October 16, 2009

The View from Donn Piatt’s Tomb

Posted by Megan-Marie under Logan, Piatt Family Cemetery | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
[5] Comments 
The titular view on a stunning autumn day.

The titular view on a stunning autumn day.

I’m actually surprised to realize that I’ve never posted about the Piatts before, apart from the one where I combined it with a quick visit to Mt. Tabor. Mostly I’m surprised because I am a bit of an afficianado of all things Piatt. Why? Because I work there. At the Piatt Castles, that is. www.piattcastles.org. Come on by sometime ;)

Like most people, I feel a certain affinity for Donn Piatt. I don’t know why most people do and I cringe to be a cliché, but, well, I like him. One of my favorite locations is up on top of his crypt. There’s a great view of the valley, and it’s very quiet and peaceful. As far as climbing up on a mausoleum is concerned, well, as I told my (non-headstoner) friend the first time I did it, “If he didn’t want people climbing up here, he shouldn’t have put a poem up there.” (It’s illegible. But I’ll get to that.)

The Piatt family are, at present, chiefly of note because of the two houses, the eponymous Piatt Castles, Mac-A-Cheek and Mac-O-Chee, which are about a mile and a half apart outside of scenic West Liberty, Ohio. A lot of the houses in this area, at one time or another, were owned by a Piatt at some point. Abram Piatt had a number of kids, and it is his descendants now who own the Castles and maintain them.

Of course the business that concerns me today is the cemetery, which is a favorite of mine judging by frequency of visit alone. Working in the house that someone lived in while they were alive definitely makes one feel a lot closer to the person or persons interred; I’ve stood in either house and tried to imagine knowing the people who lived there, I’ve stood at the tomb and tried to imagine Donn and Abram as boys playing in the valley, as men coming up to the cemetery to bury their loved ones, and the funeral procession bringing them to their final resting place.

Colonel Donn Piatt's Tomb

Colonel Donn Piatt's Tomb

Donn Piatt’s tomb, like his house, is the more ornate and noticable of the two. It was constructed first, and is the final resting place not only of Donn, but of his and Abram’s parents, Benjamin and Elizabeth, of his son Charles, and of his two wives, Louisa and Ella. Donn’s life was filled with a lot of tragedy: he and Louisa were totally in love with each other; they were both writers and they traveled a great deal. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with “consumption” (not necessarily tuberculoses), and all through the Civil War struggled with bad health. Mac-O-Chee castle was originally a cottage he built for her so she could come out to the country where rest and fresh air might heal her; but she died two weeks after the cottage was finished. They’d had two children, the son Charles, who died at age 2 from cholera, and a stillborn daughter. The medallion atop the tomb features Louisa’s profile; on the verso is a grieving poem Donn wrote for her. (more…)

 

October 9, 2009

Son of Hatchetman

Posted by Megan-Marie under Harrod, Logan | Tags: , , , , , , , , , |
[6] Comments 

So back in January when I was working on our exposé on the Hatchetman Murders, I discovered to my chagrin that I had never taken pictures of the tombstone of Henry Hellman, old Andy’s son. Recently, we went back there and did that, and I thought, well, hey, might as well put something together that reviews the cemetery itself in official Headstoner style. So I’m back on it.

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As I described in my final Hatchetman post, “Harrod Cemetery is of a decent size, was established in 1898, though it has graves dating from before then, and is still in use. Some graves go back into the trees, but I don’t recommend poking around because the cemetery is fiercely bordered by poison ivy. It is well-maintained . . . Common last names include the eponymous ‘Harrod,’ as well as ‘Abel’ and ‘Oder.’ There is only one road through the cemetery, with two exits (or entrances, or one exit and one entrance), and the side closest to the twp. road is where the more modern burials are/continue to take place.”

It is one of the early Headstoner cemeteries, to be sure, and a lot of our research on the Andrew Hellman case influenced us in the founding of this website and our Headstoning cause of, well, you know, Headstoning (vb. To go from cemetery to cemetery to look at headstones). We go there a lot, frequently to kill time, or just as often to eat pickanick style. So I got to thinking that Herrod deserves a more thorough writeup of its own merits apart from the presence of the urban legendary Andrew “Hatchetman” Hellman.
log-har-Jun202009-HenryBut before we move away from the Hellmans entirely, I would like to dedicate a moment to dear Henry, dear Henry. Henry Hellman is one of my favorite dead guys. My surprise that I had previously never taken a picture of his tombstone before was partially fueled by the fact that it’s one of the neatest. His name (there’s a closeup in the gallery at the end) is all cool and wavy.

