentucky and they were running away, they probably couldn't stop. But yet, sometimes they were hiding in plain sight because they they were absorbed in the free community that was here a little bit further north, not right across the river necessarily. But there were some, but and so, you know, it and it was a welcoming area because, again, you know, the abolitionists, they weren't not everybody lived here were abolitionists, of course. Right. I mean, obviously, not everybody was happy about it. Right. But there were enough that there were enough welcoming that there were,
[01:27:16] Unknown:
African American communities that early on. So yes. Did they tend to congregate in specific towns? Or
[01:27:23] Unknown:
from what I have seen, yes. They're they tend to be intended to be together in certain areas. Yes. Okay. Yes. There are some, black cemeteries in Clermont County, a couple of those. Okay. So they tended to be, again, buried together or they would be, again, in a different section of the cemetery. It was segregated
[01:27:41] Unknown:
still, you know, very much. I mean, it I know there's a rich history of abolitionism in in Clermont County, but it was still eight hundreds. Yes. It wasn't like today where it's very No. Very No. Egalitarian. No. Yeah. I think I'm officially out of question. Okay. Good. I'm officially out of talking. Okay. But before before we end it, why don't you just, again, tell people how they can get involved with the genealogical society. Sure.
[01:28:11] Unknown:
Plug anything you'd like to plug. Okay. Great. Because we would love to help anybody. We'd really like to see some younger folks get involved. If we have any scout groups or four h groups that need help, we've offered some help there, and we'd be happy to help with that. Any kids that have any interest, we would come and speak to the group. Okay. Again, our website has a lot of research resources, research and research information, has anything that we sell in our store, online. And, again, we have our meetings, which we'd love to have more people come and attend. And we have Where do you have the meetings? The meetings are at the Batavia branch of the Clermont County Public Library Okay. In their meeting room, one to three on the first Saturday of the month.
And we also have meetings via Zoom. So we have about 200 members, and half of our members live outside of the Tri State area. So they can't come here. So since the pandemic, we have been doing our meetings via Zoom. So even if you wanna tune in and listen to whatever or watch whatever we're doing and participate, you can have your pajamas on and don't turn your video on and and join us via Zoom for our meetings. And we'd be happy to send you an invitation. If you're a member, you automatically get an a Zoom invitation to our our different, topics.
So just if you find something, our events are all on our our website. Do you have a newsletter? We do. We have a quarterly newsletter, and we send that out to members. Okay. But we also have it available at the library. So if you wanna see any of those copies there at at our Batavia branch library as well. We also the lineage societies are something if you're interested in. We have, like, the first families. We also have settlers and builders, which are 18 20 to eighteen sixty settlers. And then we have our more fluid one that's Century Families. So if your family has been in Clermont County for a hundred years, you're eligible for our Century Family application, and then you get a pretty pin, and we honor you at our heritage day luncheon in September. And we also have, civil war families. So anyone who can trace their ancestor back to someone who fought in the civil war and and has an affiliation with Clermont County.
We also have that lineage society as well. So we also have a Facebook page. So look for Clermont County Genealogical Society, and you'll find us on Facebook. And, again, I think that probably oh, we have actually, this is just kind of a different thing. We have, our officers can be outside of the Clermont County area. So if anyone has any desire to volunteer, we sometimes have, projects that can be done as a volunteer from outside of the area because you can do it on the computer. Okay. So we we have lots of volunteers who can, again, be anywhere in The United States, and we'd be happy to have them their help. Awesome.
[01:31:06] Unknown:
Well, like like I said in the when I met you, thank you so much for doing this. You're welcome. I enjoyed it. I'm guided too. I've I've enjoyed it, you know. I've enjoyed every single person I've talked to. Yeah. I told my wife, Katie, you know, eventually, I'm sure I'll get a bad interview, but so far, everything's been great. Oh, good. Good. So good. So thanks again, and, we'll call it a successful podcast. Alright. Thank you so much, Patrick.
[01:31:29] Unknown:
Well, get
[01:31:33] Unknown:
this off. Well, thanks again to Paige for sitting down with me. Again, something I always say that we'll have to have her back on, and I think we will. Because, you know, like I said earlier, I really enjoyed learning about the history of of of where I live. So thanks again to Paige, and let's get on to some events going on around the county. We have the River Days Festival. That's gonna be Thursday, May 22 through Saturday, May 24, Front Street in Richmond, Ohio. And it's just a multi day festival, and it's got carnival rides and live entertainment. There'll be food and craft booths and family friendly activities. So it it should be just a a really a really good small town festival. So if if you're looking for something to do, the twenty second through the twenty fourth, I'd head up over there.
We've got cooking with cicadas. We're in a cicada year. I know my daughter is collecting them at an alarming rate. Apparently, they don't scare her, which is remarkable. But cooking with cicadas, because it's gonna be Friday, May 23, this Friday, from 06:30PM to 07:30PM at Clingman Park. It's just a short hike and then you get to eat cicadas. They'll have precooked cicadas and you can, experiment with some different seasonings and toppings to find find the ones you like. I talked about this in last podcast, but, Kay Skiff at the parks department said she was gonna eat one. So if you go to that, make sure you hold her hold her to that promise.
Oh, boy. We've got this this word I cannot pronounce. It's flower pounding tatakizomi. Man, that's a tough one. And, anyway, that's a Saturday, the twenty fourth from two to 03:30PM at Clingman Park. And it's it's gonna teach you how to do the Japanese art of ta oh, man. Tata kizomi. So what you do is you dye things by taking a hammer and a flower, and you pound on the flower, and it'll dye whatever it is you wanna dye. So you'll you'll get to do that, with your own handkerchief, and you'll also learn how to identify some some common flowers. So, if that sounds interesting to you, I'd head over to Clingman Park on Saturday.
The Clermont County Library's night out at the park. Let's go creaking. That's gonna be May 27, from 06:30PM to 08:30PM at Sycamore Park in Batavia. So this sounds really fun. You're you're gonna start with some stories from the Dream Weavers troop. And as a quick aside, if anybody knows how to get in touch with the Dreamweaver's Troupe, I'd I think it'd be fun to interview them. They sound like an interesting organization that just, an organization of storytellers. But any event, this, this let's go creaking, we'll start with some stories from them, and then you get to have a hands on creek exploration and a and a meet and greet with a turtle, which I know my daughter would absolutely love.
They tell you to bring a picnic basket and, dress for the splash zone, so it sounds like, people are gonna be getting wet during that. Another creek themed event, Creek Days at the Park. It's gonna be 05/30/2025, from 01:00PM to 03:00PM, at Sycamore Park in Batavia. And this is for all ages. This isn't just for kids. And you'll get to wait in the creek with and, there'll be a naturalist there to, tell you about, the creek geology and some wildlife. They do say or ask that you wear some sturdy close toed shoes, and I think I saw maybe even rain boots. So so you're gonna get probably wet and muddy, stomping around the creek, but I think that that sounds fun to me. I like creeks.
We have heritage crafts, DIY upcycled flowers. It's gonna be on the May 31 from 1PM to 04:30PM at 2156 State Route 50 Batavia, Ohio. I'm sorry, US 50, Batavia, Ohio. It'll be on 50. And this is, an event that's guided by an artist called Adrian Hawk, and you transform recycled materials into floral arrangements. There's two time slots, and you need to preregister if you're interested in that. We have National Trails Day on June 7. That's gonna be from 9AM to 1PM at Afton Zager Road in Batavia. And the the, Clermont County Parks Department will be there, East Fork State Park, and Friends of East Fork, and they're gonna celebrate their their hiking and biking trail. And there'll be booze along the trail at the campground, and, there's the overlook, is gonna feature some fun activities and information too.
We have another knee high naturalist, for June called colors of nature. I really like these knee high naturalist events. They seem really cool. We have to take our our daughter and our son there. But that's gonna be on June 7, from 10AM to 11AM. And that's gonna be a Shore Park in Milford. It's free. It's preschool focused, so it's, you you know, three to five year olds, and they're gonna read and craft and explore nature's colors. And then there's gonna be an optional play and discovery period afterwards. So, if you're looking for something to do with your kids on June 7, that sounds like a pretty good way to spend some time.
So that's all we have for events, and we'll kinda we'll close this out with, you know, another pitch to to hear from you. You know, like I said in the beginning, we're trying to do value for value. So if you, get some value from this show, we'd love it if you sent some value back in the form of time, talent, or treasure. And, again, if you wanna email us and send us money, we'll figure out a way to do that. But talent and, and time are just as important, if not more. So get in touch with us. Let us know what's going on in your neck of the woods and what we should be doing. And and, you know, if I'm doing something wrong, let me know.
And again, you can, you can get to us on Facebook at Let's Talk Clermont podcast. You can also email us at info@let'stalkclermont.com. Info at let's talk clermontdot com. So, I'm gonna try something new. Okay. This is a a podcast for new things, I think. So I'm gonna, close out try to start closing out all of our episodes with a little bit of olive wisdom. Olive Olivia is my five year old girl, and, you know, I'm sure most fathers say this about their children that, you know, they just say, you know, funny crazy things, but I genuinely think she does. So here's your olive wisdom for the day. I was putting her to bed, a couple days ago, and she said she was scared of of giraffes.
And I asked her why she was scared of giraffes, And she said, I quote, I know mouths are for eating and bums are for pooping and tails are for wagging, but why are their necks so long and why do they have pointy ears like raccoons? And I, I don't know why they have pointy ears like raccoons, but if you do, please let me know so we can let Olive know. Thanks again for listening, and, we'll see you next time.
We've been living in sin so long. All Hello, and welcome. This is the eighth episode of Let's Talk Clermont. As always, we appreciate you listening. We're gonna do something a little bit different for this podcast as I was, you know, googling around like I normally do looking for interesting news stories or things going on, up in Columbus at the State House. I didn't really find I didn't really find anything too interesting. And I realized we're getting a lot of new the podcast has been doing well, so we've been getting a lot of, new listeners. And when I sent this the podcast to someone, they got a little confused when they didn't immediately hear an interview. So I thought it'd be good to, you know, welcome you if you're new, and just kind of go back to basics and let you know who we are, what we're doing, and what you can expect from this podcast.
So my name is Patrick Ventarello. A lot of people call me Pappy. And when I say a lot of people, I mean, like, teachers in high school thought my name was Pappy. So if ever I interview somebody who who knows me well, you'll hear them probably hear them call me call me Pappy. I for work, I I work in marketing, specifically content marketing, and I freelance. And what that means is is I do a lot of writing for a lot of different people. I do some search engine optimization stuff. I do some strategy, but it's it's mostly a lot of writing, which I love because I love to write.
So, why are why did I do this podcast? Why are we here? There seems to be a real lack of good information, news for local markets, essentially. Over the years, larger, media organizations have gobbled up local newspapers and radio stations and things like that. So it's it's really tough to find good information about what's going on in in your locality, in the in the county or in your township or your municipality. So that's that's what we're trying to do here. And we're also trying to to, you know, meet interesting people doing interesting things around the county. And I've said it before and I I say it a lot.
