Jeromesville Ohio History

Growing Up J-Ville 1920's & 30's

This is a lengthy account my mother wrote about her childhood in Jeromesville, she was born in 1917.  My editorial comments are in color.

"Growing Up In Jeromesville, Ohio In the 1920's and 30's"

by Elizabeth Chesrown Ewing

In the 20's, and perhaps earlier, the elementary schools in Jeromesville were located in what today is known as Lewis Park (now consisting of a softball field, tennis courts, and the historical museum). The Phoenix School in Perry Township and the Pocock School in Mohican Township were moved to this site and joined by two porches, one to the east and one to the west.  Another room to the west was added and later a room to the east, both connected to the earlier buildings by the porches.  These were all frame buildings and the older rooms were quite dark with large cloakrooms and water pails.  There were double stationary desks in the older rooms and all were served by outdoor toilets.  There was a large play area,  as the present Lewis Park is the same area these schools had.  The high school baseball diamond was located on this land.  Some of the children were brought to school on "kid wagons", which were long-enclosed horse-drawn conveyances with seats on each side facing each other.

The high school and 7th & 8th grades were housed in the present Fickes Furniture Store.  I'm not sure when this building was erected but my parents went there at least as early as 1900 and my father probably earlier (for a time this was a three year high school and some finished at Ashland High School).  There was no inside plumbing and when the boys began to play basketball in the early 20's they played on the floor of the Glenn barn, just north of town on State Route 89.  This was the educational system for Jeromesville and environs.

When Mr. Edgar Clippinger headed the schools he began a program to build a new building which would house all of the schools with a gym and for the time, modern facilities.  This was built and in 1926 school began in the building on State Route 89 where the elementary school is today.  My brother and I started to school in the old buildings and I was in the fifth grade when we moved to the new building.  All three of us (Elizabeth, her younger brother Dick, and her younger sister Mary) graduated from the high school here and for many years our father was a member of the school board and for a time its president. 

For a time one of the buildings in Lewis Park (the one to the east) was allowed to stand and was used as a horseshoe court.  I believe the others were dismantled for the wood.  The only wooden walk which I remember went from the schools on South Street to South High Street (South Street runs east to Lewis Park).  I always walked to school using one of three alleys from Plum Street to the school grounds.  There were four teachers for the six grades at the South Street schools.

The senior picture outfits are a far cry from what they were wearing in the first picture.  The hard-to-read name in the bottom corner is Glenn Jagger - the class president.

When my parents were married (December 25, 1914), they were married standing in the archway under a large white bell at my Mother's parents' house on Plum Street.  The Jeromesville Lutheran pastor, Raymond White, married them.  Only the members of the family and Wanda & Clair Keifer were present.  After the service they had a dinner at home for everyone present.  Mother and Dad took the train from Jeromesville to Ashland (L.A. & S.)  and planned to make connections with a train or interurban to Cleveland, but because of the weather they missed the connection and had to spend the night at the Otter Hotel in Ashland and leave for Cleveland the next morning.  On New Year's Day Grandma Cliffe (Earl Chesrown's mother) had a reception for them to which she invited the members of her family.  She and Sam lived on the Cliffe farm south of Jeromesville. 

The day that my parents were married some kids from the neighborhood and some of Dad's Winbigler cousins stood out in front of Grandpa Griffith's house after the ceremony and "belled" them - rang bells, yelled, beat on pans, etc. with the express purpose of having Dad treat them to candy or some such.  This was a common country practice and is sometimes called a shivaree.   My Grandfather Griffith (Alexander Griffith) went out and joined them.  Mother's brother, Frank, who lived next door went out the back door and around the house, saw the back of Grandfather and thought he was much too tall a boy to be with those smaller ones,  got a bucket of water, came up behind him and threw the water on him - not too pleasant on a freezing Christmas Day.  I don't know what Grandpa said but he couldn't have been very happy with his son.

When my parents planned to marry my father was working in Cleveland as a salesman and Mother was working in the bank in Jeromesville.  Dad heard of a grocery for sale in Holmesville, Ohio and they bought it and lived in an apartment over the store.  This is where they first lived as a couple.  They had to borrow money to start and worked very hard to make a success of it, which they did.  Mother would take a train to come back to Jeromesville and because of the connections (via Wooster) the trip would take almost all day.  This is a distance of about 25 miles.  In May 1917 Grandma Griffith died and it was decided that Mother and Dad would sell the store, Grandpa would have a sale, and they would move in with him; into the same Plum Street house where Mother had lived from 1900.   Dad got another job as a salesman, bought a car and began traveling; which he continued to do until he died. 

Some time later he and Paul Plank bought the mill in Jeromesville from Paul's father but Dad continued to travel and Paul ran things at the mill.  On Saturdays Dad would go to the mill and work in the office and sometimes I got to go along.  I loved this but I probably drove Boyd Winbigler crazy as he was the bookkeeper  and office worker and I know I played with the adding machine.   I also remember wanting to get weighed on the large scales.

 Dad and Paul made money in the mill but decided to sell it to A.D. Winbigler and sons sometime in the 20's and Dad sold feed full-time for Allied Mills (formerly Wayne Feed).  This company was originally located in Fort Wayne, Indiana but after a merger it became Allied Mills with headquarters in Chicago, Illinois.  He never left this company and was frequently one of their top selling salesmen.  He and Mother had many lovely annual weekends in Chicago when the company entertained the top salesmen and their wives.  This organization was called The President's Club.  He was with them when he died (November 1944 - at age 59) and a number of the men from Fort Wayne and Chicago came to his funeral.  Various of these men came while Dad was working and often were overnight guests in our home.  The sales managers would go to work with Dad for a day or so, they would come for promotional meetings he was having, etc.

The flour which was made at the Jeromesville Mills was called Pure Cream Flour and Tim (her younger son) had three of these flour bags framed.  The Jeromesville Mills were located on the west side of Jeromesville, on the east bank of the Jerome Fork and on the north side of the street.  Rex Morgan bought the buildings after the Farm Bureau no longer wanted them and he had them torn down with the exception of one building west of the West Side Garage which was a much newer building and when Dad owned the mill it was used for storage.  I have a history of the mill which was published in the Ashland Times Gazette and for which I supplied the information.  I got much of the material for the article from Irene Garn.  In 1874 Richard M. Winbigler, my great grandfather, owned the mill and he sold it to Philip Ewing, Bill's (her husband and my father) great grandfather, in about 1876.

When I was in the fourth grade and Dick was in the second grade Dad took us with him to Fort Wayne to a sales meeting.  We went by train and ate on the train.  This was my first experience with this kind of traveling except for a trip from Jeromesville to Funk (about five miles) which Granpa had taken me with him on the L.A. & S. I don't think I'd ever been in a taxi before we were in Fort Wayne and never in a large hotel.  I remember going to a sales banquet and to a movie/stage show.  I'd never seen a stage show before and probably the only theaters I'd been in were in Jeromesville and Ashland.  I recall Dick and I waiting for Dad on the mezzanine at the hotel and for the first time seeing a chair in a "S" shape - fascinating to me.  Dad arranged to have one of the salesmen take us to our first basketball game - about which we knew nothing but since it was a tournament and in Indiana everyone was most excited.  On Sunday before we left we went to the home of the sales manager, George Cabler;  and his daughter who was about my age had a lovely large dollhouse in her bedroom.  I fell in love with it but I never had one.  I had a dress I wanted to take along on this trip but the neckline was a semi scoop style and since I had to wear heavy underwear in the winter which was rather high necked I begged Mother to let me wear another type of underwear.  She wouldn't do that but she compromised by cutting the neckline of the underwear so that it wouldn't show when I wore the dress.  I think the underwear had short sleeves and came to my knees.  I think the trip was in either February or the first of March.  I don't recall that Dick and I gave Dad a hard time but I do think that he was very brave to take two such young children with him.  It was a memorable experience and I've always been glad that he did it.  Eating in the diner of the train was another new thrill and I think it was the first time that I'd encountered finger bowls.

