Monthly Archives: April 2021

Bee Hives and Bicycles: Remembering Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, Part IV

30 Friday Apr 2021

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Having dealt with some of the more famous residents of Woodland Cemetery, I’m going to share some of the monuments I just like for their visual appeal. This monument for the Beckel family certainly qualifies. It’s one of the few I’ve ever seen that has a bee hive on the top. I will add that I have seen an actual hornet’s nest on a monument but that’s a story for another time (and cemetery).

The Beckel monument has a flowered wreath. According to a Facebook post I saw from someone who recently photographed it, actual bees crawl in and out of the flowers holes.

A native of Cornwall in England, Daniel Beckel was born in 1813. At age 16, he assisted his step-father, a civil engineer, who worked on the construction of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Afterward, they became the contractors that constructed the great St. Mary’s Reservoir for the Miami Canal.

A 1912 postcard for the Beckel Hotel, whose construction began in 1853 by Daniel Beckel on property once owned by the Huffman family. Due to the Civil War, the hotel would not be finished until after Daniel’s death in 1862. (Photo source: Ebay.com.)

After that, Beckel came to Dayton and started building the Beckel House (a hotel) in 1853. The Civil War slowed its progress and it was completed after he died. In connection with William Dickey and Joseph Clegg, Beckel established a private bank and was almost the sole owner of the Miami Valley and Dayton Banks. Beckel was also elected to the Ohio Legislature (in 1851), was secretary of the Dayton Hydraulic Co. in 1845 and president of the first gas company, Dayton Gas Light & Coke Co. in 1849. To say he was a busy man would be an understatement.

Beckel married Ohio native Susan Harshman in 1845. They would have 12 children but only five would live past their teenage years. One of them, Daniel Jr., died in 1867 at the age of 14 in a much publicized carriage accident.

Daniel Beckel was only 14 when he died in a carriage accident. He shares an inscription with his sister, Mary.

Daniel Beckel Sr. died on Feb. 26, 1862 at the age of 48 from apoplexy. The biography I read of him surmised it was from overwork. Susan died in 1890 at the age of 66.

I noticed when I photographed one side of the monument that the name “Ladow” was inscribed on it. It’s a rare treat to find a stone mason’s name on a marker so I looked him up. Lo and behold, I found an entire newspaper article from the Nov. 19, 1862 Daily Empire describing it in great detail. That’s even more rare. It’s possible that Ladow wrote it himself and purchased advertising space for it to be published.

This article from the 1862 Daily Empire describes Daniel Beckel’s monument. It states that the monument was 20 feet high but it didn’t look nearly that tall when I saw it so perhaps the base was reduced.

One of Daniel and Susan’s daughters, Annie, would marry Torrance Huffman. Torrance was the son of William P. Huffman and brother of George P. Huffman, Sr. George started what became the Huffy Bicycle around 1892. Let’s go across the street to the Huffman family vault, which is definitely an eye-catcher.

Huffman Family Empire

There are 89 Huffmans buried at Woodland and many of them are connected to the family whose name is at the core to a bicycle empire. A monument on top of the Huffman vault bears the name and profile of William Huffman (1769-1866). A native of New Jersey, William married Lydia Knott around 1801. They would have one son and four daughters.

The Huffman family vault is rather unique for being an in-ground burial space with a monument on top.

William and Lydia gave their son, William P. Huffman, a good education. He read law with Warren Munger, Sr., however, with the view of not adopting the law as a profession, but as a means of being more thoroughly equipped for a successful business career. William spent 10 years in farming before devoting the rest of his life to banking, real estate, and in extensive building operations.

Lydia died at the age of 86 in 1865 and William died the following year at age 96. I don’t think it was his idea to create this vault but I don’t know for sure. I think it was likely son William who made the arrangements for that. I can’t say I’ve seen an in-ground vault like the Huffman one with such a handsome monument on top. I’m thinking it possibly came years later when grandson William Huffman, Jr., who was a limestone dealer in the 1870s, might have procured it. William Jr. is also entombed within the Huffman vault with his wife, Emily.

The Huffman monument, which bears the name of William Huffman and his wife, Anna, and his grandson William Jr. and his wife, Emily, is exquisitely carved.