I I really firmly believe that if we all want to live in a better world, then we have to know what's going in our backyard. And I'm I'm trying to do this so you can know, what's going on in your backyard. So what can you expect from these podcasts? And I've structured them and it's all subject to change because I'm still figuring this out. In the beginning, for maybe ten, fifteen minutes, we go over news. We go over what's going on in the county, what's going on in townships, municipalities. We look a lot at developments because they're, you know, we're growing And, I'm concerned about development. I think it's great to develop, but I I want it done in the right way.
And so we'll we'll talk about stuff like that. And then we get to the interview. And it's just gonna be, you know, eventually, I'd like to talk to village council members or county commissioners or, you know, people like that. But outside of that, we're just finding interesting people doing interesting stuff. That's that's pretty much it. And we put episodes out every Thursday, and you can follow us, on our Facebook page, Let's Talk Clermont, podcast. But we're also on all podcast apps. You can find us on Apple Podcasts. You can find us on Spotify, Amazon. We're we're pretty much if you've got a favorite, podcast app, then we're probably on it. So you can follow us there.
And I talked about this a little bit in the last episode, but we're trying to do a value for value model with this podcast. So what that means is is if you find if you get value from this show, all we ask is that you give us a little value back, and that can be in the form of time, talent, or treasure. So, you know, if you wanna give us money, that's great. You can email us and we'll figure out a way to do that. I'm certainly not gonna say no to that. But talent and treasure are just as important, if not more important. If there's something you can do that can make the podcast better, please let me know. And similarly, if you have information or you know people we should be talking to, or I haven't been talking about something and you think I should, or I've been doing something wrong and you wanna tell me about it, let us know.
Like I said, we've got that Facebook page. You can also email us at info@let'stalkclermont.com. So that's that's all we've really got for the the preamble. I did want to give you a pork chop update because I, I got that pork chop last week from Sarah Eisen at Flourish in Rome, from one of their Berkshire hogs. And I have to tell you, it's pretty amazing. And nobody's paying me to say that. It's it was a really amazing pork chop, and I would highly recommend. I'm sure all of their meat is delicious, but, man, probably the best pork chop I've ever had in my life. So if you're looking for some some good pork, I would definitely check out Flourish in Rome and see what they have to offer.
Alright. So let's talk about, our interview today. It's with Paige Craig from the Genie, Clermont Genealogical Society. Again, I always say this and I always mean it. It was a great interview. We talk a lot about genealogy and how to do genealogy. We talk a little bit about the history of of Clermont County. And I, you know, I I really think it's interesting to learn about, you know, just the history of where where you live. And she was able to give me a lot of names of people that I'm hoping to get on, and we'll talk more about, the history of our county.
So it was a great, great interview, and I really hope you enjoy it. So we are we are recording. Okay. And I always like to start everything with just tell us who you are and and what you do. Sure.
[00:06:23] Unknown:
My name is Paige Craig, and I am the president of the Clermont County Genealogical Society. And the genealogical society, probably the best thing to do is to start with the mission. Mhmm. And it is to collect, protect, and preserve the records of Clermont County's past residents that their stories and family histories can be shared with this and all future generations.
[00:06:52] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:06:53] Unknown:
So that's a a good in a nutshell. We're a five zero one c three organization. We're completely volunteer led. We have a board of 14 volunteers, and a lot of those volunteers have specialty jobs that they do for the society. So some of them, I'm gonna highlight a few of the jobs, I think, because they're really important to our members. Not that all the trustees aren't, but some of the jobs are particularly helpful. We have a librarian, and her name is Marcia. And Marcia makes sure that all of our collection at the which is housed at the Clermont County Public Library at the Batavia branch, Make sure that it's managed, curated, kept ready, and waiting for the public. It's, non lending materials.
We have about 1,700 titles there that belong to the society. But again, they're at the Batavia Branch Library, so they're open to the public all the hours that the library is open. Okay. On top of the 1,700, those have, like, local history. They have some places where our ancestors here in Clement County might have come from. So you'll find immigration from New Jersey and Maryland and Virginia and all over. And then you'll also find just general genealogy topics, anything you'd want to look for as a a new or an experienced genealogist and how to do some of the research. Then on top of that, we have 500 family notebooks. And the family notebooks are pretty cool because they've been donated over the years by genealogists who are local to Clermont County. So they've researched their family, and then they have written their stories and put that in our library. So they're not published works and they're amateur genealogists, but boy, there are some interesting stories in there. So it's literally like a workbook that somebody did. Exactly.
Exactly. And the stories are just really great. Where they came from when they came to Clermont County, where they moved to. One of the things Clermont County and this whole Southwest Ohio area is kind of known as as being the crossroads of the nation because we were the Western frontier in the late seventeen hundreds and early eighteen hundreds. And then a lot of times, our families, decided they wanted to have a little more elbow room and they moved a little further west. Mhmm. So we're kind of the crossroads here in in the Midwest. We also have, I think, like, seven or eight file cabinets full of family files. Same thing.
People over the years have donated all that great material as they have found something that was really cool and interesting to them. They've donated that, and then we've put it in files that are alphabetical order by surname. And so, again, if you're looking at your surname from Clermont County, you can go look at our surname files and see if there's any information that might help you in your genealogy quest.
[00:10:09] Unknown:
I'm sorry. How far back do these do these, records go? We were founded in 1977.
[00:10:15] Unknown:
So nearly fifty years, the society has been, collecting and protecting all those different pieces of information. We have bible records. We have a photograph collection, which I'll talk a little bit about more if that's okay. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Projects when we get a little further into things. Yeah. So that's just Marsha's job to take care of those things along with all the rest of us. But then we also have an archives, which is housed at the Clermont County Records Center. And we have an archivist, Judith, and she takes care of the there are over a 30 boxes of records at the archives.
And the cool thing about them, a lot of them are, again, the same type of, histories, but a lot of our our books at the library might be old out of print. Well, for genealogy, it doesn't matter how old. Right. That's always I imagine sometimes the older the better. Exactly. Exactly. Because they might be rare and out of print books, you won't find anywhere else. Yeah. I just Out of print books are impossible to find. They are. So if we have a duplicate copy, we can put it at the archives, so we've got a backup. And it's also in an off-site location.
God forbid there was ever any kind of a disaster, but, you know, you like to have a backup of all of the things in your collection. And Yeah. So that's part of that. And then there are other things that are very, fragile that are really not able to be out in the public. So those can be we can make an appointment with our archivist and go and see those items too. We've got our complete inventory. Everything we have in our archives is on our website. So So it's all digital if I if I wanted to go and look at No. Just the inventory of it. Just okay. I'm sorry. Yes. Well, eventually, that's another future project. We love to digitize everything. The other thing you'll find there is, the society has been doing lineage society applications for nearly that same fifty years. So if you trace back your ancestor in Clermont County, then you have to to prove that you can be accepted into our lineage societies.
You have to have documents to prove that you were accepted into our lineage societies. Okay. So, again, if you have that same line as someone who else has already researched it, then you can go back through that same line and find all the documents that they had to prove that ancestor. And when you prove an ancestor, you try to look at their, date of both date of birth Mhmm. And location of birth, date of marriage, and location of marriage, and then date of death and location of death. That's kind of the gold standard that you're trying to look for. At least those few facts. Okay. Because I was gonna ask you, like, how do you what is the actual work of a genealogist? Sure.
Yeah. Maybe I started more at the, advanced, and we should start take a couple of steps back and go back to the beginning. But, anyway, that those are the kinds of things we have at the archives, and that, space has also the Clermont County Records Center has all the old records that are it's just really a cool place to go. If you wanna look at the common, please, records from Clermont County in eighteen o two, You can find them there at the record center. So you can look up like old court cases. Old court cases. Bob Smith is on my land and I don't want him anymore. That's that's got Yes. Yes. Have you seen any kind of fun ones that Oh, there are so many of them. Well, I have a couple. I've gotta go go for my experience, but the really so this one brought me to tears. It's I won't say it was particularly fun. No. But I have an ancestor who his name was Jesse Swimme, and he would fought in the revolutionary war.
One of the things when they decided to offer pensions, to the revolutionary war soldiers, they had to come in and do affidavits for why they deserve their pension. Okay. They had to talk about where they, fought and who they fought under and what battles they fought in. Well, at first, when the pensions were offered, they had to prove that they were also poor. So he listed all of his beehives and his 40 acres that were untillable and, you know, his hogs. And then he listed his children that were at home that he was still supporting in their ages. So when you're reading that, you think this was done in 1818, he was giving his affidavit at our Clermont County Common Police Court.
It just it's really impressive. It Yeah. It's a really great great record. So That's gotta be a really cool thing to to feel to read that connection to an ancestor. It that one brought me to tears. I gotta tell you. So, so that was really a good one. There's another one that's a a court case, and there's a history book that we'll talk about the history of Clermont County. And it listed this one particular individual, Jacob Alre, listed all of his children. Well, I thought for sure that my third great grandmother was one of his children and I couldn't find it anywhere. And it it wasn't she wasn't one of they listed nine children and she was the tenth child and she wasn't listed in the history book. Well, dig on it if I didn't find a supreme court case in Clermont County where they the children as they became adults were being sued for the land that that belonged to their father Mhmm. And someone had wanted to purchase the land. But anyway, she was listed in that list in that in that court record. So along with the other nine children. So it was a very cool thing to find. But
[00:15:54] Unknown:
do you wanna go back to a little bit about beginning genealogy? Yeah. Just kind of, you know, what I guess because I I don't know a whole lot about genealogy. I mean, I know it's about family histories and marriages and Sure. You know, my mother loves to look at our family and go back, but I just don't know what the work actually is. Like, how do how do you actually what kind of documents do you use to prove these things? Well, and the most important thing is when you're starting, you start with what you know.
[00:16:21] Unknown:
And you take the time to interview any parents, aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles, grandparents, whoever you have living, that's where you start. Okay. And that's something I wish I didn't start doing this until I retired. Mhmm. So it wasn't something that I was smart enough to do when I was younger. And so I'm fortunate. Of stuff that we're not smart enough to do when we're younger. That's for sure. There's tons of stuff I wasn't smart enough to do when I was younger. Yeah. But there are so many stories I wished I would have asked my grandparents because I think they could have answered some of the questions that I still struggle to try to answer just by finding records. Yeah. So it's a lot better to get those personal experiences, and you can write them down or you can record them on video or you can, you know, record them as a podcast, however you wanna do it. But whatever the stories from your family are the best place to start.
But then you start looking at, all the records, the types of records that you use to go back. So ideally, you wanna start with your parents and then go back to your grandparents and keep going a generation at a time until you get back as far as you can, and then you move on from there. So it's easier the longer they stay in one area, the less you have to go all over the country to do research. Right. But as we move around, we know that we're going everywhere to do all kinds of research. But the big thing is that you start it step by step. And and you don't try to jump four generations back when you're in generation one or two. You really try to go systematically one generation at a time. Yeah. And then, census records, where they've just published the 1950 census within the past couple of years.