Just to recap the story briefly, Henry managed to escape the fate of his brother and sister (if, indeed, they were poisoned; Andrew repeatedly denied that he had murdered his children, but Henry himself asserted that poison was involved in his siblings’ deaths). The day his father killed his mother, Mrs. Hellman had sent him to her brother’s house (one of the Abels in the area), and this was how he avoided that fate as well. Check out my other posts on the Hellmans if you want more of the story. There’s a really fascinating anecdote about the young Henry (age 12, as I recall) being brought to the jail to see his father. Just because I don’t want to do the whole thing a third time, I’ll sum up with Henry living a good, full life, having married and had a daughter. On to the rest of the cemetery!
(more…)

 

January 4, 2009

Family Ties — pt. 1

Posted by Kristine under Franklin, Green Lawn Cemetery | Tags: , |
[2] Comments 

Even though I was born and spent a lot of time in California, I can’t deny that Ohio is the very firm foundation of my roots. I had never realized quite how deeply those roots went until I started doing genealogy and getting interested in cemeteries. Thus, this post was born — a combination of a cemetery addiction and my love of uncovering my past.

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The Sophas--my maternal great-grandparents

The Sophas--my maternal great-grandparents

For as long as I can remember, I only knew where two family members were buried. Okay, I take that back, it’s three–the Sophas. Arthur, Julia, and Robert Sopha, my grandparents and great-uncle, respectively. At least a couple times a year my maternal grandmother would go visit her parents to clean up their graves and at least once we happened to be back in Ohio visiting ,so I got to go. I didn’t really know who they were, but it was something cool we got to do. They’re buried in section 96 of Green Lawn in Columbus. She was a housewife who died in 1968; her husband followed in 1976. Obviously given that I was born in 1985, you can figure out whether I ever met them. They were Germans, with Arthur immigrating in the early 1920s with his parents. I haven’t found out yet when she came over, but she did sometime before 1925 considering that’s when they married. Their headstones are actually under that bush in the picture… I guess my grandmother doesn’t get out there as much anymore.

The open space where Robert is buried

The open space where Robert is buried

Someday if I ever manage to become rich, I’d like to buy a headstone for Robert. He died when he was only 8 months old of cholera, my grandmother’s brother (Julie and Arthur’s firstborn). I remember that there used to be a tree there (and believe it was even there the first time Megan and I visited), but it has since been taken away so now the heastone next to him is the only way I know to find him. I remember visiting here with my grandmother as well. It’s a real shame that he’s unmarked.
Now that I’ve rambled about them for a while, I’ll move on to other people also in Green Lawn that I much more recently learned about. I swear this eventually moves away from there. While we’re discussing Sophas, I suppose I’ll go to Otto and Elsa–Arthur’s parents. They are buried not too far from their son and daughter-in-law and even closer to Robert. They were also really from Germany and came over with Arthur in the 1920s. He was also here earlier, but I don’t know the story behind that. So yes, that is all the Sophas in Green Lawn :) Actually, I think there might be a brother in there, but I’m not sure.
Otto Sopha

Otto Sopha

Elsa Sopha

Elsa Sopha

3rd great-grandmother

3rd great-grandmother

I also discovered that I have several relatives from my dad’s side of the family are buried in Green Lawn as well. They’re all from my father’s, father’s, mother’s side of the family. I don’t know as much about them, except that my 3rd great-grandmother died 59 years ago yesterday getting hit by a taxi, ironically a stone’s throw from Green Lawn. It was a really wintery January night and I believe she was walking home from a church activity. She’s buried next to her husband, Philip, who died in 1947 and has an identical headstone. She was from Ohio, but he immigrated from Germany in 1882. Who has a lot of German in her? Oh yeah. This is also the cool/weird marriage in the family where her maiden name and her married name were the same.

Martha Magdaline Leiendecker

Martha Magdaline Leiendecker

Their daughter is buried on the other side of Green Lawn, the mother of my still-living great-grandmother. Martha actually died in childbirth, I believe of her ninth child. I obviously never knew her, but imagine she was kind of strict from the general impression I’ve gotten of my great-grandmother’s life growing up. Also buried here with her is her son, Edward Richard Hauck, who died at the age of 10. I was going to say I didn’t know what of, but it was trench mouth. Genealogy makes you realize how young so many people died years ago, but that is an aside.

Near to the Haucks are my Wetzel relatives, who are my great-grandmother’s father’s side.

Albert Hauck, 2nd great-grandfather

Albert Hauck, 2nd great-grandfather

Amelia Wetzel Hauck (remarried and became Yeager), 3rd great-grandmother

Amelia Wetzel Hauck (remarried and became Yeager), 3rd great-grandmother

Frederick and Margaretha Iftner Wetzel, 4th great-grandparents from Germany

Frederick and Margaretha Iftner Wetzel, 4th great-grandparents from Germany

I had every intention of including my relatives from Amanda, Ohio, in this post, but it’s well past my bedtime and I think it’s better at this point to just get something posted. Mostly with this I wanted to show the more personal side of cemetery hunting. It means even more knowing the story behind the name on the stone, but makes it interesting wondering about the history of the other stones. Sometimes they give hints, but most of the time an entire life is reduced into a name and two dates.
 

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