"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.