So those are and that's the most the most current one that's been published because of privacy. That's how far back they go when they publish those. So they don't they don't publish censuses from I didn't know that. 1950 is the most recent published census right now. Yes. Yes. So you That's interesting. I'd have figured that they would publish
[00:18:31] Unknown:
since they've been doing censuses.
[00:18:32] Unknown:
Yeah. No. Not you can't no. You can't find those published because they're protecting people's privacy because, I mean, you have questions on their different questions. Your you have your census records from The United States are every ten years. Yeah. So, I just have for the first time, my parents are now on a census for the first time, and they're, like, nine years old. So it's it was really neat to see them for the first time on a census with their parents. And so they tell who their parents are, you know, it'll say whoever's in the household and that were what relationships those are. So you might not know for sure that this person was a cousin or an uncle, but when you see that on the census, it tells you what the definite relationship is. Okay. So those are really good way to start.
You keep going earlier and earlier in time, you get less and less information. I was gonna say it probably gets a little murkier the further back you go. It does. So the 1880 census is the first time that they tell you what relationship someone is in the household. So before that, at least starting in 1850, you started to get everyone named who was in the household. And you could kinda guess if this person was 30 years old and there was a three year old, it was probably their son or daughter, but you didn't know for sure. Yeah. You don't know. You didn't know for sure. So, you know, you but at least it was a clue, a good place to start. So I liked starting with census records first. I got started doing, my genealogy because my two sisters and I went together for my dad's birthday about eight years back, and we got him a DNA kit to test his DNA. Like the 23 and me type thing. Yeah. This one was ancestry, but 23 me works too.
But they, so the main reason we wanted was to find out his ethnicity. And we really we didn't know anything about our family history. My dad, God love him. He he told me the whole time I was growing up that my ancestors were a bunch of horse thieves.
[00:20:41] Unknown:
So I found one cattle thief, but no horse. No horse thieves. No horse thieves. No horse thieves. And he wasn't convicted. So And he got off. So he was a good horse thief. He was a cattle thief. A cattle thief. He got off. Yeah. He was a good cattle thief. I think his dad bought off the judge. That's just my opinion. But
[00:21:03] Unknown:
but but anyway, so so that really got me started because one of my friends said, well, you've got your dad's ethnicity. Now why don't you start tracing your family tree? Mhmm. And so that's like I said, the the census has really got me started quite a bit. But and you've got, birth and death records. So but they're still pretty recent. So birth and death records weren't really required in Ohio until nineteen o eight. Wow. That's that's pretty recent. Seems pretty recent to me as well. There were some some spotty, birth and death records before that, but this was when they were required by law in Ohio is nineteen o eight. Okay. So those, you can go to our local Clermont County health department and you can get a copy of a birth certificate of anyone born in Ohio if you have the right information.
So you just really need the person's name, their date of birth, and a parent's name if you've got it, and they will give you a certified copy of a birth certificate. As far as death certificates go, you have to figure out the county in Ohio where they died. Okay. So sometimes that can be a little bit tricky, especially when you get, so sometimes in, like, Cincinnati, you might have the city of Cincinnati will be one area and then Hamilton County, the those records will be kept in a different courthouse. Okay. So or or records place. Yeah. So sometimes the the jurisdiction you have to it's a little bit trickier to find where you're looking for. Clermont County, we're pretty much at our health department if they died. Like, for example, even the Clermont County the local hospital at Clermont County. So so those are death records, birth records, marriage records.
This is another really great place to visit is Clermont County probate court. I know only a nerd like me would really wanna go visit there, but you can find Listen. The world runs with nerds. I know. That's who runs the world. So
[00:23:02] Unknown:
there's nothing wrong with being a nerd. Well, I can tell you that,
[00:23:06] Unknown:
so if you go to probate court, all the marriages since Clermont County was formed are at probate court. So you can find those marriages and those are fantastic. Again, the more recent marriages have more information where the re they recorded where their or who their parents were. Earlier ones, they didn't have to say who their parents were. But again, those date back to, like, eighteen o three, I believe, here in Clermont County, those those marriages. And we're lucky because, again, Clermont County hasn't had any big courthouse fires. Oh. Imagine when there's a courthouse fire, you lose those records. Yeah. They're gone. And I imagine they were more, like, in the past, probably more prevalent to have a fire. Absolutely.
[00:23:50] Unknown:
Absolutely. They were. So Clermont County has never had? No courthouse fires. Really? Yep. No courthouse fires. I mean, I I guess I don't know the statistic about courthouse fires, but it it does seem more likely. Brown County has and,
[00:24:02] Unknown:
a lot of their records were saved, but a lot of them were definitely singed and burned. And Hamilton County's had a couple of really big courthouse fires. They you'll find, if you look researching in Hamilton County, you'll look they'll they'll call them the reconstructed marriage records because they had to go back into court and reprove your marriage, etcetera, etcetera. So it was it got a little little tricky in Hamilton County because of those fires. So, we're also, lucky because Clermont County has been really generous with its records. Okay. So there are a lot of paid sites, but, the Latter day Saints have done a lot of the records and digitized them and put them online for the world.
[00:24:48] Unknown:
And Clermont County has allowed many, many of their records to be digitized and put online. I I know my my mother and sister, they went to Salt Lake and they have, like, a whole huge thing of this genealogy.
[00:25:01] Unknown:
Yes. Yes. It's kinda wild. I don't know I don't know why they decided to do that, but it's It's it's a mission for them, I believe. And it's really great because it's just it so benefits all the rest of us. So those same marriage records and they the date that they go back to on the on the, online is kind of a moving target just like copyright and everything else as and the and the census records as we get further in the future, then they will publish more and more records that don't affect people's privacy of people who could be living at this point. Yeah. It's funny. I never even thought about the privacy thing. Like, you certainly don't wanna be putting people's information out there if they're still alive. Right. You know? Right. Right. Right. Well, and, you know, even for security, we used to ask all the time, what's your mother's maiden name for a security question. So Yeah. You just have to be yeah. That's why we store our, like, our lineage society applications. We store those in the archives because we don't wanna put them on the shelves at the library because, you know, people are doing their applications all the time. And Yeah. So yeah. So that's that's you have to really think about privacy and taking care of people's records.
[00:26:11] Unknown:
So So why this is gonna be more of a personal question? Sure. What is it about genealogy and history that that really draws you in?
[00:26:21] Unknown:
Well, I I really wasn't. I was a good history student, but I didn't really care a lot about history until I started doing my genealogy. And once you start looking back, for me, part of it's a a puzzle, a detective, sort of a race to get to who who my fifth great grandfather was. So, you know, it it's just a really interesting, thing for me. But what really and I get really involved in the history of the period that I'm researching and the location. So whether it's a historical fiction or whether it's a history book or whether it's just searching something on Wikipedia, I will look at everything I can find out about that time and that location because I wanna know about that ancestor. I don't wanna just know here's where he was born and died and married. You know? I wanna know more about the details. You want the whole story. I want the whole context of his life. I do. I do. So when you fit the two together, I just think it it really gives you a little better sense of yourself.
And for me, it very, very much inspires me when I see some of the things that my pioneer ancestors did.
[00:27:34] Unknown:
I'm inspired. I think if they could do that, what could I do now in these day Yeah. You know, in this day and time. Driving here even, you know, you you drive through the roads and you see the, you know, the forest and everything, and then you just think this used to be wild untamed land. Yes. Dangerous dangerous land. Yes. It was. And people just put their stuff on a wagon and said we're going. Absolutely.
[00:27:57] Unknown:
Absolutely. And they had really tough journeys. Most of mine came from, to Clermont directly to Clermont County from, oh, usually New Jersey, Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania. So they had to travel, across Pennsylvania and the Appalachian Mountains are were I'm sorry, the the, mountains were just absolutely treacherous, not the Appalachians. Anyway, I'm escaping me. What which mountains I'm coming through. I'll
[00:28:30] Unknown:
I'll smack myself. I actually used to work in those mountains and I don't know the name of Yeah. Yeah. But I'd I'd like I used to work on oil rigs in those mountains. Oh. So you know that I know that they're they're not easily traversable even by car. By car and there's no car, no rail. So they would come through the mountains
[00:28:47] Unknown:
of Pennsylvania and then come down to the Ohio River and then come, by flat boat then on to down the Ohio River to Clermont County. So that's, you know, that's that's a big migration trail. And then a lot came through, like, Virginia and
[00:29:04] Unknown:
then Cumberland Gap into Kentucky and then up into Ohio. Yeah. So Could you imagine being on a because a flat boat is just kinda like a skiff. It's not a big boat. I can't imagine. And the Ohio River because at at that time, there were probably still rapids on the Ohio. Yes. Yes. I mean Yes. Yes. Some parts yes. The bravery you have would have to have, especially just to take your whole I'm sure some of them had young kids. Yes. Yes. They did.
[00:29:28] Unknown:
Well, and you've got to go back and unfortunately, the the conflicts with the native Americans, that was tough on both sides. Yeah. Just completely tough. That's the era that I really would like to come back to to see. I wouldn't wanna live there, but I'd like to come back to You could just have like a little bubble that you Exactly. Yes. I just wanna see it because, you know, that was just really incredible. So you think back, I guess there were, of course, mound builders, which that's not my area of expertise. I don't know much about that. But you've had the mound builders, but then you had the French explorers that came through. And they were mostly fur traders. Right? Yes. Yes. And then, allegedly, Clermont means clear mountain Mhmm. In French.
And that's allegedly where Clermont got its name from those French explorers even though it wasn't until much much later that it was named that. Right. But then you think of, like, the North we were the Northwest Territory, part of that in the, like, 1787. Mhmm. So that was long before there were states here. It was after the American Revolution, but before there were states. Trying to remember my Ohio history. It was at eighteen o eight or 1818, something like that? We were founded in eighteen o three. Okay. But Clermont County was formed in 1800. Okay. So we were actually a county from the Northwest Territory.
And so that and the whole reason I have a history book here that was written is called the history of Clermont County, and it was starting in, like, 1795. Well, there's a reason for that 1795 because in 1795, that was the Ohio history, the Treaty of Greenville when the American the Native Americans ceded this area. This was their hunting area. Okay. So that's why because they let because after the Battle of Fallen Timbers, they signed this treaty and they moved further west. And that was the reason it was then safe for our pioneer ancestors to move here.
