Last week, I shared with you my return to Dayton’s Old Greencastle Cemetery and some of my family’s history there. This time, I’m branching out into the cemetery to see what stories I can uncover. One of them is definitely bittersweet and involves a father and son who both saw military action but ended up with very different fates.

Phil showed me a Union soldier’s marker that was close to my great-great-grandfather Samuel’s for a man named Robert Fisher and that his was a story worth sharing. It is believed that Robert was a former slave who had escaped from his native Kentucky at the time of his enlistment.

Born in 1837, Robert went by more than one last name. You can find him going by Fisher, Burditt (or Burdett), and Johnson. When I did research a few years back on some young men who had enlisted in the U.S. Colored Troops in Charleston, S.C., I learned that this was fairly common at the time.

Runaway Slave Enlists in the Union Army

Robert was 26 when enlisted at Camp Danville in Kentucky on Aug. 18, 1864. Camp Nelson was established in 1863 as a recruiting station and quartermaster supply base for military operations into East Tennessee.

In the spring of 1864, when African-American soldiers were finally allowed to be recruited and trained in Kentucky, Camp Nelson became the largest center for U.S. Colored Troops in the state. Thousands of slaves and free men of color flocked to Camp Nelson to enlist and train for the U.S. Army. Many of the soldiers’ families came, too, seeking refuge.

Robert was placed as a private with the Battery G of the 12th USCT Heavy Artillery. I don’t know exactly what Robert did or saw. But according to what I’ve read, the 12th served railroad guard duty at various points in Tennessee and Alabama on line of the Nashville & Northwestern Railroad until December 1864.

The 12th was attached to the 2nd Colored Brigade, District of the Etowah, Department of the Cumberland, to January 1865, with defenses of Nashville & Northwestern Railroad, District of Middle Tennessee, to May 1865. They were also involved in the 3rd Sub-District, District Middle Tennessee, Department of the Cumberland, to January 1866. Robert’s records indicate he mustered out in April 1866 in Louisville, Ky.

Return to Dayton

I don’t know what Robert married Emma Morgan but it was before 1870 and they had six children: Walter, William, Mame, Emma, Clara, and Robert. The 1880 Census lists them as living in what is now Huber Heights (a suburb of Dayton) at that time with Robert working as a farmhand.

By 1890, Robert had lived in the Old Soldier’s Home in Dayton briefly before moving to the newly opened Marion Branch, National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers in Marion, Ind. He was possibly suffering from wounds incurred during his time in the Civil War. He would have been 56 by then. It wasn’t until I uncovered what happened later that I realized his family situation had possibly deteriorated to the point that separating from them may have been by choice.

Robert and Emma’s oldest son, Walter (born in 1870), followed in his father’s footsteps when he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to Co. K of the Ninth Cavalry. Known as the Buffalo Soldiers, the Ninth was one of the Army’s four segregated African-American regiments. It saw combat during the Indian and Spanish–American Wars. During Westward Expansion, the regiment provided security for the early Western settlers and defended the American borders against Indian bands, Mexican encroachment, and criminal elements.

I could find nothing about what Walter personally did as part of the Ninth Cavalry but I believe at the time he was serving, his company was stationed at Fort Robinson near Crawford, Nebraska.

Brother Against Brothers

By 1894, Walter was back in Dayton working in a the saloon the family owned on Auburn Street with his siblings. According to a newspaper article I read, it was located in a neighborhood with a bad reputation where brawls and shootings were common. There was bad blood between the youngest Fisher son, 15-year-old Robert Jr., and his brothers. The feud reached a boiling point on Aug. 21, 1894 when Robert walked into the saloon and shot Walter dead. He was 24 years old.

An additional article mentioned  that Walter’s girlfriend, Nettie Simpson, committed suicide by overdosing on morphine shortly after hearing of his violent demise.

By contrast, the article describes Robert Sr. as “a hard-working and honest colored man. He is of Herculean build, and yet is a peaceable and law-abiding citizen.” It made me wonder what happened to this family over the years to bring it to this sad state of affairs. Did Robert Sr. wash his hands of the situation and seek refuge in Marion, Ind. because of it?

On Dec. 14, 1894, Robert Jr. was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three years in the penitentiary despite his attorney’s request that he be sent to reform school. That same year, in October, William Fisher was accused of being involved with murdering two veterans with the assistance of two of his sisters. He, too, was charged with manslaughter. But if William served any time for it, he was back home by 1900 when the U.S. Census notes he was tending bar again on Auburn Street with his mother and siblings.