William P. Huffman has his own monument in another part of Woodland and I didn’t have the opportunity to photograph it. His son, George P. Huffman,learned much from his father and studied law as he had. George was active in banking, real estate, and investing. It was he who started Davis Sewing Machine in 1892, which later became Huffy Bicycle (known then as Dayton Bicycle). One of the company’s first designs, the “Dayton Special Roadster,” was rolled out in 1899 on cylindrical ball hubs, 23-inch tires, and wooden rims. Like the Wright brothers with their successful bicycle shop, the Huffman were joining in on the bicycle craze of the era.

George, who suffered from the kidney malady Bright’s Disease, died young from a stroke at age 35 in 1897. His wife, Maude McKee Huffman, did not remarry and died in 1927. Their son, Horace (1885-1945) would guide the family fortunes into even greater success as Huffy Bicycles became a household name.

“To Live in Hearts We Leave Behind is Not to Die”

A native of England, George Jackson Roberts (1834-1910) was a water pump manufacturer. He and his wife, Adelia, had one daughter, Mary “Minnie” Roberts in 1865. Minnie would eventually marry John Jamieson in 1892, who went to work for her father. Minnie and John, along with their son, George, lived with her parents according to the 1900 U.S. Census.

The first person buried in the Roberts plot was Minnie’s younger brother, George Clarence Roberts. Tragically, he died in San Diego, Calif. from a sudden illness at the age of 30 in 1891 only three weeks after he was married to a woman named Nellie Gerkins. His body was brought back to Dayton to be buried at Woodland.

There’s a monument quite similar to this one at Atlanta’s Westivew Cemetery. A lone woman sits with her head propped up, gazing pensively down. Maybe that’s why this one pulls at my heartstrings.

It’s unknown when this monument was carved but the first person buried in the Roberts plot was young George Clarence Roberts, who died at age 30 in 1892.
Is this the likeness of Minnie Roberts Jamieson? I don’t know but it’s possible.

Minnie died in 1906 on March 23, 1906 at age 40. I was unable to find out what her cause of death was. Her father, George, died a few years later in 1910, at age 76 from a heart ailment.

John Jamieson remarried to Leonora Piper, who was 17 years his junior. Minnie and John’s son, George Robert Jamieson, made a name for himself as an artist, architect and book seller. He died on Sept. 9, 1929 at age 31 from a heart ailment. John Jamieson died in 1935 at the age of 73. His second wife, Leonora, is buried with her parents in another cemetery. She died in 1977.

The deaths of three members of the Roberts clan at relatively young ages is heartbreaking to think about. I suppose that’s why the words on the monument are rather haunting. “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”

Inscription on the Roberts family monument.

I’ll be back next time to wrap up my series on Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum.

The mournful face of an angel on the McMillen family monument. Ceralvo G. McMillen, a popular owner and manager of hotels, served as mayor of Dayton in 1892 and 1894. He died in 1922 at age 74.

Diamond in the Gem City: Remembering Dayton, Ohio’s Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, Part III

23 Friday Apr 2021

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Last week, I shared how Dayton’s Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum was established. I also talked about Dayton’s own Erma Bombeck, and flight innovators Wilbur and Orville Wright. This week, I’ve got two more talented people to talk about that you may not have heard of before.

View of a hillside at Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum.

In the late 1840s, Major William D. Bickham of the Dayton Journal began a campaign to nickname Dayton the “Gem City.” The name was adopted by the city’s board of trade several years later. Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar referred to the nickname in his poem, “Toast to Dayton”, as noted in the following excerpt:

She shall ever claim our duty,
For she shines—the brightest gem
That has ever decked with beauty
     Dear Ohio’s diadem.

Poet of the Gem City

It’s fitting that I mention this poem because Dunbar is buried at Woodland. I’d heard his name associated with Woodland over the years but honestly knew little about him. I learned Dunbar was one of the first influential black poets in American literature, and was internationally acclaimed for his dialectic verse.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was the child of two former slaves. His father, Joshua, volunteered for the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first two black units to serve in the war. The senior Dunbar also served in the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment. Paul was born on June 27, 1872. His sister, Lizzie, was born in 1873 but she died in 1876 at the age of two. By that time, Joshua had already left the family. He died in 1885 when Paul was 13.

