Mightier Acorns

Journeys through Genealogy and Family History

A parody of a family coat of arms designed with acorns as elements, with the motto "ex gladnis potentioribus" Latin for "from Mighty Acorns"
From Mighty Acorns

Category: Ohio

Families that lived in the state and left records behind there.

  • The Ubiquity of Prominence

    Using secondary sources, like the local histories published in the late 1800s and early 1900s, can be a mixed blessing. It depends how much the anonymous authors enjoyed puffing up their subjects!

  • No Fit Ending

    Unearthing things people wanted buried Jessie Callin was the youngest of four children born to James Monroe Callin (1844–1901) and Rosalina Bedora Davenport (1848–1876). She was born in March of 1876, so she was only a few months old when her mother died on 20 September. Her father was the brother of John H. Callin…

  • How our origin story shapes our future A couple of weeks ago, David Shaw of Serengenity made a salient comment (emphasis added) on my post about great-great uncle George’s 1911 Callin Family History: In that time period Genealogy was quite a fad, consequently many are badly written and poorly sourced. Their resources at the time…

  • And how did he know it? George William Callin (1846-1921) was one of us: a genealogist. He was active during a time when Americans enjoyed a newfound sense of optimism and possibility about their place in the world and when average men, like those in his family, were documenting their own lives as if they…

  • The Milton Township Diaspora (part 2) Sarah Montgomery was born in Milton Township, Richland County, Ohio, on 27 December 1824 and married Henry Davidson (1818–1894) in Fulton County, Indiana, on 22 Apr 1841. They took their family—including their adopted niece, Sarah Ferrell—on the Oregon Trail in 1853. In my last post about this family, I…

  • A tale from when the West was still young Once upon a time, several families founded a town in Ohio. Benjamin Montgomery (1766-1841) brought his wife, Nancy, and their six children from Virginia to settle in Weller Township, Richland County, Ohio, where they laid out a town in 1816. Benjamin called the town “Olivesburg” after…

  • When our identity is taboo, it is too easy to be erased from history Note: much of this post is adapted from “You Just Can’t Matcham,” posted on my old Mightier Acorns blog on November 11, 2016. If you are interested in this family, I included a lot more information about George and Emma’s children…

  • Using lessons learned from a different family In January I talked about finding some of my wife’s ancestors in the records of the Society of Friends (also called “Quakers”) in Indiana. As it happens, the skills I picked up as I learned about the Dyer family may help me learn more about my Scottish immigrant…

  • The family of Albert Crydler Huff (1854-1936) Albert C Huff1 (1854-1936) was the son of Lewis Huff and Catherine Stroud, born on 11 Apr 1854 in Findlay, Hancock County, Ohio. He grew up in Hancock County, but by 1875, his rather large family had moved nearly 800 miles southwest to Elsmore Township, Allen County, Kansas.…

  • William “Zardie” Sly (1882–1954) – a.k.a. Jack St. Clair William Zardie Sly (1882–1954) took his middle name from his maternal grandfather, Gilbert Zardius Avery; most of the references I have found refer to him as “Zardy,” or by his initials “W.Z.” which probably served to distinguish him from the generations of William Slys related to…