So lots of conflict, lots of battles, led to that. But before that, it was, there was actually the Battle of Grassy Run was fought here in Clermont County in Jackson Township in 1792. So and that was a battle between Native Americans and between our, pioneers, that they were living in Kentucky at the time. And they followed the Native Americans who they said stole horses from them. And then it was, Tecumseh, who was the great Shawnee chief, and then the pioneers were led by Simon Kenton, the explorer and Kentucky settler. And, that's one that I, you know, really find interesting. And I think that's the main, documented battle here in Clermont County between the Native Americans and and, the the pioneers. And they moved then. They went further. They went back to Kentucky, of course. And Mhmm. And again, things really didn't start settling here until after 1795.
And then, Williamsburg was the first settlement in Clermont County. And it was settled here in, like, 1797 or '8.
[00:32:40] Unknown:
It was the date. What was the main thing people were, coming here for?
[00:32:45] Unknown:
Land. Land. Just just land. I think land. I think land and a opportunity for elbow room, that sort of thing. So this is also considered the Virginia Military District.
[00:32:56] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:32:58] Unknown:
There were, like, 4,000,000 acres set aside for the men who fought in the American Revolution in the for the, colony of Virginia. Okay. And they were given land and it was the land was based on their rank and their amount of service. So it could have been 50 acres, could have been the I think it was 20 something thousand acres that George Washington got here in this area. Oh, I I actually didn't know George Washington. He got land here. He did. He he gave it away or he didn't didn't settle here, but he, but he got land here. So different colonies in the American Revolution rewarded their, soldiers, their veterans differently.
For example, in New Jersey, they got depreciation pay because they had extra pay because the continental, dollar went down down down down down. So to compensate the colony of New Jersey, which was then the state of New Jersey, paid them what they call depreciation pay, extra money. Yeah. So, again, different areas. I'll tell you, I'd take the land.
[00:34:02] Unknown:
Yeah. I Especially now. Those Virginia guys are so lucky. Yeah. They're they're being in New Jersey. They're all right. Money's fine. I know. I'd rather have a thousand acres. Exactly.
[00:34:11] Unknown:
Exactly. But, and that's why we've got two, if you I don't know, some deeds around here still, you'll see have the boundaries from the Virginia Military District. They did what was called meets and bounds surveys. So instead of getting this square of land, you got this horseshoe bottom of land, or you got the it went from this creek to, this tree on the top of the hill. Mhmm. And so it was a square I'm sure that didn't cause any land disputes whatsoever. You that's what so many of our court records are. Yeah. Land land land disputes. Yes. And, William Lytle, who founded Williamsburg, recorded a lot of those lands.
Some things didn't the paperwork didn't get done quite as well as it should have gotten done. So, again, lots of land disputes, but that was and so a lot of the, military servicemen came here and a lot of them sold their land. So, you know, she they just stayed back east. Anyway, what did land even go for? Like, how how would you even price that? Yeah. I have found some that was at the beginning, I have one ancestor. His, land says Aaron Leonard from the Northwest Territory. So it was it was before we were a state. Okay. And it was like a dollar an acre. Wow. Then I mean, obviously, it's not today's dollar. No. But I mean Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. It would have been worth a lot more. But but that's the earliest I have found. And then, you know, they keep going up $2, 5 dollars. You know, you just keep seeing it go up and up and up as you come forward in time. They're now where it's like $10 an acre. Exactly. Exactly.
Yeah. So, so anyway, that that's kind of the I I really think that was the biggest motivation. But, you know, people came for lots of reasons. So I I mean, we've seen,
[00:36:07] Unknown:
sometimes people came just to work as teachers where it's it's, you know, me. I imagine it's very similar to today. It's like, how do you find yourself in a place? It's like, well, I had a job. I had a job there. Opportunity there. Mhmm. Time to go. It's just my cousin was there, and he said, I got there's great land here. Come and help me work. And Yeah. Yeah. So it's just back then it was wilderness. And today, you know, you can get an apartment.
[00:36:28] Unknown:
Yes. Yeah. Yes. But those are good clues too. If you find some people in the same neighborhood, you know, that's how you do part of your research. You think, okay, well, did he come here with especially if you see them in a town back in Maine, and then you see them in Clermont County in, Williamsburg, then you kinda have an idea that they might have come here together. So, you know, which is that's a that's when you're looking at the old records to try to trace those. That those are some great clues that you you use as a genealogist
[00:36:58] Unknown:
as well. So today, how many and I'm I'm obviously, we don't wanna infringe on anybody's privacy. But
[00:37:06] Unknown:
are there families in Clermont County today that have been here since the seventeen hundreds? Holy moly. Yes. Really? Okay. So, another thing that we have so our lineage societies, those are, I'm gonna go through them. The first one is called, first families. And those are people that came to Clermont County before 1820. Okay. And if you look on our website, you'll see there are about a thousand names, between a hundred and thousand names on there of these are documented people that that their ancestors documented that they came here to Clermont County before 1820.
So they were able to place them here in Clermont County. And a lot of those people are members of our own society now that live here in Clermont County. Okay. So I am pretty thrilled. I have proven 26, different first family ancestors that came here to Calamity County before 1820. So That's gotta be kind of exciting for the people you do it for. I am so thrilled. You probably have family stories of, like, we've been here since the Indians, and then you finally get proof of it. It. Well, and here's one of my okay. I gotta I'm gotta tell you, I'm I'm very pleased and proud. One of my new ones this year is Isaac Ferguson, and he was documented as being at that Battle of Grassy Run. Oh, really? So I'm pretty pretty excited that he was one of the family members. But, you know, you lose the names that the the names change so much because you've got the wives mixed in there and you've got, you know, the since they don't keep their names, a lot of times those main names are really hard to come across. If you don't find the marriage, you know, if the marriage record wasn't turned in like it was supposed to be, then it can be a little tricky finding out who belongs to who. So so that's a really interesting one. But we have lots of those families right now.
In our society, we, just did a survey recently, and I think, like, 90% of the members that responded to the survey had Clermont County ancestors. It doesn't mean they lived in Clermont County, but they're interested in being the Clermont County genealogical society because they have Clermont County ancestors. So we've got a lot of our members who are just general genealogy, and that's great because we do lots of education. We don't just focus on our our programs don't just focus on Clermont County. We have a lot of that information, but we also focus on whether your ancestors wherever they came from or whatever kind of, records you're researching.
Again, whether you're researching, immigration, just you name it, and we we talk about it. So, like, our next program in June, we're going to be talking about, African American burial sites because you can imagine that those records are tougher to find. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, you've got the whole pre civil war and Yeah. Very tough to find. Yeah. So Imagine they didn't document that particularly well. Right. Right. So those are those are, you know, always tricky. So, again, we've got, we just did one that was very popular this year with, Scottish immigration. Oh, sure. Yeah. Because we got a lot of I mean, there were a lot of Scots. There were.
[00:40:16] Unknown:
There were. I imagine it was a lot of Scots and Irish and Yeah. Germans.
[00:40:20] Unknown:
You know, you can't talk about Cincinnati without Germans. Yeah. I know. So of my, for particularly my four grandparents as an example, one of them, he was well, my mom is, like, 50% German. So he his family came direct from Germany. The the other three of mine were, like, English Yeah. Bread you know, British, Scottish, Wales because they were here early, and that's where they came from. That's my maternal grandmother and then my dad, both of his parents. So they're so they're the early ones from Clermont County. I was always when I was looking through the deeds and records, finding a lot of them, I'd every time I'd go back another generation when I was first starting, I'd cross my fingers and say, please don't let mom and dad be cousins because there was I guess that's probably a whole Yeah. Because there were not that many No. Families, you know, when you first started, you married someone close to you. Yeah. But I found so many records where my father's one of my father's ancestors signed as a witness on one of my mother's ancestors' deeds or pension affidavit or something like that.
So that was really interesting doing that kind of research. So As an Italian or part Italian Yes. I'd I have to ask you about the Italians in Clermont County and and what kind of history they have. Unfortunately, I don't know a lot of Italians from Clermont County. So There's not I don't think there's many of us. I can't I can't I don't wanna say I'm the only Italian. No. No. No. And and there are way more now than what there would have been in the early settlement. Sorry. Clermont County. So that's why they're they would be more recent. And and that's that's great because you've got more recent records to deal with. So then you're gonna be look you're able to look at, obituaries and those those more recent records, which are really helpful because in obituaries, you know, so much of the time they name every child, every grandchild of the person.
So that's great. So, again, I don't have a lot of information.
[00:42:23] Unknown:
I just thought I'd ask. That was kind of a flyer question. Yeah. But I but we do have we do have several who are in or who are researching their Italian ancestors.
[00:42:33] Unknown:
So I can tell you there are plenty. I just don't know as much about them because that's not my story. Yeah. So I don't know as much about them. Well, and there were much more I mean, I'm sure there were Italians that came over earlier. Yes. But, I mean, that's mostly the Ellis Island. Yeah. And yeah. And and people tended to settle. We had a program recently that was very interesting and that I found this as a real interesting statistic. She said that when people came from Europe, and this is even more recently, and big more than still more than a hundred years ago. Right. Right. They came and they settled in a climate in The United States that was very similar to their climate in Europe. Yeah. So I think you would probably find more Italians maybe in, Florida. Yeah. Because it's a it's a warmer climate as far as I know. And We actually we went to Fort Lauderdale on a vacation.
Mhmm. And I didn't really there are Italians, like Yeah. Italian. I'm just came from Italy Italian Yes. In Fort Lauderdale. Yes. Yes. Now I know there were an awful lot too. We're in the early New York City and, you know, and because I have a lot of Well, New Orleans. A lot of people don't realize a lot of Italians came into New Orleans. So that so that all made up that all played a part. And when you think of, like, Cincinnati, it's really very similar to the climate in Germany. Yeah. So, you know, it's not always it doesn't hold a %, but you think of like, Scandinavians maybe up in the Minnesota. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. And it there's it's a bit of a stereotype, and it's not always true. But it it definitely there there is I mean, if I was used to Scandinavian weather, I certainly wouldn't wanna move to Florida. Right. That's what they that's what they said. That would be awful. That's what our speaker said. That's what that was she what she observed. And I thought I thought that was just a really interesting observation.
[00:44:18] Unknown:
So So I think you touched on it a little bit, because I'm kind of hoping for
[00:44:23] Unknown:
just kind of a general history of Clermont because Sure. Frankly, I don't know much about the history of Clermont. Sure. There you know, I think what colors your own history again is your family story if or where you live. So for example, I grew up here in the Williamsburg area, and I knew, from a very young age that the, John Hunt Morgan came through as a raider Morgan's raider during the civil war because I knew that he burned the bridge at Williamsburg. That was a big to do. So that was something that I knew about because it was local to me. When I think of my dad, the nineteen thirty seven flood in enrichment made a huge impact on him.
His mother was displaced and so came to stay in Williamsburg while the flood waters cleared and met my grandfather here in Williamsburg for that reason. So that, again, nineteen thirty seven flood. But when you go way back, we talked a little bit about the, 1795 is when things were opened up for settlers. Eighteen o one or 1800 end of eighteen hundred was when Clermont County was founded. Ohio became a state in eighteen o three. But, Clermont County actually has had three different county seats. So we started with Williamsburg because Williamsburg was in the center. We're like, Williamsburg is really kind of on the East Side of Clermont County now. Well, in 1818, Brown County was formed from part of Clermont County and part of, Adams County. Okay. So a big part of Clermont was split up. So as more and more people populated the area, more and more counties were formed.