When Mother and Dad moved to Jeromesville from Holmesville in 1917 they moved into Grandfather's house on Plum Street (49 Plum Street) which he had built in 1900 when he moved from the farm.  I was born in the hospital in Ashland but sometime before March 1920 when Dick was born we moved to the house east of Granpa's which he also owned (53 Plum Street).  This had been Uncle Frank Griffith's house.  Dick and Mary were both born in this house but since it was only a three bedroom house and since the family was now composed of three adults and three children it wasn't big enough for us. 

 Grandfather had made improvements such as electricity, a furnace, cemented basement and enlarged kitchen to his larger house and I think in about 1924 we moved back to this house.   There were three bedrooms upstairs and one or two on the first floor - sometimes the one room was used as a bedroom and sometimes as a second living room.  I do recall that we used the one downstairs bedroom which was really intended as such for a playroom at one time.  Grandfather had a small barn, a smokehouse, an unused outhouse, and a washhouse in the backyard. There was a five acre field back of the barn.  This is now part of the cemetery.  Early in the 1920's after Grandpa didn't have any horses,  William Noggle asked him if he'd accept as a gift the horse, buggy, and small wagon that had beloned to his father who had recently died.  He didn't want to sell them and knew that Grandpa would give Nellie good care.  He had the barn and barnyard to put her in and room to store the buggy and wagon.  He still owned the farm in Perry Township so he would drive her up there and since Uncle Frank lived at Funk he would drive her there.  She was a source of great joy to him and it was a sad sad day when she had to be destroyed.  Grandpa never had an automobile but he was most knowledgeable when it came to horses.

We had a large garden which Dad, Grandpa, and Dick worked both at grandpa's house and later at 59 Plum Street.  There were no freezers so Mother canned all sorts of vegetables, fruits, and meats.  Every winter Dad bought three hogs and they were butchered in the yard.  Grandpa made a meat pudding and he taught John Lutz how to do it so that he, a neighbor, always made it too, He often helped with the butchering as did Daddy Sam Cliffe. The bacon and hams and shoulders were cured by Dad and Grandpa smoked them in the smokehouse.  There were put in bags after they were cured and suspended by hooks from the rafters of the smokehouse.

The wash house had two floors and Grandpa used the second floor to store some of his tools, etc.  We kids used the first floor as a playhouse in the summer and in the winter it wasn't used as there was no heat in it, however, when it had first been built Mother did the washing in it but I don't remember that as I recall her doing the laundry in the basement.

Sam and Grandma Cliffe lived on the farm in Mohican Township until about 1920 (Township Rd. 1922), then they bought the house at 59 Plum Street and moved there.  About 1930 Dad and Mother paid off a mortgage which was due on the Cliffe farm and bought the house at 59 Plum Street.  They had new woodwork put on the living room and dining room, had the west windows in the living room made into full length ones, enclosed a backporch, took out a half bath and added one at another place, remodeled the kitchen, had the upstairs bath relocated into a bedroom,  made the former bath into a hall,  and added two bedrooms to the back of the house.  We moved in on Memorial Day 1930.  While this work was being done by Uncle Tod Winbigler and Bill Putnam of Findlay they stayed with us. 

Grandma and Sam moved to a half double where the post office is now.  This house later burned and they moved into a half double next to the bank and then Dad made a financial arrangement, settled some of their debts, etc., and he took possession of the Cliffe farm and gave them a life lease and they moved back there.

Since Grandpa always lived with us our home was considered to be the home of his other children.  Aunt Opha and Bertha lived and worked in either Ashland or Mansfield and inasmuch as they had never married they often spent weekends with us and always Christmas.  After Aunt Bertha became ill with Parkinson's Disease in the 20's she could no longer work (she had been a seamstress in the alterations department of Reed's Store in Mansfield) and she lived part of the year with us and part with the other sisters, chiefly Aunt Doris Bradford in Mansfield, and Aunt Opha lived with her too.  Later Aunt Opha and Aunt Bertha had an apartment near Aunt Doris in Mansfield and Aunt Opha continued to work as a secretary.  In the 1930's Dad bought another house on Plum Streeet and installed Aunt Opha and Aunt Bertha in it as by this time Aunt Bertha was confined to bed.  Dad got Aunt Opha a job in the office in the State Highway Dept. in Ashland and later Aunt Opha bought the corner grocery in Jeromesville and operated that and took care of Aunt Bertha.  She could get Aunt Bertha out of bed by herself but someone from our house - almost always Mother - would have to go up and help put her back to bed.  Aunt Bertha died in 1944 and for a time Aunt Opha continued to live in the house but she then sold the grocerty, operated a little variety store where the bank used to be and lived in an apartment in this building, rented the apartment upstairs and Mother sold the little house on Plum Street in which Opha and Bertha had lived. 

When we moved in about 1924 to Grandpa's larger house he sold the other to Lee and Freda Franks and they lived beside us until about 1975 when they moved to Boyd Drive - we lived on one side or the other of them for 50 years.  When we had lived in this house Grandpa rented his larger house and when we moved to 59 Plum he rented the larger house and owned it until he died.

Grandpa had some farmer farm the field back of his house - with horses.  I well recall the times when this field was planted in wheat and the threshers came with the steam engine to thresh and make a strawstack in the field.  We loved to slide down this but grandpa frowned on this and if we wanted to do it and avoid his wrath we chose the side not visible from the house.  Sometimes this field was in hay and then hay was put in the haymow of the barn to be used for Nellie during the winter.  This field was where we often would ride our sleds and after we were given skis we used them on the hill and built a very small jutting affair part way down the hill from which we would attempt to jump (my mother is buried a few yards from the top of this hill as it is now part of the cemetery annex).  I can't recall much ice skating being done - I know that I did not do any because I never owned any skates.  We did sled ride down the hill on South High Street and would go as far as the old railroad tracks.  The railroad ceased to operate in the late 20's.  We could never use the field for winter sports if it had been planted in wheat as we would ruin the new wheat shoots.  Grandpa always kept chickens in the barn and later Dad had a chicken house built in the field at 59 Plum and Grandpa took care of the chickens until he died,  then we got rid of the chickens.

One of Grandpa's delights was telling people that Mother and Dad would go away and leave him in charge of the three of us and that we never gave him any trouble and obeyed him.  I remember when I was quite small of being in his charge and it was bedtime and of his saying to me and I suppose to Dick and Mary too, "Go get your coatie on."  This coatie term meant my nightgown.  He was Mother's built-in babysitter but i don't think ever overnight although I'm sure he'd have felt capable of it.  He never minded when we all went away for a day or so and he would stay alone.   When we went for a longer time such as on a vacation,  one of Mother's sisters, usually Aunt Emma, would come and stay with him as he was no cook.