Robert Sr. died in 1917 at the age of 80, his remains returned to Dayton for burial in Old Greencastle. He had no marker at that time but the SUV fellows ordered one for him. William died the same year at age 46 and is buried in an unmarked grave at Old Greencastle. Robert Jr. died in Michigan in 1929 and is also buried in an unmarked grave. Brother Henry died in 1939 and sister Mary in 1919, both buried in unmarked graves. I could not trace Emma’s whereabouts but she had moved to be near Robert Jr. in Detroit during the 1920s.

A Musical Minister

I did find the grave of someone who had an association with the original church connected with Old Greencastle Cemetery.

A native of Virginia, the Rev. William R. Rhinehart was born in 1800 and wed Barbara Bender in 1824. According to his Find a Grave memorial, he was composer of hymns and songs in addition to being a Church of the Brethren pastor. He, Barbara, and their son William were living in Clear Spring, Md. in the 1830s when he published a singing school book of songs.

If you read my first blog post about Old Greencastle Cemetery, you know that its name comes from the “Greencastle Circuit” of the United Brethren churches (a sect from Germany that still exists today) to which the church belonged. The Greencastle plat itself predates 1826 and is one of the oldest in Dayton.

Rev. Rhinehart belonged to the United Brethren and his association with them eventually brought him to Dayton. I believe he was employed by the original Miami Chapel United Brethren Church that was next to Old Greencastle Cemetery. It is mentioned in his will. That church was torn down and rebuilt in 1912 but is unoccupied today. Son William married Elizabeth Felker in 1855 and worked as a carpenter.

Rev. Rhinehart died in 1861 at the age of 61. His wife, Barbara, died in 1881 at age 81. Both of them have markers at Old Greencastle. William died in 1914 but does not have a marker.

An Anonymous Collection

I’m going to finish out this post with something I don’t normally do. As is typical of many cemeteries, you’ll find markers that may have had a name on them that has since worn away or been broken off. That doesn’t make them any less meaningful, but perhaps more mysterious.

This first heart-shaped one appealed to me because of the colorful glass pieces inserted around the edges. My grandfather used to have a stone bench at his house in Centerville, Ohio that looked similar. The hummingbird at the stop is especially whimsical.

Then there’s this cast iron lamb, which has seen better days. I am guessing it was meant for a child’s grave. There is no name on it.

Then there’s this last one that I first saw in 2012 and fell in love with. I have no idea who this little stone house was built for but if you look closely, you can see the word “Father” on the roof. I had to take a picture of it again. Was this man a carpenter? A builder? I’ll probably never know.

Saying goodbye to Old Greencastle Cemetery was harder this time because I had a stronger connection to it now and had met the people taking care of my ancestors’ final resting place. I am grateful to the local volunteers who come out for clean up days and the folks to the SUV, Sherman Camp #93 that continue to care for the graves as best they can. It’s not an easy task.

Old Greencastle’s future looks bright, despite the fact there are no funds to maintain it and the city has no interest in providing any. There are going to be times when it looks a little rough around the edges, especially during the summer when the grass grows quickly. But this is a fate common to many old, abandoned cemeteries facing similar circumstances. I feel blessed that this one is getting any attention at all.

Next time, I’ll be exploring Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery, where more of my family is buried.

 

 

 

 

 

Today I begin a two-part series on a place I’ve written about before and that I have an ancestral connection to: Dayton, Ohio’s Old Greencastle Cemetery.

In October 2018, after a stop in Cincinnati at Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum, my mother, sister, and I continued on to Dayton about 50 miles north. Dayton is where my parents are from and the area where my sister and I were born. We moved to Georgia when I was five years old, but we’ve always returned to visit family and take trips down memory lane.

It wasn’t until around 2008 after my son was born that I started researching my family tree. There was so much I didn’t know and certainly not where most of my ancestors were buried.

That research resulted in a 2012 visit to Old Greencastle Cemetery that I wrote about in this post and then an update and then another update in 2014. It was in terrible shape in 2012 because the owner didn’t care about it and has since vanished. The only section that was mowed in any fashion was the veterans’ area.

Those posts detail the history of Old Greencastle and how my great-great-grandfather (1837-1912) Samuel Grice served as a Union soldier during the Civil War as a member of the 93rd Ohio Infantry. When he died of heart disease on May 11, 1912 at the age of 74, he was buried at Old Greencastle Cemetery with no marker. His wife, Margaret, doesn’t have one either. She died in 1919.