So again, people used to go to Williamsburg to go to court. Mhmm. For one short year, it moved in 1823 to New Richmond, and they thought because it was like a quote unquote port city Yeah. That, the county seat was gonna stay in New Richmond and, oh, there are lots of nefarious dealings which which, the the Clermont County Historical Society has a a great talk. Cindy from our our board is also on the Clermont County Historical Society. Okay. And she wrote a great article about that that you can find in one of our newsletters. But then it moved to Batavia and has has the county has been in Batavia since 1824.
[00:46:47] Unknown:
I love the local you know, I say that I guess I say this a lot, but, you know, you get wrapped up in national politics, but you don't realize that there's the same dirty deal that's happened at the local level. There's all kinds of stuff. There's all kinds of, you know, backroom deals. Yeah. Like,
[00:47:02] Unknown:
apparently, some records disappeared from New Richmond and found their way to Batavia before Batavia was was the official county seat. Like I said, Cindy does a really good job with it. And there's nice articles about that. So, you know, I think there are just so many different high points that you can you know, it's hard to pick your, you know, day to day history all the way through. We did start out with just, five townships. So, again, as townships got more populated, then you had, more townships were formed. We started out with one called O'Bannon, and that was kind of the original where Miami Township is now. And the people that played a big part in getting Clermont County settled were the surveyors because they were the land surveyors. Yeah. So there was a John O'Bannon, and that's where O'Bannon Township was named from.
Ohio Township, you know where it is now. And, again, parts of it were carved away, but it was one of the original townships. We also had Washington Township and Williamsburg. Township was, again, one of the original settlements. And then Pleasant Township, and that part's the part that's all kinda carved away now, and now it's part of Brown County. Okay. So those were our original five. And and, again, through the years, things changed. That 1818 was, again, an important date when Brown County was formed. So, you know, those are early, you know, the early years and, more recent history.
The book that I have was written in 1880, and it's a history book of Clermont County. That's an old book. It's an old book, but that's got a lot of the pioneer stories in it. And, again, I'm probably a little biased and stuck in that part because I was gonna ask you what you're and I think it sounds like your favorite time period. Yeah. It has to be that pine. And and there's a whole section a chapter in that book about day to day life for a pioneer. It talked about the spinning wheel and how, they were, you know, they wore the homespun and the leather and, you know, all the different things that you see in the old pioneer movies. It really talked about that in that 1880 book. And, of course, then it was, it still was, you know, recording eighty years of history. But they had a lot of people there that they could actually interview Yeah. Who had So there's actually first hand interviews. There are first yeah. There are first hand accounts in that book too. First hand accounts are always Yeah. I mean, I I don't know much about history, but I imagine you want the first hand accounts. So I guess what you're after. It's helpful or sometimes they were a little colored. It might have been, you know, by okay. Well, this is my great grandfather, so you say a little bit nicer things than maybe you would have. Right. But it's still it's certainly based in fact. And a lot of that history book used the property records and the tax records to record who was where in, like, 1823.
[00:49:54] Unknown:
It's a common thing to have for a county, a a book that was written at that time that details the history of the that seems like a it would be kind of rare for somebody to do that. It's in a lot of counties, but in a lot of places it's not. So we're really fortunate to have it here in Clermont County. So yeah. So it you know, I think you can find it in some places, but not in others.
[00:50:13] Unknown:
The the pioneer records are not as good, as far as recording births and and those and deaths because they weren't required. So you've got your cemeteries. And so we have so many we have over 200 cemeteries in Clermont County. I didn't know that either. Yeah. Well, you couldn't go to all of them because many of them are on someone's private property. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you'll have the big ones, and then it gets really confusing because you have cemeteries that are controlled by the villages and managed by the villages and then the townships.
So you might have cemeteries again in the same geographic area, but it might be in the village of Williamsburg as opposed to in the township of Williamsburg.
[00:50:55] Unknown:
And then again, you've got so many of them that are on private people's homes. Right. You know, on their private property. So and they're yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead. I need to finish the thought. No. Go ahead. Because I'd I'd love to know if what are some of the, like, really good historical cemeteries that people can go to? Well, we we just had a,
[00:51:15] Unknown:
my daughters of the American Revolution group just did a grave marking ceremony at the Union Cemetery. And Union Cemetery is on, Branch Hill, Guinea Pike in Miami Township, and it is it had burials from, I believe, 1818 to 1884. So there definitely were people that, like, fought in the revolution and fought in French and Indian war and things like that. In those yes. So That's wild. Yeah. So those people are and then it's been active or inactive ever since. But it's talked about in that in that very same history book. And it talks about Miami Township and, keeping it beautiful and as along with its other cemeteries.
So, there are a whole list on our website. So I would encourage anybody to look at them. We've got, when we know it, a GPS location. If we've got a picture, if we have a if it's a public cemetery that's easy to go to, you'll see a picture of a sign, and then we'll have the address on there. So, some of them, we just have a a location. Back in the nineteen fifties, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Beech Forest chapter went around and recorded the what was the inscription on every tombstone of everyone they could find who died before 1900.
[00:52:31] Unknown:
Wow. So that was a huge major undertaking. But that is a big project. Imagine. So you went to every single headstone? They went to every headstone and wrote down what the inscription said. And Were there any do you know of any of the inscriptions? Were there any clues?
[00:52:45] Unknown:
Well, most of them had, like, the person's name Mhmm. And the date that they died. And then it would say, like, age eighty four years, four months, three days. Okay. And so then you have to calculate when they were born. Some of them had more detail. Some of them had the detail where the person came from. There are some in Clermont County. I don't remember which cemetery, but they're they're in German. Oh, really? Yes. That's kinda cool. Yeah. Very that's very cool. So that that's I think that's a really neat aspect of it. There was a social lodge. You you know, just like we have social media now. We had social lodges back then. And there was the independent order of Oddfellows.
So they had a lot of cemeteries that they took care of in their heyday. And they've since been turned over a lot of times to townships. But a lot of them one of the independent order of Oddfellows was to bury the dead. Okay. And that was their one of their goals, one of their tenants. So because of that, they had cemeteries throughout the county. And you'll see IOOF sometimes on the top of the cemetery. And that means that they were they took care of those, people that were buried there. So, that's that's another those are great old cemeteries. So I every township and every village, I believe, has at least one, two, three, public places where you can just go and walk around and and see the history. I mean, it's it's it's just amazing the history that you can find there. My parents have a a place in
[00:54:18] Unknown:
on a lake in Tennessee, and there's a nature preserve across the lake. And you can go there, and there's just these old cemeteries, and you can see, like, fought in the civil war. Yes. So Yes. And then again, you can find a list of this on the website. Right? You you can see the cemeteries, the actual burials.
[00:54:37] Unknown:
You, we have, like, 45,000 listed and there's way more than that. So But you can find the cemeteries that you can go to? You can find the cemeteries you can go to. Yes. It'll talk about that. And that's www.ccgs0h.org. C c, Clermont County, 0 h, Ohio. C g s, genealogical society. So that's that's the where website. Sometimes we'll have, Facebook pictures that we'll post for different gravestones or that sort of thing.
[00:55:06] Unknown:
So So outside of, graves Mhmm. You know, I I think everybody knows about Grant's house and things like that. Are there any other kind of historical places in the county that people might not know about that are really interesting? I'm glad you said that. I am on a committee in the county,
[00:55:22] Unknown:
which is, America two fifty, and it's being, spearheaded by Discover Clermont. And one of the things that they're putting together together is called the passport to museums. And so this passport is going to list all of the museums, and I believe there are 14 participating in this passport. So, for example, at Williamsburg, there is Harmony Hill, and that Harmony Hill Museum has a, land office that was recently reconstructed, rebuilt, but it's furnished in that period that where, William Lytle was, you doing all of his grant recording and his his survey recording and land records. So there's, Promont House in Milford. And again, I don't wanna you know, I want people to look and see because when you see these passports, they're gonna be distributed at all the Clermont County, libraries. Okay.
For It'll be it'll be like a password that you get to get to the And you can Anywhere. Yes. And you can and you can get a stamp, and it will tell you a description about each of these different, locations. There, there's the Bethel Historical Society and then the Clermont County Historical Society. So, again, lots of different places and different things you can research at everyone. The Clermont County Historical Society has a a great display of clay pipes and they're and also points, which when I was a kid, we call them arrowheads, but they have those. So and they have the different hours when each museum is open. So they're all over Clermont County, and they're just really great places to go. We have in our our collection, besides having the research type items, we have some maps people might be interested in looking at at the Clermont County Public Library. I love maps. Yeah. People like maps. Yeah. I really like maps. And so we have maps. We have, the, like, the WPA, the Work Progress Administration in it was, like, 1935 to '43, somewhere in that range.
They went around and, did plots of the cemeteries around Clermont County. So there's, like, a 40 that they did back that far ago. Yeah. So they have maps of those. We have a book with maps. And,
[00:57:34] Unknown:
how far back do your maps go? Just out of curiosity.
[00:57:37] Unknown:
Well, let's see that. Well, that's when that one was produced. We have one that we actually sell on our website, which is it's called an Indian Trails at More Roads map. Okay. So it says it's 18 o '5. But so and then but it would have those trails that would have been there at the time that were what the Native Americans would have used. We have a, set of all 14 townships, and I wanna say 1870 and in 1890, somewhere in that range. So those are some of the older township maps. And those township maps, they have it's a a map of every property owner and where their property was at that time in each township. Okay. So I think that's a really interesting one if you're looking at that time frame. So and, besides maps, we have a photo collection, and we're really pleased we received a grant from ConnectClairemont to, digitize our photo collection. It was donated in the nineteen nineties by a man named Richard Disney, and he donated it to Clermont County. And it's five volumes in at the Clermont County Public Library at Batavia branch.
And we are digitizing those because we only had them in the notebooks there that were the original pictures. Mhmm. So the pictures go in Clermont County from, like, 1885 to the nineteen nineties. What are what are some of your favorite pictures? I imagine The one. Well, the one that I thought was very cool, there was an 1885 train wreck. Okay. And I thought that's pretty cool. I think it was in Pierce Township. So each of the townships, there are a lot of old family barns, old family homes, teachers, a lot of teachers from the earlier days. Yeah. And, again, these were taken you you you can't just publish them on the website. You have to look at copyright. You you know, you're I think it's, like, I think we're up to about 1929 before that's in the public domain. After that, we can't publish things. But we're going to make it available to researchers once we get everything digitized.