 We were one of the few families in Jeromesville who took annual vacations.  Some of the places where we went were:  fishing trips to Michigan with the Kyler family, Washington D. C., New England, New York City, Lake Erie,  Niagara Falls,  Mother and Dad alone went to California in 1935, two years to the Chicago World's Fair,  Round Lake (this time Dad had a well dug and electric pump installed as he was not happy with the Village water service - same Myers pump in use until 1977 when we moved in with Mother and wanted to use an automatic washer), many weekends to Findlay to visit Uncle Tod and Aunt Elma Winbigler.  Dad, as a young man, had stayed with them for long periods of time;  as they had no children Dad took the place of a son.  It was to our house they came when they visited Jeromesville, only going for short periods of time to be with Grandma Cliffe (Elma's sister), Aunt Minnie Long or Uncle Harry Winbigler.  It was from Dad that they borrowed the money when they needed it and it was to him their property went when Aunt Elma died.  We were in New York City when Uncle Tod died and had to return immediately as Aunt Elma wouldn't make any arrangements until Dad was there.  Dad sold their house and had a home built at Chaska Beach in 1939 which Mother sold in 1949.

I mentioned the washhouse back of Grandpa's house and that we used it for a summer playhouse.  One of the things we did was stage plays.  We'd make signs and post them and solicit the neighborhood for an audience.  The admission charge was a pin - what we did with those I'll never know.  The smokehouse or washhouse were what we used to play Andy Over (a game played over and around a building. A small rubber ball is tossed over a building while calling out "andy over". Players try to catch the ball on the other side. If the ball is caught, the catcher runs to the other side of the building and attempts to tag someone from that side. Play continues until all of one side is tagged) with one team being in our yard and the other in Franks'.  We often played ball in the side yard of the Kylers' and tag football in the street.  There weren't nearly as many cars then and they didn't go as fast on Plum St. as they do now, so it was relatively safe.  We played darebase, tap the icebox, hide and seek, hop-scotch, went sled riding, skied, shot baskets through a barrel hoop on the second floor of a little barn two doors east of 59 Plum which Jim Kyler tore down in 1956.   We were staying with Mother during the summer of 1956 until our house on Duff Drive was completed and Jeff spent many hours helping Jim.  He felt so very important and would hurry through his lunch to get out and help Mr. Kyler.  We have some pictures of this activity.

We played statues, tag, rode our bikes, roller skated, rode scooters (some of the boys made them with roller skate wheels), dressed up in our Mother's clothes, played in sand piles, played with our dolls, practiced our piano lessons, belonged to 4-H Clubs, Dick belonged to the Boy Scouts and he trapped muskrats in the creek, went on picnics, Dad and Dick went fishing and hunting and Mary hunted some but I never did and I didn't care for fishing.   It seemed that there were many programs at our church in which we as children took part as quite young children and when we were in high school.  We often had company on the weekends and frequently went to one or the other of Mother's sisters' or brothers' houses.  When we were in high school we all played basketball and the girls' teams played a game before each of the boys' games.  Mother and Dad followed the teams in and out of town.  Grandpa didn't know a thing about basketball but since we were all so excited about it he thought he'd like to see a game so he went one night.  It meant nothing to him and he got bored so he walked home - quite a walk for a man probably in his nineties. 

Another story of Grandpa's walking - after he no longer had Nellie he wanted to go up to the farm which had been his but which was now Uncle Frank's and for some reason or other he decided to walk.  When he got there he walked around the farm for a while and then they ate.   He was going to walk home but they insisted on bringing him.  Once he wanted to get into the house and for some reason it was locked (which was seldom the case) so he got up on the railing on the back porch and then onto the little storage shed built onto the house and pulled himself into the bedroom window of his room.  He must have been ninety at the time.  Another stunt was sleeping in the backyard with Dick in a little Boy Scout pup tent. 

I seem to have many stories about Grandpa but he was so very important to us as we had always had him with us.  I just couldn't believe he had died when Dad called me at Wittenberg to tell me, although he had called me several days before to tell me that Grandpa had broken his hip.  I thought that if he could live to be 95 he could live forever.  I was hoping that he would come to Springfield for my graduation even though Mother didn't think he could make the trip.  I think he would have if I'd asked him.  When he knew that we were coming home from college and we would arrive after his usual bedtime he would be resting on the couch and pretend that he just hadn't been sleepy.  He was almost totally deaf and it was extremely hard to converse with him but I resented it when my friends didn't try to make him hear.  He walked up town for the mail every day,  read the Cleveland Plain Dealer to which he subscribed and the Ohio Farmer.  He always sat across the table from me and if I didn't want some of my food (egg whites especially) he was only too glad to eat them for me.  

Until he died he ate as though he were still doing a big day's work.  He rented his house to Geiger's and got $18 per month of which he gave Mother $15 which, of course, didn't come close to paying for his food, or other expenses but when I found out that she accepted money from him I was incensed and didn't see how she could do it.  He always kept whiskey in his room after the repeal of prohibition and during prohibition and later he made elderberry blossom wine which he kept in the basement in a locked chest.  He would sometimes serve it when we had company but since he was not careful about how he made it Mother wouldn't drink it but Dad did and people who didn't know how unsanitary it was claimed that it was very good.  He always moaned when he would read about whiskey being emptied into the street during prohibition and would say, "what a waste of all that good whiskey".  I don't think that he ever got drunk or even felt good and he didn't smoke or chew.  He loved soda pop and would keep bottles of it in his room.

When the Griffiths lived on the farm in Perry Township they went to the Meng Church (Reform) the land for which had been given by Grandma Griffith's grandfather.  Grandpa didn't belong to any church but his family in Penna. had belonged to a Reformed Church, in fact his father John had been one of the founding members of the church at Fishertown, Penna. and was the first person buried in the churchyard.  One of the ministers at the Meng Church was trying to get Grandpa to join and he later did but he did not take kindly to the pressure of this minister and told him, "I'll carry my own wheat to market".  Pressure tactics were the wrong thing to use with Alexander Griffith.

With a family the size of ours there was always plenty of work to do.  Mother baked bread twice a week and on Saturdays she usually baked three pies and a cake (I took over the cake baking when I got old enough), we didn't have any permanent press clothes so everything had to be ironed and the washing machine was the wringer type with no dryer, and there was no dishwasher either.  On Saturdays Mary and I, when we became old enough, had to help with the cleaning.  Mother often had help for the spring and fall housecleaning chores and frequently she had to have help on a regular basis.  Mother was often ill with various ailments, the most common was a migraine headache.  We relied heavily at those times on a widow, Rene Shearer, who would come to our house and if necessary stay overnight.  She lived on West Main Street and I recall stopping on my way to school to ask if she would go to help Mother who was ill.  She became almost a member of the family and we were so happy for her when she married the Methodist minister although we then lost her services.  Once she was working for us and her younger son came to eat with us that evening too.  We had pancakes and Dick wanted someone to give him the molasses but since he was quite small he didn't speak quite right.  I should add that his name and mine for myself was Eppie, so when asking for the syrup he said, "asses, Eppie, asses".  This became a family joke as it tickled Edgar Shearer so much and we all took it up.