I had stayed in touch with Fred Lynch, senior vice commander of the Sons of Union Veterans, Major General William T. Sherman Camp #93, over the years, enjoying the updates he sent me on how the cemetery was doing. It’s been mostly thanks to him and the other SUV volunteers that any mowing, trimming, or repairs have been done. On occasion, Montgomery County Commissioner Debbie Lieberman has sent over the community pride clean-up trailer with landscaping equipment to help out.

I was thrilled in 2018 that I learned from Fred and Phil Brandt (who had been researching Old Greencastle for some time) that the SUV applied to get a veteran’s marker for Samuel and that it had been approved. We would be able to see it during our visit.

My mother, sister, and I met up with Frank and Phil. It was an emotional day for me, finally getting to meet two people who had done so much to help keep this abandoned cemetery from dying. The improvements to Old Greencastle were obvious as we looked around.

It also has a nifty new sign, which I didn’t have a chance to take a picture of that day so I borrowed this one they posted on Facebook in 2019.

The first place they pointed us to was Samuel’s new marker, which they had recently placed. I was a bit teary eyes about it, frankly. It touched my heart that a group of people who had never met me or my family had gone to the trouble of applying for a headstone for Samuel, a man who had not had much in the way of material goods in his lifetime. I wish we had a marker for Margaret as well, but that may come later.

We had wondered how it was that Samuel and Margaret ended up buried in this cemetery. That mystery was solved when Fred located a property map that showed the Grices and Olingers (Margaret’s maiden name) had owned land in the same neighborhood as the cemetery. I had spotted Olinger graves during my 2012 visit.

Two of Samuel’s sons Harry and Wilbert married two sisters, Florence and Cordelia Claar. These two women were the daughters of Louisa Elvira McCoy Claar and John Irwin Claar. That’s where my next Old Greencastle story begins.

The sisters were born in rural Jackson County, Ohio in the 1880s where the Claar family had lived for years. At some point after 1900, the Claars moved to Dayton. Florence married my great-grandfather Harry Grice just a month before her father John died in February 1906. He is buried in Beaver Union Cemetery in Pike County, Ohio.

Cordelia married Wilbert Grice a few months later. Sadly, that marriage would end in divorce some years later. They had one daughter, Margaret.

The next years were hard on Louisa and the remaining siblings. The boys took jobs doing whatever they could, from making cigars to posting signs. Edward and Vinton never married. Mabel worked as a housekeeper until her marriage to Elmer Ellsman.

Edward died at the age of 37 in April 1919. By this time, the family had changed their last name from “Claar” to “Clair” in everything I’ve seen. My guess is that World War I made having a German-sounding last name quite uncomfortable.

You can’t even read Edward’s marker anymore. When I came in 2012, I couldn’t find it amid the tall grass and weeds.

Everett, the oldest, married later in life to a woman named Laura. They would move to Pennsylvania but had no children. He died in 1966 and is buried with Laura in Natrona Heights, Pa. in Mount Airy Cemetery.

Louisa was my father’s grandmother and I do have photos of her later in life. Early in my grandparents’ marriage and the first few years of my father’s life, they lived with my great-grandmother Florence and Harry on Milton Street. That’s about five miles from Old Greencastle. I’m sure Louisa lived nearby. This is the one photo I have of my father, Florence, and Louisa together.

It was this photo we took with us to Dayton on our visit. My mother was holding it as I knelt beside Louisa’s stone. Louisa died in 1941 at the age of 83 after what the newspaper called an 18-month illness. She was living with Cordelia when she died. I feel sad that her marker is homemade and falling apart. But at least she has one.

My great-grandmother, Florence, died in 1945. She is buried with Harry in Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery, a far larger cemetery than Old Greencastle. We’ll visit her grave in a few weeks when I explore that vast burial ground.

Vinton died in 1946 at age 56 and was buried with his mother and Edward. His marker is also in poor condition. Mabel, the youngest, died in 1982 at the age of 87. She is buried with her husband, Elmer, in Dayton Memorial Cemetery.

It’s an understatement to say that these simple gravestone represent a lot to me. These were my ancestors, my family, whom for years I knew nothing about. My father and grandfather never spoke of them.

We dearly hope to provide a new single marker for Louisa, Edward, and Vinton so that something is in place once their markers disintegrate, which will sadly happen sooner than later. I’ve been looking into the expense and how to do it.

I’ve got some more stories to share from Old Greencastle that I know you’ll enjoy. Come back for Part II.

 

 

 

This is the final installment in my series on Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum. Today I’m simply going to share some images from my visits that I really liked. There’s no rhyme or reason to them. In fact, two of them are almost identical.