If they email us, we're gonna put the index. So what the subjects of the pictures on our website. So then if someone wants to request a picture, we'll send it with a disclaimer. You can't publish this. Right. But here it is. If it's your family, my goodness. We want people to have a copy of it. Have you found old photographs of your own family? There were some of mine in that that collection. I have, families, Lindsay, and they weren't direct ancestors, but they were cousins. Okay. So they would have been, you know, cousins. So It must be kinda neat to see. It was. It was so neat going through and say, oh, I know that last name. I know that last name. So it was neat. Again Did you did you look at anybody and go like, oh, no. That's dad. Like, that looks just like that. I didn't have the opportunity to do that, but but they were definitely my my ancestors, my relatives. So it was very cool. But I think other people are gonna find that. And especially imagine if yours was, you know, if you had a great great grandma that was a teacher here at, you know, somewhere in,
[01:00:42] Unknown:
Olive Branch Mhmm. In the nineteen thirties. I just think that would be very cool to have. I've done that with my own family photos where it's you know, I think we have one of maybe my great great grandfather or something. And you look at him and I go, oh my gosh. That's my dad. That you did. Yeah. And me, by extension. Like, that looks exactly like me. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So what kind
[01:01:04] Unknown:
of how much time does it take to to really do a good genealogy of your family? I mean, I imagine it it takes a lot of work. Yeah. It does. You you and you you get out of it what you put into it just like anything else. And so sometimes, I'll go down a wrong path, and I'll think it was my family. It might be someone else with the same name. And we have so many times when a father named his children after his brother. So he might be John Smith. He named his son James Smith. Well, James Smith was his brother too. Yep. And you kind of put him in the right generation. And so you really have to look carefully at location and generation Yep. And, you know, every detail you can get about someone. So that takes a lot. And you can go down a wrong trail and be really messed up. I'm sure sometimes it's not it's not that bad to go down a wrong trail. Because imagine it's still interesting. It's still it's still fun. And you still wanna look at the
[01:02:00] Unknown:
the history of that time. And, again, that's that's what really makes it interesting to me is that extra history that, you know, the what what you hear, what you find. Yeah. I know in my family. So I'm my first name is technically John. Uh-huh. My father's first name is John. We have different middle names. Uh-huh. The my mother always tells a story when they got married. She just put John Ventarello on the wedding invitation, and she said and my dad told her, no. You you can't do that. There's so many Johns. You have to put my middle name Right. Or else nobody's gonna know what John this is. Right. It's it's just funny how and my son is now John Dominic. Yeah. Yeah. See that? And that's that's your family pattern for naming. And once you find that pattern, though, you can find other you know, that's a clue to go back a generation that you may not know who that generation was. You start looking for that. The kind of patterns are, like, lead to success in genealogy? Because imagine it is a lot of noticing patterns and It is. It is. It's,
[01:02:58] Unknown:
like, a lot of it is the other family members, acquaintances, and neighbors that are in the same area, like we talked about a few minutes ago. It's it's knowing who because they came in groups together. Sometimes many families would come together, Or you would see someone come from a certain area of, let's say, in Hamilton County, from a certain area of Germany, and you'll see a whole group of people from that same area back in Germany. So you that that come and settle. So they they didn't come all at the same time. They came in waves, but they came obviously because somebody wrote them a letter and said, come here. This is a great place. So so those patterns, trying to think other family again, you'll see a lot of times where, a child will be named, like, John Stephen Smith. Not not Stephen, but Stevens.
Well, Stevens could well have been his mother's maiden name. Oh, yeah. So that's a good clue too. Location names, you know, again, we we talked about John O'Bannon. And so, you know, O'Bannon's in that area. There's a very good chance they might have come from John O'Bannon. I would certainly look at his family if he didn't have a clue Right. Where else to look. So place names do kinda make a difference too. What kind of the opposite side of that coin, what are some common mistakes that people typically make when they're doing genealogical research? The worst thing you can do is just copy.
You you say, okay. I'm a DNA match to this person, and I'm just gonna copy this whole branch of their tree. Because there are a lot of nuances to DNA matches. And whether it's your fourth cousin or your third cousin or your second cousin once removed, Believe it or not, if you just copy a whole branch, you're probably copying a whole lot of wrong information. So you need to do your research before you copy a whole bunch of other people's
[01:05:02] Unknown:
great research. Because their research might be right, and your research to a point might be right, but that doesn't mean you're connecting the two properly. Okay. So you gotta cross reference. You really you really need to do your 23 and me. Like, I'm good. I know exactly everything that's going on. Everybody
[01:05:18] Unknown:
no. You can't do that. You really need to do your genealogy step by step research. And, you know, sometimes you might be able to fudge. You might be able to jump a generation, but usually, you really wanna know who's this one's parent is and who's this one's parent is. If you do DNA, you might wanna be prepared to find surprises too. Because sometimes we have surprises because, there might be someone on a sentence that it says he's your son, that their son. Mhmm. But really, he wasn't. He was a neighbor and their and his parents died. And they just kind of adopted. And they adopted it, but there was no official adoption until, you know, more recent. Where else to go. Exactly. We were friends. Exactly. And they they gave them they the family said, well, we're just gonna give you our last name and or whoever filled out the census, like, it could be the, you know, the census taker said, oh, well, he's, you know, one of the Smith kids, so we'll put him down as, you know, Tom Smith, but really, he's Tom Jones. Right.
So those, that can be confusing, but it also can be a clue if it's like this doesn't you don't match anybody else past this certain generation. You're you're probably gonna look at someone who maybe, you know, lived close or, again, came from could have even been come out on an orphan train. You know, you have we had a,
[01:06:42] Unknown:
speaker that talked about the orphan trains, and that was really interesting. Yeah. Like, I know what an orphan train is. I have no idea what an orphan train is.
[01:06:48] Unknown:
They were in orphanage orphanages in the East, and they were, becoming overcrowded. And so the people at West, said, well, come here and you can live on my farm. Well, they also worked on their farm too, usually. Kinda like a hen of Green Gables type thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We need somebody to Yeah. Smoke the cows. So So come on out. And, you know, sometimes they were you know, it was a childless couple. And so so they were displaced and people from DNA have found that their ancestors were they trace them back to New York City or some place out east, and then they find them suddenly almost
[01:07:27] Unknown:
transported to Kansas. Well, they were. Yeah. They were literally put on a train to Kansas. They were. Yeah. So I didn't know they did that. That's kinda I mean, it makes sense. Yeah. You know, certainly. Well, that's why we Yeah. I imagine there's tragedies when successes with Oh, yes.
[01:07:41] Unknown:
Yes. And and, you know, I I don't have any of those stories, but I found it so interesting. And I and imagine if you have a family that that's part of your story, you're gonna become an expert in that area. So then just again, do they just keep connect you just connect to those Well, like you said, it's kind of a puzzle. Like, it's a you gotta be a sleuth and you gotta It is. Go back to the records. It it yeah. It is. It is. I had a lot of fun. I did a project with, my cousin, John, and we worked together because we it's a lot easier when you've got two people's DNA than just one. So I had my mother's and she was his first cousin. When we united the DNA, we found more matches together, And then we were able to look and say, okay. Because we had one, there were records.
One place said her last name was Flannery. One place said was Flam Youth. It it was like so many different last names. We had no idea. Well, by the time when we finally figured out all the matches together with other and Slammuth was f l a m m u t h. We traced her back to Germany to her hometown. And once you this was in '18, I think, '39 or so. She was born in Germany. But that was because of being able to use his DNA, my DNA, and then other people who really knew their ancestry. And usually, it was the male line that we were able to match with, and and then we were able to find that last name. But it But it's probably a little easier with the male line because the name stays more consistent. Yeah. But I love, the German records that I've, had to the the fortune the good fortune to search through because they started in, like, the
[01:09:18] Unknown:
fifteen, sixteen hundreds from through the church. I was gonna ask you because, you know, there's a lot of Germans. So once you get back Yes. Here's one of my families. How do you get over the ocean? Yeah. Well, when you once you get across there, which we were when you're able to find a hometown in Germany, they stayed put a lot of the time because they were I imagine some families in Europe that have been there for probably thousands of years.
[01:09:42] Unknown:
Mine were poor, and so they were not slaves, but they might as well have been Serves. I mean, they were tied to the land. You know, it's funny whenever you hear somebody, you know, like, oh, in a past life, you were a prince or something like no. No. You were probably a servant. Yeah. Mine were servants. You were probably some guy that just, like, baked bread or something. That's probably who you were. Exactly. Yeah. So, but when you get there, the the family stayed there for so long, you know, that you get generation after generation. And then in the baptism records, clear back that 1516, '17 hundreds, they were naming the parents and the grandparents and the godparents. And so you get just
[01:10:20] Unknown:
so many names on God record. Know those those baptism records, they still keep them. Yes. We when we got married, we actually I had to go back because I was born in Columbus. I had to go to the parish in Columbus and get my baptismal records. Uh-huh. So I imagine that's probably pretty fruitful for Virginia. Very, very, very. And so mine were mostly Lutheran, but sometimes then you would lose track of one. You're like, where'd this one go? Well, they might have married someone who's Catholic. Yeah. And then you have to switch over and find the Catholic record. So it was really interesting. It was unusual, but it Yeah. I imagine, especially in the fifteen hundreds, I imagine. Yeah. I can't remember when the reformation was, but Yeah. That's I imagine there wasn't too much, like, oh, I'll just go be Lutheran now. Oh. No. No. Not so much. Oh, that's not what happens in the fifteen hundreds. Not so much. Not so much. A little more common today. Right. Right. Right. Right.
[01:11:10] Unknown:
So, anyway, those are those are great records when you can, you know, work on that project. But, again, if we hadn't had DNA to get that name and then when you got the uncommon name and you found the town, then the records went
[01:11:24] Unknown:
back, back, back, back, back. So So I know you talked a little bit about your favorite history book. If people are interested in just the history of Clermont or Mhmm. Genealogy or anything. Mhmm. What what are some of the books that you would recommend to people to Well to check out and read? We have,
[01:11:39] Unknown:
I'd almost call them the Reader's Digest version. We have collections of, stories that were submitted by Clermont County Genealogists. We had a an eight a 1980 collection and a 1990 collection. And, again, this isn't a super big long collection, each one of them. Mhmm. But your family name might very well be in there. And then there's a story. It might go on for a page, a half page, two, three pages about many different families. If there are pictures, we have pictures in there. So those two are ones that we have on our website today, and you can find them at any library. So at any And you can check them out. Right? No. No. You cannot. Okay. Most of our things are non lending. They're reference I wasn't sure if that was They're reference. But you can buy the ones too. If you if you find your family, you know, then it might be worth buying a book that's got your family name in it. So that's pretty cool. We have marriage records. Even though those marriage records were written, there's, a lot of detail, that are they ours go from, like, the 1800 to 1875.
