Adding to Our Database and Local Family Histories

    (continuing from the last post)  I recently donated scans of Hostetter family photos to CDPL to be uploaded onto the “image” database on our Local History/Reference page, because I know that I am related to several families in the county, as Anna Marie’s sister, Mary, married Perry Nichols, and had eight children. Many of their families are scattered throughout the county.  If you have any historical pictures of your family that you can identify, we would love to scan them into our database. 

     On the right are my grandmother Anna Marie Hostetter Hatfield's grandparents--Simon D. Hostetter and Catherine Goodbar.  They lived near Ladoga in the 1800's.

     We also have a Family Bible Project database that we would like patrons to add to. Just bring in a Bible that has a family history written in it, we can scan it, or you may donate the book to our archive. We add your information to our searchable database for others to use. Here is an example from a family Bible I found somewhere years ago, that records many people in my fifth-great-grandmother's family. 

      Mathew Thompson, at the bottom, rode in a canoe with his parents Samuel and Catherine from Cincinnati to a spot on the Mad River, in 1796, to be the first white boy to live in Dayton, Ohio. He later moved to Hagerstown, Indiana, to live with a sister, who was the great-grandmother of the Wright brothers! He lived in Ladoga for a while, and then he and his wife, Margaret Gillespie, moved to Remington in the 1860's to live with their son, George, the first postmaster there, and that is where they are all interred. Most of that information I did not find online, but from library research. 

"Who Do I Think I Am," Montgomery County Style!

Margaret Thompson and Corbin Hostetter, my great-grandparents, parents
of  Mary (Nichols), George, Eugene, and Anna Marie (Hatfield).

     I’ll come out from behind my “blogger” anonymity and reveal that I am Dianne Hatfield Combs, not born in Montgomery County, but I have lived here since 1986. I knew my American grandmother,  Anna-Marie (nee) Hostetter Hatfield had grown up near New Market. But what else did I know about her family?  My family history curiosity started with some old pictures in Grandma’s trunk, and now I have folders full of information. For several years I have dug through many county and city resources at CDPL to discover that in seven generations, my father is the only person in my direct line to not have lived in this county.  Just how far back do I go in this county?  Well, I have Goodbars settling in Scott Township in 1830’s, Halls in Brown Township during the same time, Wassons in Brown’s Valley, and the Hostetters showed up a bit later. I have many family members buried at Harshbarger’s Cemetery, and at Ladoga.  My husband and I have traveled to many libraries in and out of Indiana searching for more pieces to our family puzzles.

     At CDPL, we have many family history books that are the result of family historians organizing their own research and publishing it in book form. I have not started one yet, but on the off chance that there may be some of my family in a book here, I researched and found the “Zug,  Zuck, Zouck, Zook” family history that just happens to contain information on my American grandfather’s Hatfield/Zook side of the family, from Johnson and Brown counties. 

     

Thou Art Greatly Beloved!

     What wonderful words to be said of anyone, and especially our subject today, Benjamin Taylor Ristine!  He was born in Gallatin County, Kentucky, in 1807 and lived for a while in Madison, Indiana.  Ben's father, Henry, was a ranger in the War of 1812, and having traveled through the Wabash Valley,  picked Montgomery County as a place to raise his young family. They moved by wagon from Madison, Indiana, in 1823, taking ten days to make the journey. They purchased land in section 31, next to Ambrose Whitlock, on property which is now Farmington Hills subdivision. They built a "log hotel" in the downtown area, kept that until 1829, moved away, moved back and bought another public house east of the courthouse. Young Ben worked in the hotel business, while "reading" for the law.  He abandoned law, and ran a dry-goods business for seven years.  He resumed the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1840. He was in partnership with several lawyers: William T. Noel, Hosea D. Humphreys, and Alexander Thompson.  He later partnered with two of his own sons--Theodore and Hosea.

from Beasley's Crawfordsville Directory for 1878-79

   Ben married Hosea Humphrey's sister, Florinda, in 1837, and produced six sons, and one daughter-- they became two attorneys, two doctors, a farmer, and a soldier, and a well-placed daughter.  Albert, the soldier, died immediately after the Civil War, of illness. 
   In his full front page obituary of the Crawfordsville Weekly Journal on January 1, 1897, high praises rang across the page for this early settler and well-regarded attorney. He was held with great esteem by all those who knew him across the state of Indiana, and in our own vicinity. The Ristine name would go on to be intertwined throughout the history of Montgomery County, and a search on our library database will provide much proof of this.