Dad's job necessitated his being away from home overnight.  Some weeks he would be gone for several nights but was always home on the weekends.  This put the burden of many emergencies on Mother and it was a good thing that Grandpa was living with us.  Having him with us and Grandma Cliffe either next door, two doors away or in town (depending on the time frame) and later Aunt Opha and Aunt Bertha on Plum Street, meant that we had an extended family all around us.  Mother had lived on Plum Street since 1900 and Dad had grown up just around the corner from Plum Street on South High Street in a little old house on the east side (it is still standing).  They had gone to school in Jeromesville and knew everyone in the village and the people in the surrounding area.  Since there were three of us in school they came to know newcomers through contacts with the school and church so that I doubt if there were many people with whom they were not in some slight way, at least, acquainted.  It was a tight-knit society.

Mother had played the organ, sung in the choir, and been active as a member of the Trinity Lutheran Church.  Dad and his family belonged to the local Christian Church.  This was a situation which created many problems as neither would agree to change.  For a time Mother and I went to the Lutheran Church and Dad to the Christian Church, but when more children arrived Mother went to the Christian Church with Dad and finally joined his church; but he always told people that his wife was a Lutheran.  After Dad died Mother rejoined the Lutheran Church and since I was still living with her at this time I went there too but did not join.  When Bill and I were married and living in Ashland we joined Trinity Lutheran there and continued to belong to the Lutheran Church either in Ashland, Jeromesville, of Strongsville.

Mother was always extremely frugal and did many things which Dad's income would not have forced her to do.  She baked bread because Dad loved homemade bread but she made her own laundry soap, made dresses for me from dresses of her sisters or had someone else do it, had at least one coat made for me from one of her sister's, patched clothing and bedding, used thins of every sort until they were outdated but if there were families in need as during the depression she gathered up things which we'd outgrown and gave them away.  Her own wardrobe when we were small was rather limited but she often bought hats at Eddie Stover's in Hayesville and these were rather expensive.   Dad loved clothes and bought good ones, sometimes had them tailor made.

I think Mother learned to drive in the late 20's or early 30's.  Dad had a coupe which he drove for work but we had a large car for the family - a Buick and this was kept in Grandma Cliff's garage when she lived at 59 Plum.  Mother, and often Grandpa, would go to Mansfield to see her sisters and Lakeville to see Aunt Mell about every other week,  after mother learned to drive.  When Dick and I were at Wittenberg she drove to Springfield.

There was never any question about the three of us going to college as it was always taken for granted that we would.  There were few restrictions placed on us as to where we would go,  except Dad would not let me go to an all girls school or any place as large as Ohio State.  I went to Wooster my first year and then to Wittenberg,  Dick to Wittenberg for four years.   After trying Ohio Wesleyan for about two weeks and Wittenberg for about a week Mary quit for a year, then she commuted to Wooster, then to Wittenberg for a year and a half and then to the University of Pittsburgh for a year and a half from which she graduated.  Dad had gone to Ashland College for a short time and taken a business course. 

As you know,  television was nonexistent during the 20's and 30's, but we had radio.  I recall the first radio we had:  an Atwater Kent, very long, many dials, a separate horn shaped speaker and a "bird cage" which was a frame with wires wrapped around it and it was to be turned in the direction of the station we wanted to hear,  an outside aerial which was only a steel pole mounted on something like the house with a wire attached to it and to the radio.  Some people had headphones and there was a place on ours for them to be plugged in but we didn't have them.  Many people didn't have a radio when we got ours.

Some of the favorite programs of this period were:  Hermit Ghost Stories, Gene and Glenn (singing and Gene's imitation of a character called Jake and another called Lena - dialogue),  Ma Perkins (soap opera),  Amous and Andy (two white men imitating black - humor), Vic and Sade (soap opera - humor), Fibber McGee and Molly (humor - weekly), Stella Dallas (soap opera), One Man's Family (drama - weekly - Sunday night), Jack Benny with Rochester and Dennis Day (humor - weekly - Sunday night), Lux Radio Theater, Fred Allen (humor - weekly),  Indians ballgames, prize fights, Red Skelton (humor - weekly),  Eddie Cantor (humor - weekly),  Ben Bernie (variety, his band - weekly), dance bands from Meadow Brook, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy (humor - weekly), The Shadow (drama), Moon River (music - nightly),  Dawn Patrol (music 12AM to 3AM), Lum and Abner (humor - weekly),  Jack Armstrong All American Boy, Burns and Allen (humor - weekly).

Holidays were very important in our family.  Maybe because Dad was an only child he loved having all of the relatives by marriage that Mother's large family provided.  As I stated before Aunt Opha and Aunt Bertha were always with us for Christmas as were Grandma and Daddy Sam Cliffe and sometimes others of the family.  This was a big day and we always had a well loaded tree.  When we were small Mother bought children's handkerchiefs which were colorful and pinned them by a corner to the tree branches.  I have two of the light bulbs that were on one string - a blue bird and a gnome.  We had Christmas at our house and had a huge noon meal;  plus hand candy, nuts, oranges and always a five pound box of chocolates.  Grandpa never entered into the spirit of the day though everyone else did.

Thanksgiving Day we always spent at Grandma's and she sometimes had others there.  I remember especially Uncle Harry (her brother) and Aunt Mary Winbigler from Ashland.  She was a wonderful cook and loved to be praised for her excellent meals.  This was eat until it hurts day.  Doing the dishes later was a big pain as her kitchens were often unhandy.  Sometimes she had a dinner on New Years Day and this was another large meal.

The Fourth of July was a worry to Mothers but a thrilling day for kids.  We were given money to spend for fireworks and great planning went into this,  particularly by the boys.  Some of the things available were:  punk which could be lighted and burned so slowly that it could be used for several hours and was used to light firecrackers, torpedoes, Chinese firecrackers, lady fingers, large firecrackers called Salutes, flash crackers, spit devils, cherry bombs and for after dark use - sparklers, Roman candles, sky rockets, aerial bombs, fountains, pinwheels and probably more.   Almost all dangerous.  Plum Street had many kids our ages living on it so the noise on July 4th was hard on dog's ears.  I remember once going to Brookside Park in Ashland to see fireworks at night but we usually had enough on our street to satisfy us.   Having so many kids around us meant that a game of something was usually in progress.  Oddly enough, the parents never got involved with their kids disputes so the problems were soon over and play began again.  We could have had a real neighborhood feud if the parents hadn't had so much sense.

I do recall a parade one Fourth of July and there may have well been more.  The one I recall I rode in an open car and threw thimbles with advertising around their edges - for the Jeromesville Mills.  I wore a crepe paper dress made by Mother.  It was covered with green petals which were sewn to a muslin slip and the edges were rolled somewhat by using a pencil or something like that.  There were contestants who marched.  Bill Kyler and Ralph Carl won one of the prizes.  They were dressed as The Gold Dust Twins.  There was a soap powder sold then called Gold Dust and on the box were two black boys, twins.  Jim Kyler, Bill's father, used burnt cork to blacken them but I've forgotten what they wore.  We had a fireworks display at the "old school grounds" - present day Lewis Park later that evening.

One Fourth I was part of a drill team which performed on a raised stage at Lewis Park.  There were other events but I don't remember what they were.  Fireworks were on the agenda.  There were several traveling "Medicine Shows" which put on their acts at Lewis Park.  Medicine which would cure everything was sold.  I remember going but my parents did not - many adults did.

