Today I am in Dennison, Iowa just 30 miles north and east of where I was born. This marks the culmination of a trip across the mid-west from central Ohio to western Iowa. The trip began as an Elderhostel/Road Scholar trip to Put-in-Bay on the Ohio side of Lake Erie. There we enjoyed an introduction to the War of 1812 and its probable conclusion with the defeat of the British Lake Erie fleet by Commodore Perry in October of 1813. We also participated in some lake study and birding.

Upon completion of the week with Road Scholar we headed south to Greene County Ohio where the Andersons settled in 1801. The trip included a visit to the Caesar Creek Quaker cemetery where James Anderson and Priscilla Coffin Anderson are buried. Priscilla’s grave site is unmarked, but we did locate and photograph James’ tomb stone. The visit also included a trip to the “Pioneer Village” where the Caesar Creek Quaker Meeting house was moved in the 1970s to protect the structure from damage and vandalism. The homes, barns and building in the village would have been very like what the Anderson and Horney families built and lived in there in the early 1800s.

We then traveled across Indiana and Illinois, stopping in Toulon, Stark County, Illinois. A visit to the historical society in Toulon pointed us to the cemetery and the grave site for Robert Holmes and Ann Erwin Holmes, my paternal grandmother’s grandparents. We also visited Elmira cemetery a bit to the north and east of Toulon where we found the grave site of my grandmother’s parents, George Holmes and Margaret Haacke Holmes. The visit demonstrated the issues with surnames and their spellings. I had been unable to find the location of where my great-grandmother had been buried when doing the searches at various sites on the web. Her surname on the head stone is given as Hickey — a variant of the original spelling.

After a short visit with my mother’s oldest living sister in Minneapolis, we traveled on to Jefferson and Scranton, Greene County, Iowa where several of James and Priscilla’s sons settled in 1850 and 1865, including my great-grandfather Harmon Anderson. After several attempts we located Harmon and Margaret Horney Anderson’s grave site. We were also able to find the monument to Harmon’s oldest brother William. This monument includes a brief history and genealogy of the family. However, one side of the monument is unreadable now because of the weathering of the stone. Fortunately there are photos of the stone from several years ago that clearly show the inscription.

Now we are settled in a B & B in Dennison, Iowa after a visit to Woodbine and several family sites there. The house where my father lived and grew up is gone as is the house where my immediate family iived for a few years before moving to Oregon in 1940. My grandmother and grandfather Turner’s house is still there as is Grampa Snazzie’s old blacksmith shop. That is now owned by a developer with an interest in historical buildings (Todd Heistand, NuStyle Developmetn Corporation). The shop has been remodeled to a modern office and conference room. The floors are those of the original shop. blackened from years of exposure to smoke and oil, they will require little in the way of care and upkeep as they are thoroughly cured by the smoke and oil of nearly a hundred years as a blacksmith shop. The present owner has kept the pulleys and overhead belts that ran the grinders and probably the bellows for the forge. The hood that stood over the forge in the early nineteen hundreds is still there as are some of the smithy tools that my grandfather may have used.

The building that Dr. Anderson owned is gone, it is a vacant lot between the police station and the city hall. The feed store that my Uncle Newt McKinney owned and operated is still there and still used as feed store, though part of it has been converted to a travel agency run by the daughter of the man who took over the store from Aunt Mary Anderson McKinney after Uncle Newt died.

Woodbine looks a bit like the Woodbine I remember from my visits there in the late 1940s and 1950s. A recent renewal of the streets in the downtown have given Woodbine a refreshed look but has retained the appearance of the original including the brick cobble stone streets.

I have very much enjoyed talking with folks in Ohio, Illinois and Iowa who may not have known my ancestors but did know the area and bit of the family history. In Woodbine I came closest to folks who knew my parents and grandparents.