That, again, we have the genealogical society did they used to do what we call indexes. The way that, genealogist work has changed tremendously over the year. We used to do books and books were the most common. Now you tend to find things online digitally. So you've got those digital collections. So the same thing that that history book that was written in 1880, you can find every word of it online for free. Oh, okay. So they're all so most and so, again, you're looking in that it's in public domain. So most of the time, different colleges, if you look around for your own, area where county where you're from, if there's a county history book, it's likely digitized, and you can just read it online. Or you can, you know, get the book at the library too. So, again, that's one of my favorites. There's one that was written in 1913.
That's the history of Clermont and Brown County where they kinda married the two together. Because, again, they were when they were originally settled, they were together. Right. So you'll find that one. That's a good one too. And, again, that's now in public domain. So there are so many things, again, you can find. And we have all the links to the, different, museums are on our website. There's a section a tab that's called research resources. One of them has Clermont County links. And so so you'll see the link to that history book is in those Clermont County links. The links to the different museums are in that Clermont County links. So you have a lot of different, places where you can do research or in those Clermont County links, and those are all public on our website.
We do have some paid sections of our website. The detailed burials, all the headstones that we have and inscriptions that we have, those you have to pay for your membership, which is $17 a year. It's not it's not a real expense. It's certainly not gonna break the bank. It's not gonna break the bank. But, again, if you go to the Batavia library, she'll log you in and you can do it all for free. The library has a lot of great online, so the family search, I would encourage everybody to have a family search account because that's free. Okay. And, ancestry is a paid account. But, again, the library has a subscription, So you can go log in and use the library's ancestry, information and so you don't have to pay for the account.
So and, we have the Ohio Genealogical Society, which has all they have several digital resources from each of the 88 counties in Ohio. Okay. And, again, you can go there into the Batavia library, and they will log you in to look at that as well. So, you know, again, that's a there's a paid membership to go with it. But if you don't have that paid membership, don't wanna pay for the membership, just wanna see what's there, at least you could go to the library and log on to one of their computers and the librarians will help you. They're really, really great at the Batavia branch library. There are several that specialize in genealogy there.
[01:15:40] Unknown:
So you mentioned the Ohio, Genealogical Society. Mhmm. I did wanna ask how the Clermont Genealogical Society kinda plays in
[01:15:48] Unknown:
what kind of role it plays in the larger Sure. We're we're considered a chapter of the Ohio Genealogical society, which means they can refer things to us. We can refer things back to them. We don't have a, you know, we don't pay them anything. They don't pay us anything. There's no they're both nonprofit organizations, but we certainly can have them as a resource, which is really wonderful. They're really great with that. The other thing is we have a lot of, we have a membership of the National Genealogical Society. Okay. And that one, you know, I'm not as familiar with because I don't do as much work with them. But that's another important and individuals can have memberships to both of those as well.
We have a lot of partnerships, like, again, the Clermont County Historical Society, we work really closely together. So we have our meetings on at the Batavia Library on the first Saturday of the month from one to three. And the historical society has theirs on the third Saturday of the month from one to three. And sometimes the programs for the two, their people are interested in both places, and they're all free to attend. So you're always welcome. Everyone's public's always welcome to attend our meetings. Oh, cool. So so just as a Anybody can come in. Nice. Yeah. It's always open. It's not just members. It's anybody come in. And then if you have questions, that's a good time to ask questions. We have a lot of people there before and after the meetings. As you can imagine, if you've been researching in Clermont County for thirty years, you might be able to help point somebody in the right direction to find a record they're looking for.
[01:17:26] Unknown:
So you meant if we can kinda switch gears a little bit. Sure. You mentioned the Daughters of the Revolution. Yeah. And I'm sorry to say I've heard of the name, but I don't know much about it. Do you wanna talk a little bit about the Daughters of the Revolution or what they do?
[01:17:39] Unknown:
I'm in the Clef Valley chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and that means that I can trace my lineage back to someone who fought in the American Revolution. Okay. Now, again, I've I've gotta say I'm pretty pleased because I've got my Jesse Swann from Clermont County. I also have Nathaniel Dunham from Clermont County, Isaac Ferguson. You know? So so I've got those folks that are Clermont County ties as well. I kept saying when I was researching, I was never gonna get out of Clermont County with my research. But, anyway, the the Daughters of the American Revolution, it, they're a service organization. Okay. And again, a woman has to trace her lineage back to someone who served in the American Revolution. That might be someone who fought or someone who might have been a woman who raised, food for the troops Okay. Might have been a taxpayer, someone who paid taxes at, you know, at the time of the American revolution to support the troops could have been someone who served in office. Okay. And, again, we our our important goals are to make sure we foster historic preservation, patriotism, and education. So you can see how that does kind of follow along Yeah. With a genealogical
[01:18:50] Unknown:
society. Imagine if you've done all the work to prove that Yeah. You have an ancestor in the revolutionary war, your next step is like, well, hey. Here I am. Yes. Might as well just join the school.
[01:18:59] Unknown:
It is. And and it's but it's, we have a lot of different areas. We do a lot with literacy, and we have, different schools that we help. We have, a lot that we do with, veterans and with, active military. Again, it's a service organization. And, again, we have programs monthly to the at Cleft Valley. And in Cleft Valley is, includes, like, Anderson Township and, different parts of Cincinnati. The members can really be from anywhere, but we have a lot of Clermont County members at Clough Valley. So, we just did a grave marking ceremony of a revolutionary war soldier Isaac South who came here from New Jersey. He was one of the guys who had to buy his land. Oh, poor guy. Buy it for a dollar an acre. Yeah. But I'm not crying for him too much. Say when he left New Jersey, he had eleven and three quarters acres. He got came to Miami Township in 1817, and he bought a 40 acres. And he died in 1826, and he left his kids 600 acres.
So Wow. He added in, you know, just Sounds like he did well for himself. He did well for himself here. Yeah. So Are there
[01:20:08] Unknown:
this question just popped in my head. Are there people who can trace the roots back to the, like, the founding of Clermont County who still own that same land?
[01:20:18] Unknown:
Now that's a good question. I don't know of any, but I bet money there are. Okay.
[01:20:24] Unknown:
Who are the big predominant names that own Oh my goodness. You know that?
[01:20:28] Unknown:
There are so many. I worked a lot on the the cemetery project. We updated it from, having pictures on, c old CDs Okay. To a database to go on our website. So, golly, there are names, that just keep let's see. Well, I have to some of my own are Lindsay, Ferguson, Snyder, but you've got Lytle. You've got oh, gosh. There are just so many. Each township has its own, folks that were really important in the township. Right. Washburn, that's another I mean, they're just names. There's so many of them. But if you look in that history of Clermont County book, every township is listed separately.
So then you get an idea of the families that were there from the beginning and they had large, large acres of land. Yeah. I think of another grave marking ceremony we did was, Thomas Paxton. He was a real important person. We have, well, really, you've got, you know, Ulysses s Grant's family was he was born in Point Pleasant. You've got, trying to think, governor Pattison was born in Milford. So, you know, you just I just recently realized that he he was a governor. Right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And then so I drove by Pattison Park. After I learned that, I'm like, oh, well, that makes That makes sense now. Park. Uh-huh. And and you'll again, a lot of those old family places, that's where the names came from. Yeah. So there's still O'Bannon Creek. There's, you know, so many of the creeks were named after the earth. That's gonna be a cool thing to to to look back at the genealogy Yes. And then go back to the familiar places that and it's like Old O'Bannon Creek, Watson Park. And I can't tell you the number of people that come here from out west and visit where their family was back here when it was the frontier. Yeah. They're just as thrilled as us as those of us who live here right now. They're they're just as happy to see where their ancestors were Yeah. As what, you know, is what we are as as we are proud of them here now. Yeah. So because imagine some people this was just a way station almost. It was. Well, and it's the same thing if you had your hundred acres and you had 10 kids.
Well, they didn't really wanna settle for 10 acres when they could go out west and get A hundred. A hundred for their own. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you had maybe the older couple, you know, maybe the the daughters might have stayed because they married and the older son might have stayed. But then you had some that moved on west so they could get their own property and their own land. That must have been a really wild time. Just the whole land of the best destiny and Wouldn't it have been Yeah. Just very cool. Yeah. Like you said, it would have been really it'd be fun to go back
[01:23:07] Unknown:
if you had if it was just like a television screen or something like a bubble. Like, I don't I don't wanna fight Indians. I don't wanna I I think I would have been eaten by wolves for sure. Yeah. I mean, again, it's like a like you said, we talked about in the beginning. It's just especially, like, you talk about Pennsylvania when you drive through those hills.
[01:23:25] Unknown:
Allegheny Mountains. There it is. Allegheny Mountains. Finally. There it is. Goodness sakes. Sorry. I know I studied geology, and we went there on field trips. Yeah. I know I should know the name of those. Yeah. Well, but, you know, but but then they came down to Pittsburgh, and that's when they Yeah. Got on the river and came on west. But, oh, I was gonna smack myself in the head for not remembering Allegheny. But, no, you you you look at that wilderness, and it's Yeah. You know, from a car window, it it just looks like pretty mountains. But then you get into them. Oh, man. How would you have liked to have climbed those? And most of the time, the wagons were not for riding in. The wagons were for carrying your stuff and you walked behind the wagons.
[01:24:05] Unknown:
You didn't get Imagine a a wagon in mountains. Yeah. I mean, like like I said before, it was tough enough with a car, four wheel drive. And how many times they would have broken the axle and the wheel? Oh. Yeah. It's really And I mean, I imagine a lot of times if you break an axle or wheel, that's kinda game over. It's either you figure out how to survive where you are or you get eaten by wolves. Uh-huh. You better hope you have a carpenter with you. Yeah. Exactly.
[01:24:29] Unknown:
Which is, you know, obviously, probably why people came out in waves. The Coopers. Just one person. That's right. That's right. Coopers. I actually know what a Cooper is. Coopers and a lot of, the well, the mills, those are the most important, you know, because you had to feed whether you ground corn for corn meal or whether you ground your wheat for flour, you had to eat. So the mills were important. Tanneries Yeah. Those were important. And, you know, glass making. Believe it or not, glass making was important along the Ohio. So later and, you know, earlier, I'm sure they I mean, they didn't have glass for their windows, but later they did. So We even glass for just
[01:25:04] Unknown:
things. I mean, not just windows. I mean, I think people I think people probably take a lot of things for granted. Yeah. You know, glass being one of them. Yeah. You know, you can go to the grocery store, get a Yeah. Glass mug or something. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, a hundred years ago, somebody had to blow glass like that. There's a reality show on Netflix and my wife and I watch it about glass blowing. Uh-huh. It's hard work. Yeah. And tanneries, I mean Yeah. I don't know firsthand what they smell like. Yeah. I don't think they smell great. No. I haven't. And I mean, there's some nasty chemicals that you have to use. Yeah. It's just that life was just rough. We had, when you think about there were a lot of, ferries. Because you you you know, you couldn't travel seven miles to get to a bridge.