Matilda took in laundry to support her and Paul while he attended school. He often read to his mother in the evenings, his interest in poetry and literature already apparent. By 14, Dunbar had poems published in the Dayton Herald. He was the only student of color at Dayton’s Central High School, where he befriended Orville Wright. Not long after, Orville dropped out of school to start a printing enterprise with brother, Wilbur. The brothers published the short-lived black newspaper, the Dayton Tattler and Dunbar wrote for it. But it folded after six weeks.

The only student of color at Dayton’s Central High School, Paul Dunbar was elected president of the school’s literary society, and became the editor of the school newspaper and a debate club member.

As a man of color, Dunbar struggled to find work and eventually took a job as an elevator operator, which enabled him time to write on the side. With the help of a former teacher, he gave his first public poetry reading on his birthday in 1892. A journalist was impressed enough that he published a letter of praise in various newspapers, garnering significant national attention for the young poet. Dunbar published his first book of poems, “Oak and Ivy”, in 1892. It was a combination of traditional verse along with poems written in Southern black dialect, the latter drawing a great deal of attention.

Expanding into Short Stories and Novels

Over the next years, Dunbar wrote more poetry and began to venture into short stories and novels. In 1893, he spoke at the World’s Fair and met Frederick Douglass, who called him “the most promising young colored man in America.” He moved to Toledo, Ohio and in 1896 published his second book of poetry, “Majors and Minors.” The book was a success and he was invited to present his poetry in England.

After returning, Dunbar married a young writer and teacher named Alice Ruth Moore. He took a job at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. for a short time but Alice encouraged him to focus on his writing so he quit. His first collection of short stories, Folks From Dixie (1898) had favorable reviews. But his first novel, The Uncalled, published that year was not as successful.

George Walker, Adah Overton Walker, and Bert Williams dance the cakewalk in the first Broadway musical to be written and performed by African-Americans, “In Dahomey.” Dunbar wrote the lyrics.

Dunbar’s essays and poems were published widely in leading journals, including Harper’s Weekly and the Saturday Evening Post. In collaboration with composer Will Marion Cook and author Jesse A. Shipp, who wrote the libretto, Dunbar wrote the lyrics for “In Dahomey”, the first musical written and performed entirely by African-Americans. It was produced on Broadway in 1903, and successfully toured England and the United States over four years

Sadly, Dunbar’s health suffered from his time in D.C. and in 1900 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, so he and Alice moved to Colorado. Their marriage was already crumbling as he turned to whiskey to treat his symptoms, something his doctors encouraged at the time. He and Alice separated in 1902 but never divorced. Dunbar returned to Dayton to be with his mother. He died on Feb. 9, 1906 at the age of 33. His mother died about a year later. She did not have a marker until 1940 when the students of Dunbar High School raised funds to provide one for her.

Despite dying at the young age of 33, Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote 25 books, 15 essays, over 100 poems, 35 song lyrics, 24 short stories, nine musical shows, and four plays. His sister, Lizzie, is buried beside him.

His gravestone along the roadside at Woodland is overshadowed by a willow tree planted there. That tree refers to a poem by Dunbar called “A Death Song”. The first verse is on his stone, but there were two more verses.

Lay me down beneaf de willers in de grass,
Whah de branch ‘ll go a-singin’
as it pass.

The second verse describes a lake that is now filled in. A stained glass window in the Dunbar room of Woodland Mausoleum shows the view explained in that verse. Had I known about it ahead of time, I would have looked for it when I went there in search of Charles F. Kettering earlier in my visit.

Innovator and Inventor

Across the way from Erma Bombeck’s grave is Woodland’s mausoleum, built in 1969. I wanted to duck inside to see if I could find the grave of inventor Charles F. Kettering, for whom the city where I was born was named. I ran into Angie Hoschouer, Woodland’s manager of development/marketing, and she pointed me in the right direction.

One of 12 stained glass panels inside Woodland’s modern mausoleum, finished in 1969. These windows were designed by Willet Studios in Philadelphia, Pa.