One thing I always enjoy at any cemetery I visit is peeking inside mausoleums. Sometimes there’s nothing much but on occasion you get some surprises. The Gerrard family mausoleum would fit the latter description.

Rise of the Cantaloupe King

Born in 1860 in the Cincinnati-area community of Cherry Grove, Stephen Gerrard came from a poor family and had little formal education. He supported himself in his youth as a street peddler, but ultimately made his fortune by taking advantage of refrigerated rail cars to transport cantaloupes nationwide, selling them far more widely than previously possible.

His sales of Colorado melons throughout the country’s central and eastern regions made Gerrard wealthy, gaining him the nickname of “Cantaloupe King”. According to his Find a Grave page, he hybridized the Elberta peach and the Honeydew melon.

In 1915, Gerrard and his wife Estelle built a grand mansion at 748 Betula Ave. to show off his hard-won wealth. The Gothic Tudor Revival home featured a variety of decorative touches uncommon in most houses of the era, such as gargoyles, stained glass windows, marble columns, carved plaster ceilings, elaborate fireplace mantles, and Tennessee marble floors.

In 1928, a music room was added as a birthday gift to Estelle that included a huge pipe organ designed by W.W. Kimball of Chicago, earning the mansion the honor of having the largest residential pipe organ in the U.S. (and the first self-playing organ in the world).

End of an Era

Despite severe financial losses during the Great Depression, the Gerrards managed to barely hold onto their mansion until Stephen’s death after a stroke at age 75 in 1936. The mansion was sold in the late 1930s for only $65,000. Estelle, who moved in with her daughter, died in 1947.

The house went through much neglect over the next decades, destroying the functionality of the pipe organ. After being restored and made livable, Gerrard’s mansion was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1987. As of 2017, a young couple was living in the Gerrard mansion.

The Gerrard mausoleum was one of the last of the grand mausoleums built at Spring Grove. Its architecture is typical for the era with a blend of modern classicism and Art Deco. Because the mausoleum was on the property of Spring Grove, the bank technically could not seize the $125,000 structure to pay off Gerrard’s debts.

I especially like the doors. One of the standards of Arts and Crafts architecture and ornament was the use of natural materials and when that was not possible, as in the case of these bronze doors, to use ornament to express the natural world.

Fortunately, I was able to look through the openings in the doors to see inside. While I couldn’t get a good picture of the stained glass, the four statues were impressive. I learned later that they are thought to represent the four seasons.

Grumpy Beer Baron

When I visited Spring Grove back in 2013, I didn’t have time to photograph many grave stones. But I did remember this fellow. When it came time to label his photo in my records, I referred to him as “Grumpy Dead German Guy” so I’d remember it. That probably wasn’t very nice of me but it fits.

My research on George Franz Eichenlaub is a bit spotty. He arrived in America from Germany in the 1830s from a brewing tradition and became a Cincinnati beer baron. He went into business with another German brewer, his son-in-law Joseph Kauffmann, and they were quite successful. Eichenlaub died in 1870 and his frowning visage is on the back of the monument shared by his daughter, Marianne, and Joseph.

The Tiffany’s of Cincinnati

I must have liked the Duhme monument a lot because I photographed it during both of my visits to Spring Grove. The family, originally from Germany, founded a jewelry store in the 1830s that would go on to become known as the Tiffany’s of Cincinnati.

Brothers Henry (born in 1814) and Herman (born 1819) opened up Duhme and Co. on the corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets soon after they arrived in America. At first, they sold high-class goods but by the 1860s they were making and selling silver and jewelry. It became a popular showplace for some of the most beautiful jewelry and silver in the city.

Herman was the one who figured more prominently of the two, in his business and personal life. His first marriage ended in a messy divorce and a rather unhappy second one, although both resulted in the birth of several children. He died in 1888 in St. Clair, Mich. at age 69. Duhme & Co. continued under various iterations until 1928. You can still find Duhme & Co. silver from time to time.

The monument I referred to earlier is actually for Henry, who died in 1874, and his family. The figure of a woman holding an open book on her lap with a child at her knee evokes maternal imagery. Henry and his wife, Louisa, did have several children and I believe only the first, Henry, died in infancy.

The monument was ordered by the New England Granite Works from Westerly Granite in Westerly, R.I., who was responsible for many Spring Grove monuments. The base is made of red Westerly granite and the pedestal/statue of white Westerly granite. It was ordered on Feb. 18, 1889 and arrived on Dec. 13, 1889. This was not long after Herman’s death and his plainer marker was also ordered from Westerly Granite in 1889.