We had a local band which often gave concerts on the square.  One of the band directors was Lew Chesrown.  There were, of course, others over the years.  Daddy Sam played the bass drum in the band and Bill Kyler played a drum.  They had navy blue uniforms trimmed in gold.  Often an ice cream festival was held at the same time, perhaps on a different corner of the square.  There used to be a round bandstand on the square but this was before my time.

Memorial Day the parade to the cemetery began at the square.  WWI veterans, Spanish American War veterans, and a few Civil War veterans marched as did a contingent of Sons of Union Veterans, which included my Dad, and children.  We carried flags to put on graves and cut flowers tied to sticks which we put on the veterans graves.  These flowers looked tired when we started.  I did this until I was quite large and asked to be excused - much to my father's chagrin,  but he agreed.  I can't believe that I knew men who had fought in the Civil War but I think the last one around here didn't die until the early 1940's.

We had organized softball games - girls and boys.  These games were played at Lewis Park and out of town.  All three of us played at different times in our lives.  I played through high school and perhaps part of the time that I was in college but I don't recall ever having played when Mary did.  Dick played American Legion baseball which consisted of a team from all of the county and they played teams from other towns.  He also played on the boys softball team.

We all played on the high school basketball teams.  We played other schools in the county and in February the top teams played in a tournament at Ashland College.  Jeromesville girls played in the tournament once when I was in high school but we lost.  I think that they won at least once when Mary played.

Perhaps because she was away at college during her younger sister's domination of the sport my mother underplays several remarkable years.  To quote from the Ashland County HS Sports Teams 1921 - 1963 website:

"The Jerries were led by Emily Franks (Fast), Freda McDaniels (Paullin), and Mary Alice Chesrown (Mrs. Bob Semler). Mary Alice, called by several Jeromesville’s best ever, won the county scoring title twice in ‘38 and ‘39. Her best night was 26 points against Nova, when the team had a 49-point game. In 1939 she led the county in scoring with 121 points in 8 league contests."

http://www.ashlandcohssportsteams.com/Ashland_County_Girls_Basketball.html

When Mother was young she took dancing lessons in a room called the Town Hall which was on the second floor and over a restaurant (today the lower part is a storage room for the hardware store).  This is on West Main Street.  I was in a Christmas play in this hall when I was quite small.  I played a child waiting for Santa and I had to lie down in front of the tree.  Everyone in the audience laughed because I was careful not to muss my hair which Mother had curled.  Dad wouldn't let us go to anything in the Town Hall later,  as he felt that it was a firetrap.  Other people went and there were even square dances held in it.  

My grandfather's assessment would prove accurate 90+ years later.

* Bill Kyler tells me that this Town Hall was called the KOTM Hall (Knights of the MacAbees) as the fraternal order had meetings there.  He also said that there were annual Christmas programs there under the direction of Myrtle Ebert, a legendary Jeromesville schoolteacher.  He also said that every Fourth of July there were baseball games in town - he played and before that I remember his father playing.

There were at times movies in a theater beside the grocery on South High Street.  These were only shown on the weekends (I think) and were often Westerns.  We went to Ashland, Wooster, and Mansfield to the movies.  We shopped in those towns too.  Dad did his banking in Ashland and Wooster.

Jeromesville Businesses

Grocery stores (4)

H.B. Winbigler - West Main Street

John Winbigler (plus shoes) - West Main Street

Edwin Alleman (plus yard goods, shoes & sundries) - West Main Street

Broome's Corner - corner of West Main & South HIgh

(Broome's was where the present grocery is and was owned by various people later)

Automobile agency (2)

Ford - South High (where D&F was) (Carl's and later Deihl's)

Ewing Chevrolet - South High & East Main (used car lot for D&F)

Garage (not auto agency)

West End Garage - West Main Street

Theater (1)

South High Street

Telephone Office (2)

Farmers - South High Street

Star - North High Street

(one of my memories from the summer of 1956 was that when walking up town to the store I would always cross to the west side of the street before getting to the telephone office,  as you could watch the operator at the switchboard through the screen door - it seemed like a fascinating job to me)

Dairy (1)

Ideal Diary - Diamond Alley

Made ice & bottled milt, sold ice cream & cones, delivered milk and ice.  Before Ideal this had another name which I can't remember

Cement Block Plant (1) Diamond Alley

Made cement blocks for buildings (P.Z. Funk and J. P. Kyler)

Hardware Stores (2)

Ewing (with the auto agency) - South High and East Main Streets

Carl - North High and West Main Streets (where hardware is 1988)

Meat Market (1)

Anderson - West Main Street

Bank (1)

Citizen's Bank - West Main Street

Walter Carl President - Mother was working here when she married.

Haberdashery (1)

Smalley's - West Main Street

When Frank Smalley became postmaster he put the post office in the back of his store, later when he died the store was moved to the back of the building and a lunch and ice cream store was in the front.  (Restaurant is there now, 1988)

Furniture Store and Funeral Home (1) - North High Street

Lewis Winbigler had furniture store on West Main where the bank is now and Walter Fickes had funeral business on North High.  They later became partners and used the old high school for the furniture store and converted a house into the funeral home.  (where they are today)

Mill (flour and cornmeal, grinding grain) (1)

Owned by a number of people, including my grandfather and father (Richard Winbigler & Earl Chesrown) and Bill's grandfather (Philip Ewing)

Elevators / Equities (ground grain) (2)

Kysors - West Main Street

Funk and other owners - Spice Alley

Shoe Repair Shops (2)

Perry Schaub - North High & West Main

Frank Winbigler - East Main (small building in back of his house)

Restaurants (1)

Newcomer's (Newcy's) West Main

Pool Room (2)

Various Owners - West Main Street

Welty's - West Main Street

(In building where present grocery is and the west side.  It faced West Main but was set back from the street.  I think this may have been a saloon before my time)

Drug Store (1)

James Winbigler - North High (Areal drug store)

Hotel (1)

Corner North High and East Main Streets

Winbigler's (Hoppy and Mame) in my day but Welty's earlier (Mrs. Winbigler's family), rooms and meals.  The Star Telephone office was in this building.

Doctor (1)

Offices varied depending on doctor and availability of space.

Bakery (1)

Atterholts had a bakery for a time on West Main Street

Millinery (1)

Dora Harris had a millinery store on the second floor of a building on West Main Street.  Her shop was above her brother-in-law's grocery (H.B. Winbigler)

Railroad and Station (1)

L.A. & S. (Lorain, Ashland and Southern) The depot was on West Main and the tracks ran back of the cemetery and through what is today the lumber company with the depot on the north side of West Main Street.  Mother and Dad took this train to Ashland the day they were married and planned to make connections with one to Cleveland, but were late and had to spend their wedding night at the Otter Hotel in Ashland.

Churches (3)

Lutheran, Christian and Methodist

Lumber Company (1)

Fred Sigafoos started company in 30's and later sold to Winbiglers.

Blacksmith Shops (2)

Edmonson's

Route 89 across from cemetery, directly back of their house at 11 Plum Street

Heffelfinger's

On alley back of their house at 27 West Main Street.