Born in 1878 in Loudonville, Ohio, Charles F. Kettering entered Ohio State University at age 22, dropping out in his sophomore year because of poor eyesight. Kettering worked for two years as a telephone lineman and then returned to Ohio State, graduating at age 28. He worked for the National Cash Register (NCR) Company, which would eventually become an industry giant. My great-grandfather, grandfather, and father all worked for NCR and it dominated Dayton until it (ironically) moved its headquarters to Atlanta in 2015. While at NCR, Kettering helped develop the first electric cash register.

During these years, Kettering invited other NCR engineers to join him on nights and weekends to tinker on cars at his associate Edward Deeds’s barn. They became known as the Barn Gang, and Kettering was called Boss Ket.

Kettering always regarded himself as a professional amateur. “We are amateurs,” he observed, “because we are doing things for the first time.” “Do something different,” he continually admonished, “My God, do something different.”

From Hand Crank to Electric Ignition

In 1909, Kettering founded the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, known as Delco, with Deeds (also buried at Woodland). Kettering was involved in a number of research projects at Delco, inventing a portable electric generator and many important automobile innovations.

But the most important thing Kettering is credited with is inventing the first electric ignition system for automobiles. This development allowed drivers to start their car without going to the front of the car and turning a hand crank to start the engine. Kettering also invented electric lights for automobiles, enabling night driving.

Art piece in the Kettering family corner in Woodland Cemetery’s mausoleum.

General Motors purchased Delco in 1916 and Kettering was hired as the head of General Motors’ new research division. He became a vice president in 1920. Under his leadership, General Motors also developed diesel engines, safety glass, and the refrigerant Freon. Kettering’s home was the first house in America to have electric air conditioning, through the use of Freon. Kettering retired from General Motors in 1947.

Tomb of Charles F. Kettering. His wife, Olive Leora Williams Kettering (1877-1946) is entombed with him. So is their son, Eugene Williams Kettering (1908-1969).

Kettering also was interested in philanthropic endeavors. In 1945, he and General Motors president Alfred Sloan established the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, located in New York City. Kettering died on Nov. 25, 1958.

I’ll be back soon with more tales from Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum.

The gaze of German immigrant Adam Schantz, Sr. (1839-1902) greets you after you pass through the gates of Woodland Cemetery. Over the years, he operated a butcher shop, a brewery, and a water purification system he patented to create what he called Lily Water. He named it that because the Schanzt family flower was the calla lily.

First in Flight: Remembering Dayton, Ohio’s Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, Part II

16 Friday Apr 2021

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A few weeks ago, I got rather personal in my opening post about Dayton, Ohio’s Woodland Cemetery & Arboretum. In Part II, I’m going to share some history about how Woodland came to be. I should add that on the day I visited Woodland in October 2018, I didn’t have much time so I missed a few things. My photos of the Wright brothers’ graves are actually from a family trip in 2013.

Woodland was established in 1841 with an initial 40 acres in Southeast Dayton. The cemetery’s founder was John Whitten Van Cleve (1801-1858) and one of his claims to fame was being the first male child to be born in Dayton. That led me to look up when Dayton was founded, which was April 1, 1796.

View of Dayton’s skyline from Woodland Cemetery.

Renaissance Man

It appears Van Cleve was a bit of a Renaissance man, interested in doing a little bit of everything. He entered Ohio University at Athens at age 16, teaching Greek and Latin there before graduating. He studied law with Judge Joseph H. Crane, and was admitted to the bar in 1828.

Van Cleve was elected recorder in 1824 and 1828, served three terms as mayor of Dayton between 1830 and 1832, and also served as city engineer. In December 1828, Van Cleve purchased an interest in the Dayton Journal, which he edited until 1834. He was also involved in the druggist business, in partnership with Augustus Newell, their firm being Van Cleve & Newell.

In his later years, Van Cleve became an accomplished musician, painter, botanist, and geologist. As founder of Woodland Cemetery, he served as president of the Woodland Cemetery Association from its inception until his death from tuberculosis in 1858. He is buried at Woodland but I did not have a chance to photograph his monument. So I am taking the liberty of borrowing a photo of it from Find a Grave.

Monument to Woodland Cemetery founder John Van Cleve. His funeral notice describes him as “an old and eminent citizen” but he was only 57 when he died in 1858. (Photo source: S.G. Thompson, FindaGrave.com.

