RETURN TO OHIO PART II

Wednesday morning we met my cousin Jim at his hotel and spent a little time looking over pictures and catching up on the past 40 years or so before heading out to visit a few cemeteries to look for the burial sites of our ancestors.  We visited two cemeteries: St. John the Baptist in Landeck and St. John the Evangelist in Delphos. We found three couples who were our 2nd great grandparents:  Johann Wagner (1821-1895)  and his second wife Sophie; Nicholas (1832-1910) and Margaretha Mueller (1831-1892); and Hermann Frecker and his wife Bernadina Wrocklage:

 

 

We also found our great grandparents Charles and Susanna Mueller. 

 

In the afternoon, we spent time in the Delphos Public Library, looking for any information on our families that had once lived there.  Jim had been in the library the previous day, and was anxious to show me a binder full of information on the Wrocklage, Esch, Frecker and other families.  He recognized some of his father's letters and his handwriting on other documents, and realized that this binder contained much information that we thought had been lost in the flood at the Ottawa Library. Somehow this small piece of the 6 binders his father had donated to the Ottawa library had been either transferred or copied and sent to Delphos.  We were both thrilled and Jim convinced the librarian to copy the entire binder and send it to him for a fee.  (Jim also offered a generous donation to the library.)  After he receives the binder, he will make a second copy and send it to me.  So this first day of research was quite successful.

 

On the second day of research, we spent time at Gethsamani Cemetery in Lima.  Here we found the graves of all of our Schulien and Mueller relatives, including our grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles, great aunts and great uncles.  Here are our Mueller grandparents' headstones:

 

  

We also found the resting places of our great grandparents, Joseph and Mary Schulien, and our aunt Marcie and Uncle Charlie, as well as Jim's mother and three brothers.

 

 

 Then I found the headstones of my Brennan grandparents and great grandparents, as well as my Brennan 2nd great grandparents, the immigrant couple, Ned and Mary Brennan, which I did not expect to find.

Their names (Ned and Mary) are not inscribed - only the Brennan surname and the dates of their deaths.  But these are the correct dates and so I am certain this is the correct headstone.

After a very successful, albeit sad walk through the cemetery, we went to the Allen County Historical Society Museum and I copied some records from a Brennan file they have there.  We also took pictures of exhibits in the museum and this one brought back memories:

When I was a little girl visiting my grandmother, I used to hear the horse-drawn milk cart coming down the street early in the morning.  I don't know when they switched to actual milk trucks, but this type of vehicle was still being used when I was a small girl. 

We met up with my cousin Tim in the museum and all piled in one car to drive around town and see the houses we remembered.  Many of them needed paint and were not in good condition, but it brought back many memories. 

Here's my Brennan grandparents' old house:

And my Grandma Bernie Mueller's house:

At Grandma Bernie's house, Jim and I rang the bell and Jim asked if we could come in and look around.  Though the owner of the house looked suspicious, she graciously granted our request.  It wasn't the same, of course, and the current owners had not done much to the inside or the outside to keep it in good condition, but nonetheless, it was quite an experience to be back in the house after nearly 50 years.  (My grandmother died in that house a little over 50 years ago, in 1963.)

Here's a picture of our mothers when they were little girls, sitting on the front porch with their uncle Rod:

And here are Jim and me, sitting on that same porch a few days ago:

Only the railing has changed.

We also drove past my Schulien great grandparents' house, as well as a brick mansion once owned by wealthy friends of the family. 

This house was in great shape, and Jim and I reminisced about the tunnel between the house and the four car garage.  The tunnel was put in so that the couple who helped maintain the house, and who lived in an apartment above the garage, would not have to walk in the snow to reach the main house. I suppose it was also handy for the two bachelor owners of the house when they parked their cars in the garage in the winter.   


We made a short visit to the house of my mother's cousin, Paul, who is 80 years old, and he told us some wonderful stories about the family, including the fact that my great grandmother, Mary Schulien, used to cook Sunday dinner for German prisoners of war who were living not far from Lima during WW II.  Apparently the prisoners worked in her son's foundry during the week, and she was asked to cook them a German meal on the weekend.  

Then it was time to say good-bye to both Jim and Tim, and spend a quiet evening trying to absorb all that we saw over the past two days.  The days of visiting with my mother's family, and gathering information about her ancestors had come to an end and the next days would be spent with my father's family, visiting and catching up with the Brennans on the years we've been apart.