[01:25:49] Unknown:
You know, so there were ferries every couple miles. So there were more people, especially between, you know, Ohio, Kentucky back and forth. The other thing we haven't really touched on at all, but when you talked about history, so I do wanna mention this, is what a fantastic place Clermont County was for underground railroad stops. Oh, I yes. I I almost forgot to Yeah. And I I I have one that I keep thinking, oh, maybe he was part of the, you know, one of the abolitionists, but I haven't been able to prove it. So but that would be a very cool ancestor to have that was responsible for that. And and that would just be very, very cool. Did a lot
[01:26:25] Unknown:
of I mean, I I know this was a very prominent stop on the underground railroad. Mhmm. Were there a lot of African Americans that just
[01:26:33] Unknown:
stayed? Yes. There were because they were welcoming to that, community. And there were, you know, they they came and, so when they were leaving if they were leaving somewhere in Kentucky and they were running away, they probably couldn't stop. But yet, sometimes they were hiding in plain sight because they they were absorbed in the free community that was here a little bit further north, not right across the river necessarily. But there were some, but and so, you know, it and it was a welcoming area because, again, you know, the abolitionists, they weren't not everybody lived here were abolitionists, of course. Right. I mean, obviously, not everybody was happy about it. Right. But there were enough that there were enough welcoming that there were,
[01:27:16] Unknown:
African American communities that early on. So yes. Did they tend to congregate in specific towns? Or
[01:27:23] Unknown:
from what I have seen, yes. They're they tend to be intended to be together in certain areas. Yes. Okay. Yes. There are some, black cemeteries in Clermont County, a couple of those. Okay. So they tended to be, again, buried together or they would be, again, in a different section of the cemetery. It was segregated
[01:27:41] Unknown:
still, you know, very much. I mean, it I know there's a rich history of abolitionism in in Clermont County, but it was still eight hundreds. Yes. It wasn't like today where it's very No. Very No. Egalitarian. No. Yeah. I think I'm officially out of question. Okay. Good. I'm officially out of talking. Okay. But before before we end it, why don't you just, again, tell people how they can get involved with the genealogical society. Sure.
[01:28:11] Unknown:
Plug anything you'd like to plug. Okay. Great. Because we would love to help anybody. We'd really like to see some younger folks get involved. If we have any scout groups or four h groups that need help, we've offered some help there, and we'd be happy to help with that. Any kids that have any interest, we would come and speak to the group. Okay. Again, our website has a lot of research resources, research and research information, has anything that we sell in our store, online. And, again, we have our meetings, which we'd love to have more people come and attend. And we have Where do you have the meetings? The meetings are at the Batavia branch of the Clermont County Public Library Okay. In their meeting room, one to three on the first Saturday of the month.
And we also have meetings via Zoom. So we have about 200 members, and half of our members live outside of the Tri State area. So they can't come here. So since the pandemic, we have been doing our meetings via Zoom. So even if you wanna tune in and listen to whatever or watch whatever we're doing and participate, you can have your pajamas on and don't turn your video on and and join us via Zoom for our meetings. And we'd be happy to send you an invitation. If you're a member, you automatically get an a Zoom invitation to our our different, topics.
So just if you find something, our events are all on our our website. Do you have a newsletter? We do. We have a quarterly newsletter, and we send that out to members. Okay. But we also have it available at the library. So if you wanna see any of those copies there at at our Batavia branch library as well. We also the lineage societies are something if you're interested in. We have, like, the first families. We also have settlers and builders, which are 18 20 to eighteen sixty settlers. And then we have our more fluid one that's Century Families. So if your family has been in Clermont County for a hundred years, you're eligible for our Century Family application, and then you get a pretty pin, and we honor you at our heritage day luncheon in September. And we also have, civil war families. So anyone who can trace their ancestor back to someone who fought in the civil war and and has an affiliation with Clermont County.
We also have that lineage society as well. So we also have a Facebook page. So look for Clermont County Genealogical Society, and you'll find us on Facebook. And, again, I think that probably oh, we have actually, this is just kind of a different thing. We have, our officers can be outside of the Clermont County area. So if anyone has any desire to volunteer, we sometimes have, projects that can be done as a volunteer from outside of the area because you can do it on the computer. Okay. So we we have lots of volunteers who can, again, be anywhere in The United States, and we'd be happy to have them their help. Awesome.
[01:31:06] Unknown:
Well, like like I said in the when I met you, thank you so much for doing this. You're welcome. I enjoyed it. I'm guided too. I've I've enjoyed it, you know. I've enjoyed every single person I've talked to. Yeah. I told my wife, Katie, you know, eventually, I'm sure I'll get a bad interview, but so far, everything's been great. Oh, good. Good. So good. So thanks again, and, we'll call it a successful podcast. Alright. Thank you so much, Patrick.
[01:31:29] Unknown:
Well, get
[01:31:33] Unknown:
this off. Well, thanks again to Paige for sitting down with me. Again, something I always say that we'll have to have her back on, and I think we will. Because, you know, like I said earlier, I really enjoyed learning about the history of of of where I live. So thanks again to Paige, and let's get on to some events going on around the county. We have the River Days Festival. That's gonna be Thursday, May 22 through Saturday, May 24, Front Street in Richmond, Ohio. And it's just a multi day festival, and it's got carnival rides and live entertainment. There'll be food and craft booths and family friendly activities. So it it should be just a a really a really good small town festival. So if if you're looking for something to do, the twenty second through the twenty fourth, I'd head up over there.
We've got cooking with cicadas. We're in a cicada year. I know my daughter is collecting them at an alarming rate. Apparently, they don't scare her, which is remarkable. But cooking with cicadas, because it's gonna be Friday, May 23, this Friday, from 06:30PM to 07:30PM at Clingman Park. It's just a short hike and then you get to eat cicadas. They'll have precooked cicadas and you can, experiment with some different seasonings and toppings to find find the ones you like. I talked about this in last podcast, but, Kay Skiff at the parks department said she was gonna eat one. So if you go to that, make sure you hold her hold her to that promise.
Oh, boy. We've got this this word I cannot pronounce. It's flower pounding tatakizomi. Man, that's a tough one. And, anyway, that's a Saturday, the twenty fourth from two to 03:30PM at Clingman Park. And it's it's gonna teach you how to do the Japanese art of ta oh, man. Tata kizomi. So what you do is you dye things by taking a hammer and a flower, and you pound on the flower, and it'll dye whatever it is you wanna dye. So you'll you'll get to do that, with your own handkerchief, and you'll also learn how to identify some some common flowers. So, if that sounds interesting to you, I'd head over to Clingman Park on Saturday.
The Clermont County Library's night out at the park. Let's go creaking. That's gonna be May 27, from 06:30PM to 08:30PM at Sycamore Park in Batavia. So this sounds really fun. You're you're gonna start with some stories from the Dream Weavers troop. And as a quick aside, if anybody knows how to get in touch with the Dreamweaver's Troupe, I'd I think it'd be fun to interview them. They sound like an interesting organization that just, an organization of storytellers. But any event, this, this let's go creaking, we'll start with some stories from them, and then you get to have a hands on creek exploration and a and a meet and greet with a turtle, which I know my daughter would absolutely love.
They tell you to bring a picnic basket and, dress for the splash zone, so it sounds like, people are gonna be getting wet during that. Another creek themed event, Creek Days at the Park. It's gonna be 05/30/2025, from 01:00PM to 03:00PM, at Sycamore Park in Batavia. And this is for all ages. This isn't just for kids. And you'll get to wait in the creek with and, there'll be a naturalist there to, tell you about, the creek geology and some wildlife. They do say or ask that you wear some sturdy close toed shoes, and I think I saw maybe even rain boots. So so you're gonna get probably wet and muddy, stomping around the creek, but I think that that sounds fun to me. I like creeks.
We have heritage crafts, DIY upcycled flowers. It's gonna be on the May 31 from 1PM to 04:30PM at 2156 State Route 50 Batavia, Ohio. I'm sorry, US 50, Batavia, Ohio. It'll be on 50. And this is, an event that's guided by an artist called Adrian Hawk, and you transform recycled materials into floral arrangements. There's two time slots, and you need to preregister if you're interested in that. We have National Trails Day on June 7. That's gonna be from 9AM to 1PM at Afton Zager Road in Batavia. And the the, Clermont County Parks Department will be there, East Fork State Park, and Friends of East Fork, and they're gonna celebrate their their hiking and biking trail. And there'll be booze along the trail at the campground, and, there's the overlook, is gonna feature some fun activities and information too.
We have another knee high naturalist, for June called colors of nature. I really like these knee high naturalist events. They seem really cool. We have to take our our daughter and our son there. But that's gonna be on June 7, from 10AM to 11AM. And that's gonna be a Shore Park in Milford. It's free. It's preschool focused, so it's, you you know, three to five year olds, and they're gonna read and craft and explore nature's colors. And then there's gonna be an optional play and discovery period afterwards. So, if you're looking for something to do with your kids on June 7, that sounds like a pretty good way to spend some time.
So that's all we have for events, and we'll kinda we'll close this out with, you know, another pitch to to hear from you. You know, like I said in the beginning, we're trying to do value for value. So if you, get some value from this show, we'd love it if you sent some value back in the form of time, talent, or treasure. And, again, if you wanna email us and send us money, we'll figure out a way to do that. But talent and, and time are just as important, if not more. So get in touch with us. Let us know what's going on in your neck of the woods and what we should be doing. And and, you know, if I'm doing something wrong, let me know.
And again, you can, you can get to us on Facebook at Let's Talk Clermont podcast. You can also email us at info@let'stalkclermont.com. Info at let's talk clermontdot com. So, I'm gonna try something new. Okay. This is a a podcast for new things, I think. So I'm gonna, close out try to start closing out all of our episodes with a little bit of olive wisdom. Olive Olivia is my five year old girl, and, you know, I'm sure most fathers say this about their children that, you know, they just say, you know, funny crazy things, but I genuinely think she does. So here's your olive wisdom for the day. I was putting her to bed, a couple days ago, and she said she was scared of of giraffes.
And I asked her why she was scared of giraffes, And she said, I quote, I know mouths are for eating and bums are for pooping and tails are for wagging, but why are their necks so long and why do they have pointy ears like raccoons? And I, I don't know why they have pointy ears like raccoons, but if you do, please let me know so we can let Olive know. Thanks again for listening, and, we'll see you next time.
Introduction and Podcast Overview
Meet Patrick Ventarello
Purpose of the Podcast
Podcast Structure and Value for Value Model
Pork Chop Update
Interview with Paige Craig
Clermont County Genealogical Society
Genealogy Records and Archives
Beginning Genealogy
Census Records and DNA Testing
Marriage and Death Records
History of Clermont County
Clermont County Lineage Societies
Historical Cemeteries in Clermont County
Museums and Historical Sites
Genealogy Research Tips
Daughters of the American Revolution
Underground Railroad in Clermont County
Upcoming Events in Clermont County
Closing Remarks and Olive Wisdom