Not Just a Cemetery

Currently spanning 200 acres, Woodland is one of the oldest “garden” cemeteries in the country. It’s not only a final resting place for more than 110,000 people, but is home to a collection of 165 specimens of native Midwestern trees and woody plants. Ornithologists flock to Woodland to get a glimpse of a variety of birds, with special tours provided by Woodland to help those new to the hobby. During the spring, mother foxes and their kits are a common sight.

A few weeks ago, I shared that in all my years of coming to Woodland, I entered through the Waldo Street gate because it was the easiest way to get to my family’s graves. That entrance was created in 1912. The formal entrance of the Romanesque gateway, chapel and office, completed in 1889, are on the National Register of Historic Places. This is how it looked around the turn of the century.

This card, postmarked 1910, shows off Woodland’s Romanesque gateway, chapel, and office. (Photo source: hippostcard.com)

On this visit, accompanied by my cousin, Crystal, and her patient husband Ron (who drove us around), I went in through the front gates.

This is what Woodland’s entrance looks like today (minus the orange construction netting.) The office is on the right.

Woodland’s chapel contains treasures I was unfortunately not able to see because it was closed. But I wanted you to get a look at just one of the 16 Tiffany stained glass windows inside of it. I borrowed it from Woodland’s web site.

This is just one of 16 Tiffany stained glass windows in Woodland’s chapel, which also features a hand-cut Tiffany mosaic floor.

Close to Woodland’s front gates is the grave of a woman known to many around the world for her warmth and wit, author and humorist Erma Bombeck. I read her books in my teen years and while I couldn’t always relate until years later to her humorous tales of motherhood woes, they still made me laugh.

If Life is a Bowl of Cherries…

Born Erma Fiste in 1926, Erma grew up in the Bellbrook suburb of Dayton, just a few miles where I was born. She was an avid writer from her high school days, working for the Dayton Herald in a number of capacities, and got her degree at the University of Dayton. She met and married fellow classmate Bill Bombeck in 1949. They started a family and writing was put on the backburner until the 1960s.

Erma Bombeck made millions laugh with her wry musings about housework and parenting.

Erma Bombeck’s home during her married life was in Centerville, Ohio, where my paternal grandparents lived. Her neighbor was Phil Donahue. She resumed her writing career for the local Kettering-Oakwood Times in 1964, with weekly columns that yielded $3 each. The following year the Dayton Journal Herald requested new humorous columns as well, and Bombeck wrote weekly 450-word columns. After three weeks, the articles went into national syndication in weekly columns under the title “At Wit’s End”.

As Bombeck’s writing career took off, the family moved to Phoenix, Ariz. The books Just Wait Until You Have Children of Your Own (1971), I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression, (1974), The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (1976), If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (1978), and Motherhood, the Second Oldest Profession (1983) are among the many that followed. The Grass is Always Greener actually took life as a TV pilot in 1978 but it didn’t make it off the ground. She was also featured on ABC’s Good Morning, America from 1975 until 1986.

At the time I visited Woodland in 2018, this was the only marker for Erma Bombeck. A traditional gravestone with her name and dates (along with one for her husband, Bill, who passed away in 2018) was placed in 2019.

Bombeck was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease (an incurable genetic disease) when she was 20. She survived breast cancer and a mastectomy, and kept secret the fact that she had kidney disease, enduring daily dialysis. She went public with her condition in 1993.

On a waiting list for a transplant for years, one kidney had to be removed, and the remaining one ceased to function. On April 3, 1996, she received a kidney transplant. She died on April 22, 1996, at age 69, from complications of the operation.

Bombeck was brought back to her hometown and interred in the family plot at Woodland. A 29,000-lb. rock serves as her monument, brought by flat-bed truck from her adopted home in Arizona.

First in Flight

It’s probably bad of me to admit this but for many years, I had no idea the Wright Brothers were buried at Woodland. We never went to visit their graves. But during a summer visit in 2013, I wanted my husband and son to see them. Clearly, the Wright brothers are hands down the most famous pair buried in the cemetery. What started in a small bicycle shop in Dayton would eventually change the way the world traveled.

I spent a good bit of time on the Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company web site (which is excellent) and they make an assertion about the brothers that made me see them in a new light. The Wright brothers didn’t truly build the first airplane. The first fixed-wing aircraft (basically a kite on a stick) was created and flown almost a century before Orville and Wilbur made their first flights.