In my research on Westerly Granite, I learned that they also made four of the mausoleums at Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery.

Bringing Home the Bacon

I was also rather taken with the Brill family monument but it wasn’t until this week that I learned that it had a connection to the Duhme monument. It turns out they were both made by Rhode Island’s Westerly Granite.

Born in Germany in 1824, Jacob Brill married Catherine “Katie” Jacobs in their native country sometime in the 1850s. Their only child, Katie, was born around 1855. I’m not sure exactly what year the Brills emigrated to America. But by the 1880 U.S. Census, Jacob was working as a butcher.

Jacob eventually operated his own pork packing facility in Camp Washington and did quite well. He died on Oct. 1, 1896 at age 72. According to newspaper reports, his will left everything to his wife to the tune of over $100,000. That was a lot of bacon back in the day!

On March 1, 1897, Katie ordered the monument via New England Granite Works from Westerly Granite for $4,000. Factoring in inflation, that would have amounted to over $100,000 at that time. I’m not entirely sure that $4,000 figure is correct. Like the Duhme monument, the base is made of red Westerly granite and the pedestal/statue of white Westerly granite.

Female Pallbearers Chosen

Katie died on Sept. 19, 1898 at the age of 68. I found a rather detailed funeral notice for her in the Cincinnati Enquirer. There is no mention of her daughter, Katie, at all. But you can read in the notice that Mrs. Brill had some of her best female friends serve as four of the eight pallbearers, which was highly unusual. The other four pallbearers were her nephews.

Daughter Katie would marry at the age of 44 in 1899 to attorney Carl Nippert, becoming his second wife. Sadly, he died only five years later in 1904 at age 50 of kidney failure. Katie died several years later in 1928 at age 73. Both she and Carl are buried with her parents in the Brill family plot.

Double Vision

You might be amazed to find (as I was) that there is an exact duplicate of the Brill monument’s statue at Spring Grove. The Kreimer family must have seen the Brill one and liked it so much that they contacted New  England Granite Works to purchase one just like it for them from Westerly Granite.

However, the Kreimer monument is made of Barre granite (found in Barre, Vermont) instead of Westerly granite and cost considerably less at $1,200. I’m not sure why. Part of me wonders if the Brill monument actually cost $400. But the two monuments are about the same size. The two bases do have a number of style differences.

Along with his father, Henry, Charles. H. Kreimer operated Kreimer & Brother Furniture Co. He was married to Emma Roehl in 1880 and they had four children together. Son Alfred took over the family business after Charles died of heart failure on July 24, 1923 at the age of 61.

After I posted these two monuments on Twitter, Paula Lemire responded with a photo of the same statue on a monument at Albany Rural Cemetery in New York. That one actually has an anchor on the book the statue is holding.

Sands Through the Hourglass

The last grave marker I’m going to share is not very large or stunning. But I do think it’s a bit out of the ordinary.

Born in Germany in 1825, Conrad Windisch worked for his father in the family brewing business. During the German Revolution of 1848, he emigrated to America and moved around a bit working in breweries in Pittsburgh and St. Louis before landing in Cincinnati in 1850. In 1854, Windisch married Sophia Kobmann, who was from his village back in Germany.

Windisch started his own brewery in 1862 and sold his interest in 1866 to focus on his own interests. With his brother-in-law, Gottlieb Muhlhauser, as well as Muhlhauser’s brother, Henry, Muhlhauser-Windisch & Company was born. It was commonly known as the Lion Brewery because of two stone carved lions atop each of the two gables at the entrance. They were among the first to introduce ice machines and was the city’s second largest during the 1880s.

Conrad Windisch died in 1887 at age 62. His son, William A. Windisch, and later another son, Charles Windisch, kept the brewery going until 1920 when Prohibition forced them to cease operation.

It’s hard to describe Conrad’s marker. It almost looks like an old brick wall with a Medieval window carved out of it. A cut off tree leans in front of the window, symbolizing a life cut short, along with ivy. To me, it evokes a feeling of Conrad’s Old World roots when he was working alongside his father in Germany as a young man.

It’s the winged hourglass at the top of the marker that give it that added charm, emphasizing how times goes so quickly as the years of our life fly by.

As I come to the end of my Spring Grove adventure, I’d like to thank Ken Naegele for taking the time to show me around. Without his guidance, I doubt I would have seen as many of the gems this beautiful burial ground has to offer. Hopefully, we can meet up again when I’m next in Ohio so I can see what I missed.

Next time, I’ll be visiting Old Greencastle Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio again. I have several family members buried there. You won’t want to miss it.