Born in Jeromesville in 1867

Died in 1961

Buried in the Jeromesville Cemetery

Perhaps my favorite relative and by far the oldest by "date-of-birth" person I have ever known. One of six children by returning Union Army Captain Richard Winbigler and his wife Elmira Hammett Winbigler.  Richard returned to Jeromesville after his discharge and his tales of the "Bloody Pond" at the Battle of Shiloh were passed down through generations of family members.   We believe he served under General Lew Wallace (the author of "Ben Hur") because he named one of his sons Lew Wallace Winbigler.  I recall finding a drawer full of Richard Winbiglers GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) convention ribbons and materials when we dealt with her estate.

The Lew Wallace Winbigler Family

Lewis Chesrown was Leslie Chesrown's grandfather.  Leslie was Emma's first husband.

Grandma Cliffe lived alone on the farm until the last year of her life and we had family Thanksgivings there each year. 

These included pleasant and rabbit hunting expeditions.

Me (Jeff) digging away beside the tool shed at the Cliff Farm.  Emma's second husband was Sam Cliff.  About this same time I found a old two-bladed felling axe in that shed.  I showed it to my oldest cousin Mike Chesrown and he took us (the three 1950's cousins - Tom Chesrown, Becky Semler, and Jeff Ewing) into the woods on the other side of road to try it out.  None of us had ever seen one.  He sunk it deeply into a log and the old handle broke off at the blade when he tried to remove it.  The blade is probably still there sixty years later.

The north section of the Cliff farm is now part of Route 30,  the barn is visible from the Route 30,  the first barn on the left after passing Highway 89 going west.

That is little Carrie in the front row fourth from the left,  fifth from the left is her lifelong friend Grace Spencer who moved to California but would occasionally come East and visit Carrie in Jeromesville.

Reformed and Lutheran Meng's Mount Zion Church - In a deed dated 6 Aug 1829, Philip and Mariah Meng sold 2 acres in the SE 1/4 Section 33, Perry Township, to Henry Jackson and Conrad Friedline, trustees of the German Lutheran Church and the German Reformed Church.

This map shows southern Perry Township and Northern Mohican Township in 1874.   In green are the neighboring Meng,  Griffith,  and Boffenmyer  farms.  Carrie's parents were Alexander Griffith and Elizabeth Boffenmyer,  her grandmother was Phebe Meng.  All three families came to Ohio from Pennsylvania and settled these 80 acre land grant farms in 1822.  As would have been typical in those days many of their children ended up finding marriage partners in nearby farms,  and in their case at nearby Meng Church .  The Griffith family was from Bedford County Pennsylvania,   near Johnstown which was a region settled by Welsh and German miners.   Carrie was born on the Perry Township farm in 1888,  a year later the famous flood would occur back in Pennsylvania.  

Opha Griffith

My mother wrote that: "Dad got Aunt Opha a job in the office in the State Highway Dept. in Ashland and later Aunt Opha bought the corner grocery in Jeromesville and operated that and took care of Aunt Bertha ....  Aunt Bertha died in 1944 and for a time Aunt Opha continued to live in the house but she then sold the grocery,  operated a little variety store where the bank used to be,  and lived in an apartment in this building".   The three 1950 cousins visited their Aunt Opha and her variety store when in Jeromesville,  the store was not a threat to F.W. Woolworth but she did sell quite a lot of candy and should have gotten kickbacks from area dentists.

Aunt Opha always had packages of:

49 Plum Street

Mom wrote:  "When Mother and Dad moved to Jeromesville from Holmesville in 1917 they moved into Grandfather's house on Plum Street (49 Plum Street) which he had built in 1900 when he moved from the farm." 

The house looks brand new in this picture;  with Alexander, Carrie, and Elizabeth standing in front of it.  This would have been the easternmost house on Plum Street at the time.  

click here to see 49 Plum Street today

Aunt Doris

Aunt Doris Bradford was another of Alexander Griffith's daughters.  Fortunately the most photogenic as after she had twin daughters she became an even more popular subject for the camera.  She died just seven days before I was born and is buried in Mansfield.  So it is more likely that I am the reincarnation of Aunt Doris than of William Randolph Hearst who died more than a year later on August 14,  1951.  So much for that theory (old family joke).

Paul Carl

Paul Carl was a few years older than my mother but also left an account of what it was like to grow up in Jeromesville a century ago.   A condensed version of this appeared in the Ashland Times-Gazette back in 2010.   Rather than subject myself to typing out the entire original I have pasted in the T-G version below. 

"Recently, I re-read Paul Carl's memoirs, which he wrote when he was about 75 years old. Carl was born in Jeromesville in 1907. His grandfather Alleman was a cabinetmaker and lived in the house near the square that has the high pillars. It was built in 1818, and was believed to have been the largest tavern west of the Alleghenies. It served as a stagecoach stop between Wooster and Mansfield and was known as the Hargrave Tavern.

Carl wrote that since his grandfather was a cabinetmaker, he also built coffins and served as the village undertaker. The coffins were stored on the third floor in a room that had formerly served as the tavern ballroom. Carl said his mother told him when she was a little girl and they played hide and seek, they would hide in the coffins.

When I hear young people say, "There is nothing to do in this town," I reflect on how Carl and his buddies made their own fun while growing up in a village of about 300 people. He said they went "skinny dipping in the crick" in the summer and played hockey on the ice in the winter using a club made from a sturdy tree branch and a stone for a puck.

He told about going fishing with his grandfather when he was 8 and catching a snapping turtle that weighed 25 pounds. They took the LA&S train to Ashland and walked a few blocks, carrying the turtle in a gunny sack, to the Otter Hotel where they sold it to the owner, Billy Otter. The train made many stops and had trouble arriving on time, so the kids dubbed it "the lay around and sleep train."

Carl told about the big bobsled they had that held six to eight fellows. It took a half-hour to drag it up the hill but it was worth the five-minute ride back down.

It was fun to explore the four or five floors of the Plank flour mill until the owners chased them out and then they went to the sawmill to watch the buzzing blade cut through the hardwood. Outside, they slid down the pile of sawdust.

They got Hershey kisses at Jim Winbigler's drug store where they paused to look at the stuffed birds and animals. At Byne Winbigler's drug store, they bought penny candy and coaxed him to play the music box that set on the counter.

A trip to the railroad station was next where they waited for the steam engine to come roaring in with whistles blowing and bells ringing. They watched as passengers departed and mail and other freight would be loaded on. The railroad tracks were a good place to walk on a Sunday afternoon up to the big trestle, the wooden bridge that carried the tracks over the Jerome Fork.

The boys liked to put a penny on the track for the engine to run over.

At Doc McClain's Veterinarian Hospital, they hoped to find a cow or horse strapped on the operating table so they could watch an operation.

It was always satisfying to go to the Glenn farm where they gathered chestnuts in the fall and hunted mushrooms in the spring.

Carrying water for the threshers made them feel important. Sometimes they watched as a baby animal was born.

His first paying job was for Mr. Austen, a retired farmer. He led his milk cow to the edge of town to a pasture and returned her at night for which he got five cents each day. He didn't mind cleaning the manure out of the horse stable as much as cleaning the dusty chicken house at his family home.

Later, he earned a dollar a week as sexton for Trinity Lutheran Church, where he rang the bell for services, lit the gas stove Saturday to warm the church for Sunday services and generally kept the building clean.