Neither Orville or Wilbur attended college. Orville actually dropped out of high school in 1889 and the brothers opened their own print shop.

What sets the Wrights apart is that they were the first to design and build a flying craft that could be controlled in the air. Every successful aircraft ever built since, beginning with the 1902 Wright glider, has had controls to roll the wings right or left, pitch the nose up or down, and yaw the nose from side to side. These controls enable a pilot to navigate an airplane in all three dimensions, making it possible to fly from place to place.

Early Days

Sons of Church of the United Brethren in Christ pastor Milton Wright and Susan Koerner Wright, Wilbur was born in 1867 and Orville was born in 1871. Both parents were well educated, with Susan having a mechanical bent. Because the Brethren’s prominence in Dayton, the Wrights moved to Dayton in 1884. Sadly, Susan would contract tuberculosis and died in 1889.

Unlike their parents, Wilbur barely graduated high school and Orville dropped out the year his mother died. But they were always tinkering on something and testing out theories. Together, they opened a printing shop that eventually expanded to a bicycle shop. Eventually, they concentrated on just making bicycles and did very well financially as the bicycle craze raged.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into the history of how the brothers went about testing out their theories in Kitty Hawk, N.C. and how they tweaked and developed their Wright Flyers from 1889 to 1906. There are plenty of books written about it that can give you a glimpse into that world. Needless to say, they eventually showed off their flyers and dazzled the world with their demonstrations of flight.

You can visit the Huffman Prairie Flying Field Interpretive Center (run by the National Park Service) in Dayton and drive around the original Huffman Field. This memorial to the Wright brothers is located there.

One place I visited on that 2018 visit was Huffman Field, the world’s first test flight facilities where the Wright brothers conducted a lot of their test flights after the Kitty Hawk ones. Wright Patterson Air Force Base is right next door. It was very cool to see where those early flights took place. Also located nearby is the Huffman Prairie Flying Field Interpretive Center, operated by the National Park Service. We also stopped by the memorial to the Wright brothers located on the grounds.

Orville and Wilbur are buried with their parents and twin siblings Otis and Ida, who died within days of their birth in 1871.

Battling Legal Woes

Sadly, once the Wrights had demonstrated their aircraft in public, it was easy for others to copy them and many did. The Wrights were dragged into time-consuming patent fights in Europe and America. Their legal troubles diverted their attention from the ground-breaking innovation and invention they specialized in. The brothers never married. Wilbur supposedly told reporters that he didn’t have time for both a wife and an airplane.

In 1912, at the age of 45, Wilbur died suddenly of typhoid. It was a major blow to Orville, who would eventually sell the business in 1916 and go back to what he loved: inventing.

Wilbur, the eldest of the two, died suddenly from typhoid in 1912. He was only 45.

Orville put together a laboratory and contracted out as a consultant on a wide variety of engineering projects. He did aeronautical work, helping to develop a racing airplane, guided missile, and “split flaps” to help slow an aircraft in a dive. He also tackled aerodynamic automobile designs, toy designs and manufacture, even a cipher machine for encoding communications.

Orville’s last major project was helping rebuild the 1905 Flyer III, which he and Wilbur had perfected at Huffman Prairie. This was put on display at Deeds Carillon Park in Dayton, Ohio in 1950. Orville did not live to see the ceremony. According to the Wright Aeroplane Company web site, he suffered a heart attack in 1948 after fixing the doorbell at his home and died a few days later.

Orville sold the business in 1916 and went on to work on new inventions, which is what he truly loved to do.

Hawthorn Hill was the post-1914 home of Orville, Milton (his father) and Katharine Wright (a sister). Wilbur and Orville intended for it to be their joint home, but Wilbur died before the home’s 1914 completion. The brothers hired the prominent Dayton architectural firm of Schenck and Williams to realize their plans. The Wrights named the property after the hawthorn trees on the property, of which there are at least 150.

Hawthorn Hill was the home of Orville Wright and his father, Milton, and sister, Katherine in 1914. Now managed by Dayton History, tours of it are held on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The home was owned by the National Cash Register (NCR) Corporation after Orville’s death in until August 18, 2006, when the company donated the historic home to the Wright Family Foundation in honor of Orville’s 135th birthday and National Aviation Day. In March 2009, Hawthorn Hill became part of Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. In June 2013, ownership was officially transferred to Dayton History.

