Now or Never...

Photos - left, broken headstone of John Hess & Mary Bloss Hess. Right, is repaired stone.

No, I'm not writing about Elvis, although I must admit I did enjoy his music. I just borrowed a line from one of his songs.

I've been blogging a bit about my trip prep. We leave bright & early tomorrow (Friday) for some vacation time. We always try to run away after tax season (we own a tax service)just to get away from the phones that have been ringing off the hook & the constant flow of people in & out of the house. Anyway, we're headed out of town for a week or a bit more to do some family history research. The prep for this has been on going for quite a while. But is it ever really done?

The obituary search lists for both Nashville & Elkhart are done. The cemetery hunt lists are done and ready. Our tickets are bought for the Grand Ole Opry - yep, its true the Krugman's are going to do something besides hang out in cemeteries and libraries, we're actually going to play tourist in Nashville for a while! We figured out a few days ago that one of the biggest events in racing is taking place in the path of our research - yeah, its in our path, notice I didn't say it the other way? Indy 500 is in Indianapolis this weekend. SO we shall go far west around the Indy. Anyhow, studmuffin asks after going thru all the lists I was preparing to put in the briefcase, "what about Butler County?" Huh? "you know Butler County, Ohio?" I had forgotten all about the final leg of our trip, a few days in Butler County, Ohio.

For those of you who don't know where Butler County is, it can be found just to the south of Montgomery County (Dayton area) and Preble County, Ohio. It was formed from parts of Hamilton County, which sits just to the south. At one time that entire area of Ohio was Hamilton County, from the Kentucky border north into what is now Shelby County, Ohio.

So I went into Legacy and printed off a report of the people who "used" Butler County,Ohio as one of their facts for B/d/m or Census. To my surprise, I found almost two pages, or about 83 persons who fit that criteria. Printing off the list from Legacy I decided to go thru them one by one and find out what I knew about each.

Out of the 83 or so persons that appeared on my list, about 15 had at some point removed themselves from Butler County. So those I was able to remove them from my list. Next I went on line (seems I spend ALOT of time there!) and located the Butler County public library. I see from their website they have an obituary index for the local paper as well as some cemetery indexes. COOL! So I've added some time at the library to check out those items. WIth that information I should be able to locate the obituaries I want as well as the locations of the burials for headstone photographs!

The line in Butler County is primarily associated with some of the descendants of John Hess & his wife, Mary Bloss. They are buried there in Blue Ball in Middletown Cemetery. Although a few other lines wandered south from Montgomery County into Butler, lines such as some of the Apples, Emerts, Gebharts, and even some Boomershines! This county has always been one of the counties that I didn't pay lots of attention to, I guess I just didn't realize how many persons in my data base had connections to the area.

All that is left to do today for the trip research is finish off my prep work for the drive thru western Indiana - mostly photographing headstones in counties along the way to Kentucky.

I hope to be able to blog as we are on our trip, sharing my finds & discoveries with you, as well as some great adventure. I like to be up & out early so I'll do my best to keep you up to date. So stay tuned!

As for the rest of my trip prep I guess its now or never eh?