He helped his father in his hardware store, where he learned much by eavesdropping on the "spit and whittle" men who sat around the pot-bellied stove in the back. They condemned the day's youth while bragging about their conquests of young ladies after they tied the reigns on the buggies.

One prank he remembered was the time they tied a long rope to the church bell and hid in the bushes while they rang it at 2 a.m. Another time, the Star Telephone Co. had left some poles lying around, so they built a pen and "borrowed" a cow and kept her in her new home.

When they upset the girls' outhouse, one boy got his coat caught on a nail and landed knee deep in the smelly pit.

All and all, he concluded, nobody he knew ever ended up in prison and only one fellow became an alcoholic.

Carl died in 1994 at age 87. He lived much of his life in Ashland and had a furniture store on East Main Street at one time, but he never forgot his Jeromesville roots."

January 2009

Jeff's Jeromesville

"I believe that every middle-aged man remembers the girl he thinks he should have married.  She reappears to him in his lonely moments, or he sees her in the face of a young girl in the park,  buying a snow cone under an oak tree by the baseball diamond.  But she belongs back there, to somebody else, and that thought sometimes rends your heart in a way that you never share with anyone else." 

My first thought is that the idea to write something down about this topic came out of nowhere.  But when I examine it more closely I can see a cascade of events leading up to it.  

I’ve always intended to write some sort of autobiography, if only to lay the foundation for filming a family history documentary.   But I find big documentary projects difficult to actually start, if the end is not in sight from the beginning it is hard to get going.  Fortunately my relationship with Jeromesville is easy to compartmentalize and tackling something with a narrow focus seems manageable. 

I suppose the idea actually had its genesis in April 2008 when I returned to Ashland with a high school softball team from Alabama, where I have lived since 1991 (except for a couple years in Oxford, Ohio and Bowling Green, Kentucky).  I had recommended the team to the Wendy’s Tournament selection committee and I used their appearance as an excuse to tag along and visit my old hometown.   I need any excuse I can find these days as with the passing of my Uncle Bob Semler in 2007 I have run out of relatives to visit.  

I sat with one of the tournament organizers during games, Gail Mowry - who I first met several years ago.  Gail graduated from Hillsdale in 1967 and went through Lutheran Catechism one year before I did, although not at Trinity.  At some point we started comparing mutual friends and acquaintances.  Inevitably the names of the Carl girls; Candy, Georganne, Barbara, and Debbie popped into the conversation.  As we talked it occurred to me that I could be having much the same conversation with almost any Hillsdale baby boomer, especially the guys.   I guess almost any small town has had its “Petticoat Junction” moment; but Jeromesville had its real life Bradley girls at about the same time that the television ones were being broadcast to us each week on Channel 8.

I thought about the girls a bit more the next day when I visited the graves of my parents and brother in Jeromesville and then drove by the house my parents moved into when they began their retirement.  Candy’s grave is next to theirs in the cemetery; on land that for me was an extension of my grandmother’s backyard playground.  And my parents had bought the house from Barbara and Debbie’s parents in 1980.  

When I returned to Alabama I gave no further thought to the matter, not even when I saw the movie “Atonement”.  It features a young actress (Oscar nominated Saoirse Ronan) who had seemed strangely familiar to me during the Oscar ceremonies and again later when I watched the movie itself. But it was in such a distanced way that I was unable to make an actual connection. 

Then last month a casual search for “Jeromesville” on Goggle popped up a group of Jeromesville (1961) and Hillsdale (1965-69) high school yearbooks for sale.  Mom had taught at the Jeromesville school for several years so I bought the books to see if she was in the early one.  They turned out to be from the estate of long-time custodian Dale Smith.   Mom was nowhere to be seen (I now think her time at the school was during the 1962-1965 period) but the books had full coverage of all the Carl girls.  Which brought back a flood of nice memories along with the realization that Debbie was my Saoirse Ronan connection.

I had to laugh a bit when I got to the 1969 yearbook.  This was on the eve of Woodstock yet the Hillsdale student body looks like they are waiting for “One Last Kiss” from Conrad Birdie.   Say what you will about the 1960’s counterculture but at least girls stopped aspiring to dress like their mothers.

So with forces pointing me in the direction of telling the story let’s see if I am up to the task.  I have a reputation as quite a good storyteller and in this case a somewhat detached (objective) relationship with the subject.  I’ll mostly cover the period before our move from Ashland to Strongsville.  After that my contact was limited to occasional visits to see my grandmother and then later my parents when they moved back in 1978.

Jeromesville is my mother’s hometown, Jeromesville High School Class of 1935.   My most vivid early childhood memories are of spending the entire  summer of 1956 living in my grandmother’s house (59 Plum Street).  We had moved there between houses in Ashland, having sold a house on Edgehill before the builder had completed our new house at 862 Duff Drive.

 My most important job that summer was helping Jim Kyler (who lived next door) tear down an old barn in his backyard.  A motivated 5-year old boy with his own “Handy Andy” tool belt and a pair of bib overalls can pull a lot of nails.  From dawn to dusk I didn’t give him a moment alone on that project, even riding to the dump in the cab of his truck (the most thrilling adventure of my life up to that point).  I would watch for him each morning from the window in my grandmother’s breakfast room.  I spent my 6th birthday working with him and could not have imagined a better present.

 Jeff and Becky digging up Mame's gravel driveway.

That's Jim Kyler's barn in the background - tearing it down was Jeff's big project in the summer of 1956.

During my occasional days off, the Bishop brothers and I would go a few houses down Plum Street to show off around Debbie, Barbara, and Georganne.  We liked to fill glass jars with ants, and then put in a spoonful of jelly and watch them chow down.  I had to invent my entertainment; I did not bring any toys as almost all our stuff had gone into storage.  The McFarlin house and the abandoned place across the street were as far as I was allowed to venture in any direction. But there were plenty of anthills and Elderberry bushes within range. 

The above photo is of me (on the right) with Billy Bishop in Jeromesville during the summer of 1956;  with David Kyler in the background who was killed in 1973.   Both of their gravestones are about 100 yards from where we are all standing in the photo and my plot awaits in the same area.   For three seemingly interchangeable small town Ohio boys playing together in their backyards,  it is hard to imagine three so remarkably different lives. The toy gun I am holding in the photo is is probably one of Hubley's Frontier Rifles. 

Occasionally on a Saturday afternoon one of the masochistic parents would drive this whole group (and Greg McFarlin-a younger cousin) to Ashland to see a Disney movie.   This might have happened 2-3 times but the one I actually recall is “The Great Locomotive Chase” staring Fess Parker.   We saw this just after Mr. Kyler (and I) had stacked the wood he salvaged from our summer barn project in back of his shed; piling it on a platform to keep it off the ground.  It vaguely resembled a railroad flatcar and we kids would climb on top and pretend that another train was chasing us.  And we would sing the movie theme song; the only part I remember is: “we stole a locomotive just to take a ride….”.

Other kids I recall from that summer were Dave Kyler, Steve Fast, and Mary Maxwell.  Fortunately my older cousin (Mike Chesrown) had left one of his baseball gloves at my grandmother’s house.  The older guys quickly got me up to speed playing catch over on the ball field, which would come in handy when I arrived on Duff Drive at the end of summer.

Barbara and Debbie were sisters, with Barbara one year older.  Georganne was their cousin and lived across the street, she and I were a few months younger than Barbara and a few months older than Debbie. 