Next time, I’ll share the stories of another inventor and a poet.

Gustav Wiedeke, along with his sons, began a small manufacturing business that made furnace boilers. Over 100 years later, Elliott Tool Technologies Ltd. is the result of their efforts. His life-size statue is reported to startle the guards at night.

Climbing My Family Tree: Remembering Dayton, Ohio’s Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, Part I

02 Friday Apr 2021

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This week, I’m starting a new series on Dayton, Ohio’s Woodland Cemetery. It’s going to be a bit different because Woodland is the first cemetery I ever visited and have returned to many times. You’re going to hear some stories that I’ve not shared with many people before. Unlike most of my initial posts, this one is not about Woodland’s history. I’ll get to that next week. Hopefully, you won’t mind this detour.

My family moved to Georgia when I was five. But every summer, we would return to Dayton to visit family and go to places that were familiar to my parents. Woodland Cemetery was one of them.I remember we always entered at the back gate off Wayne Avenue because it was the closest entrance to where we were going. In fact, I didn’t even see Woodland’s front gates until maybe 10 years ago because of that.

The concept of a cemetery was foreign to my childish mind. I only knew I liked seeing the trees, the pond and especially the swans that lived there. It may have sparked my life-long love of swans, I’m not sure. But to me, it was a beautiful place. I don’t remember being afraid or feeling sad there.

We always entered Woodland Cemetery from the back gate off Wayne Avenue by the swan pond. My great aunt and uncle are buried close to the pond’s edge in the center of this photo.

To be honest, I didn’t know whose grave we were visiting when we came during those early years. Nobody would ever say and I was too confused to ask. I only knew that the woman’s marker we visited had my last name.

I would not know for many years that she was my father’s mother, Charlotte Grice Muller. She died on July 22, 1960 at the age of 44 after undergoing heart surgery. She suffered a serious stroke in 1955 when my father was in high school and her health deteriorated from that time forward. So much so that my father was sent to live with relatives and he graduated from a different high school.

A picture of my grandmother Charlotte Alberta Grice Muller in her youth.

I later learned that my grandmother’s death was so traumatic to my Dad that he never talked about it. His father, my grandfather, remarried less than a year later to a widow he knew from work, Wanda. She was the only grandmother I knew on that side of my family. She was always nice to me. But I never felt like a truly knew her.

Until I found a framed picture in a drawer of my grandfather sitting next to a woman I had never seen, I thought Wanda was my Dad’s mother. Maybe I was 10 or 12 by then. I gathered my courage and finally asked my Mom, “Who is this woman?”

“That’s Charlotte, your grandmother.”

My grandmother died at the young age of 44.

At last I knew. When I asked why nobody had ever explained that to me, I was told, “We thought you knew.” I believe that. It wasn’t a secret they were actively keeping. Maybe they did tell me but my young mind couldn’t grasp it all. But there was still so much I didn’t know, so much was left unspoken.

It came out in bits and pieces over the next years and many confusing moments began to make more sense. Tense times that had confused me. Dad had adored his mother and her death pulled the rug out from under him. I’m not sure he ever got over it.

As a result, I knew little about my father’s family’s background. That led to my getting a membership to Ancestry.com after my son was born and later my interest in FindaGrave.com. Soon after, my blog was born and the rest is history. So a lot of what happened at Woodland on those visits was building a foundation for what was to come.

A picture of Wanda and my grandfather taken during a visit in 1976.

I wish I had known Charlotte. My mother has shared a few memories of her. That she was a fashionable, beautiful woman who enjoyed life and spoiling my father. She was also a straight shooter and was known to get excited while watching a boxing match on TV. The stroke left her a changed woman and her last years would be difficult ones.

My grandfather Carroll, grandmother Charlotte, and Aunt Suzie are buried together.

Charlotte is no longer alone. My grandfather died in 1998 at the age of 81 and is buried beside her. My Aunt Suzie, who suffered from cerebral palsy from birth and spent most of her life in a group home, died in 2007 at the age of 60. When Wanda died in 2012, she was buried at Woodland with her first husband who had died in 1958. Their plot is in a different part of the cemetery.

My great aunt Esther Grice Wolf died a year and a half after my grandmother, her sister, in 1961.

Across the road next to the pond, Charlotte’s sister Esther is buried. She had the same history of heart trouble as her siblings. She died of a heart attack on Christmas Day in 1961 at the age of 51. She was my great uncle Eugene’s first wife and mother of my cousin Tom, whom I’ve always called my Uncle Tom. He’s always been something of a father figure to me and walked me down the aisle when I got married because my father was wheelchair bound by that time. He turned 81 this month and I love him dearly.

Tom’s father, Eugene, was not just my great uncle. He was a big-hearted giant of a man who earned the respect of everyone that met him. My Dad loved spending time with him and so did I. His second wife, Ruth, had no children of her own and they always spoiled us when we came down to visit them in Florida. She was a kind, classy lady who always had time for me. She died in 2019 and is buried at Woodland as well. I hope to visit her grave when next I visit.

My great uncle Eugene, great aunt Esther, and their sons, Ron (who recently passed away from cancer) and Tom. This would have been after Eugene returned from serving in the U.S. Army in World War II.

Eugene was close with his brothers-in-law, Cliff and Harry, and my grandfather Carroll. This photo from 1939 was taken after the Ohio River flooded in Cincinnati. They all piled in a car and went to take a look for themselves.

Eugene Wolf, Harry Grice, Cliff Grice, and my grandfather, Carroll Muller, pretending to dive into the Ohio River in Cincinnati after it flooded in 1939.

Eugene passed away in 1983 from an embolism and we were heartbroken. It was totally unexpected and I remember sitting in my journalism class the next day crying. Even as a teenager, I knew someone truly good had left this world and it would never be the same without him.

My great uncle Eugene Wolf died of an embolism while in the hospital for routine surgery.

One relative whose grave at Woodland I had never visited was my great-grandfather Bernard. He was another person I knew little about. He and my great-grandmother, Helen, divorced in 1938 and he remarried a few months later. I know that he was a carpenter who worked for the Dayton Wright Airplane Company in the 1910s (yes, the Wright brothers who are also buried at Woodland) and later for NCR. I still have a dresser Bernard made for my father, he wrote on the back of one of the drawers.

I believe this is a 1940 photo of Bernard (my great-grandfather), my father (who would have been maybe two) and my grandfather, Carroll Muller.

Bernard died in 1966. It wasn’t until 2012 when I was visiting Woodland with my mother and my aunt that I literally stumbled over Bernard’s grave. I was looking for someone else’s grave when I found it. He’s buried on the hillside northwest from the swan pond not far from where my other relatives are buried. All those years, I never knew.

My great-grandfather died in 1966, two years before I was born.

On the far end of the swan pond are my paternal great-grandparents, whom I mentioned a few weeks ago in my post about Old Greencastle Cemetery. Charlotte’s mother was Florence Claar Grice and she married my great-grandfather, Harold Grice, in 1906. I’m pretty sure that’s how my father ended up with the middle name of Harold. She gave birth to Charlotte in 1915. I believe the photo below is of Florence holding Charlotte on her lap around 1916.

I love this picture of my great-grandmother and my grandmother, Charlotte.

Florence and Harold died within a few months of each other in 1945. They were both 60 years old. They are buried next to each other. The first time I saw their graves was in 2012. I don’t remember visiting their graves with my family but it’s possible I don’t remember.

My great-grandmother, Florence Claar Grice, died at the age of 60.
My great-grandfather, Harold Grice, died in 1945 a few months before my great-grandmother.

That about sums up my family history at Woodland Cemetery. These people were not famous. You won’t find them in the history books like the Wright brothers, Erma Bombeck or poet Paul Dunbar. But they are MY history. So they mean a great deal to me.

I like to think of those early visits to Woodland as the unwitting first link in the chain to where I am today and what I try to do. Share the stories behind the stones so the people they represent are never forgotten. Because I can remember standing over a stone that was once a mystery to me and I now take comfort in the fact that I have many of the answers now that I didn’t have then.

Next week, I’ll share the history of Woodland Cemetery and introduce you to some of its more famous residents.