My grandmother was a member of Trinity Lutheran Church and about this time we permanently transferred in from the Lutheran Church in Ashland.  We stayed Jeromesville Trinity members even after moving into our new house in Ashland and would drive the 10 miles each Sunday for Sunday School, the church service, and often a visit to my grandmother’s house.  I also had a great-grandmother still living on her farm south of town and a great-aunt who ran a candy store on Main Street. 

Both Carl families attended Trinity; with Barbara, Georganne, Debbie, and I involved in Sunday school and the assorted youth activities.  Candy was four years older, while she was rarely part of these activities she was probably the first “girl” I ever noticed, “as a girl” anyway.  Suddenly I became too shy to talk to her anymore and for the next couple of years, before she went away to college, my mother found it much easier getting me to attend church.  

Nancy Smith and I were a bit of a novelty to the other kids in our age group because we went to school in the big city of Ashland.

When 8th grade rolled around it meant Catechism class every Saturday morning and Acolyte duties on Sunday.   Barbara, Georganne, Russell Eagle, Nancy, and I would meet with Paster Phillip Barnhart in the church basement for the program that would lead to our confirmation.  He was a humorless man teaching a dull subject and Georganne, Russell, and I were a real trial to him.  In good weather Barbara, Georgeanne, and I would walk home together after class; and mom would drive back down and pick me up at my grandmother’s house.

The Paster did not have to contend with Debbie that year.  Although she and Georganne were both in 7th grade, Georganne’s earlier birth month made her one of the oldest 7th graders and eligible for the class.   Debbie endured it the next year without us.

The three of us were also quite a trial for Barbara and Nancy.  Barbara was 13 going on 33 and Nancy would eventually do missionary work, they both took the class very seriously.  It was three against three and I don’t recall the serious three laughing with us one time during the entire year. 

We three free spirits managed to entertain ourselves and between us had enough fun for nine.  We had a standing joke about Georganne’s social studies book, every mention of this wonderful book would send us into fits of mega-laughter while the completely mystified “serious” people waited for us to regain our sanity.  Too bad I could never get either of them to attend nearby Camp Mowana.  I went to that Lutheran summer camp after the 6th, the 7th, and the 9th grades.  In 2003 I returned for a week-long service retreat, helping the incoming counselors get the place in shape for the campers.  It is virtually unchanged-they still sing the same silly songs in the dining hall.  But this time my bunk was in the administrative lodge and not in one of the cabins.

Despite my father’s almost weekly encouragement, Georganne and I were never anything but good friends.  She was one of the few girls bright enough and (perhaps more importantly) twisted enough to appreciate my sense of humor.  That made her very special to me.   But as I was still dazzled by her older sister I remained completely clueless to what others were seeing.  In fact it came as a surprise the day after I sat with her at a countywide Journalism conference (held at the Miller Memorial Building in Ashland-a magician entertained us-I don’t know how do I remember stuff like that) when Vance Dillard (an Ashland friend) spread the story in school about my “hot” new Hillsdale girlfriend. 

Debbie was an entirely different matter.  The two of us had always been very relaxed together.  Then unexpectedly we started flirting on a youth group trip to the Ohio Caverns.  This was something very new for me and it was like I was seeing her for the first time. There were sparks.  All of a sudden the prospect of being old enough in a few months for a driver’s license began to take on a new urgency. 

But before that could happen our family abruptly moved to Strongsville. Switching high schools between your sophomore and junior years is almost always bad news.  I hated the new school so much that I actually started to study, in the “making the best of a sucky situation” tradition. I was so turned off and tuned out of the high school thing by my senior year that I scheduled all my classes in the morning; the guidance office could then release me to an afternoon job in a nearby factory, cutting sheet steel for stop signs.

At some point during my miserable two years at Strongsville High our family visited Ashland and ended up having dinner at the Surrey Inn.  By an especially cruel coincidence Debbie was also having dinner there that night.  We spotted each other, she introduced us to her date, and we all talked for a while.   The drive back to Strongsville that night still qualifies as the single most depressing moment of my life.

As you get older and look back on things with more perspective, you find that various changes in your life can be classified by the degree of your awareness of them at the time they occur.

The most compelling scene in `Field of Dreams' is when Burt Lancaster is talking about what it was like to give up his dream of playing major league baseball.  He says:

 “It was like coming this close to your dream and then watching it brush past you like a stranger in a crowd. At the time I didn't think much about it. We just don't recognize the most significant moments in our lives when they happen. Back then I thought: there will be other days, I didn't realize that was the only day”.

Conversely there are those crossroads moments when the path branches off in two different directions and you know with your very first step that you have just lost something important by going that way.  Such was my realization that night at the Surrey Inn. 

I never saw any of the “Carl” girls after that chance meeting.  The last thing I recall on the subject is my grandmother giving me a calendar with a picture of the Hillsdale marching band, and pointing out Georganne in the front row wearing one of those big majorette hats (the same picture is in one of the yearbooks).

As I said before, Jeromesville was just a very small and compartmentalized portion of my youth.  But looking back now it is a gold mine of pleasant memories and innocent nostalgia.  This story has poured out of me in a stream of consciousness way; probably the easiest thing I have ever written.  I’m not quite sure where it all came from-some things that I had repressed for years took the occasion to bubble to the surface.  I don’t think until today that I fully realized the uniqueness of each of the four cousins/sisters, or of how different my relationship was with each of them.  Yet this little part of my life provided me with pretty much the full range of early adolescent experience, and in a very gentle way for which I am very grateful.

The Ewing Connection

My mother wrote about how in 1876 Richard M. Winbigler, her great grandfather, sold the Jeromesville Mill to Philip Ewing, the great grandfather of her husband Bill Ewing.  Philip was the son of Jacob & Sophia (Mowery) Ewing.  Sophia's father - Michael Mowery - was a Revolutionary War soldier who lived to be 100 and is buried in Wooster.

Philip Ewing's wife and Bill's great grandmother was Sophia Swartz (the daughter of David Swarts and Catherine Smith) who grew up on this farm located at 245 County Rd. 1675, just to the northeast of Jeromesville. 

It is only a mile from the Griffith farm which was pictured earlier.  And the farmhouses are of an almost identical style.

Both Philip and Sophia were born in 1829,  Philip in Mohican Township (Ashland County) and Sophia most likely in Perry Township;  the earliest Ashland County births on either side of my family.

Elza Ewing was another of Philip's sons.  His marker is also in the McComb cemetery.  Perhaps he and his wife inherited Jacob's house in McComb or they may have already been living with Jacob.   Laura's maiden name was Dravenstott, coincidentally an Elza Dravenstott (b. Jan. 20, 1923 d. Jan. 3, 1993)  ran a televsion repair business business in Ashland when we lived there http://www.elzashomestore.com/,  and there is another Elza Dravenstott buried in the Jeromesville cemetery (b. Jul. 6, 1890 d. Oct. 25, 1984).   The one in Jeromesville was a distant relation of Laura's.  Perhaps they are all related (including Jacob) and may have some connection to an earlier Elza back in the old country.

Elza, while obscure, is not unknown and is almost always a male given name (Elsa being the female version).

You Spell It Buffenmyer ...

..... I spell it Boffenmyer,  apparently it was changed about 100 years ago.