Smithsonian – GenealogyAtHeart.com

Your Town’s History – A Treasure Hunt

I’ve lived in my small city for 17 years – longest I’ve been in one place in my entire life. With all the rain we’ve been having, I decided I would spend time learning more about my town’s history. Nothing like curling up on the couch during a storm with a good book!

A week ago, I visited my local historical society and spoke with the archivist. She kindly loaned me two books. One is sourced beautifully so it’s led me to find more information. It was written by a former historical society member whose career was in library science. The other book was a commemorative of the city’s 125th anniversary and was written by historians/archeologists noted in the state. The commemorative book begins with pre-colonization, the other book begins with the town’s founding.

I discovered an online out of print book written by a local in the 1960’s when he was in his 80’s. He personally knew many of the founders so his perspective is slightly different than those of the other authors. There is one more book I’d like to locate that will give me a perspective from the immigrants who arrived here circa 1905. Then I plan to peruse old newspaper articles for additional information.

I’ve learned several things…

There once were two Native American middens – one a kitchen midden that was leveled for home construction and the other, near downtown, was a gravesite that was desecrated by a noted Smithsonian archeologist who decided to have the middle sliced in half so he could quickly see the strata. He discovered skulls and charred bones. No one seems to know where those remains have been interred.
The first burial in the city cemetery was that of a murder victim. The shooter was never charged as it was determined to be accidental. Um, sure.
Hamilton Disston was a fishing buddy of the then-governor and was allowed to purchase large tracts of land he selected because the state was insolvent. He bid .25/acre and then, turned around and told those who were already land owners that they had to pay him $1.25/acre for the land they were on. No one took this to court? And we complain about tech billionaires today!
My city had the first female physician and the first female pharmacist in the state.
We had electricity early until we didn’t. The man who supplied it decided to relocate south and not telling anyone, dismantled his equipment and left town. The residents woke up one morning to discover they had no electricity. When someone checked they discovered he was gone so a small group of business leaders decided they would take over the building he vacated. It had been the original ice house and to this day, is a power plant. If you are a long time reader you know I frequently complain about power outages – now I understand that this is just part of the city’s culture lol.

I’m glad I took this dive into my town’s past. Wearing my genealogical hat, I have a different lens which I analyze the information presented in what I’m reading. It’s also led me to question some of the conclusions that were drawn. Now, when I drive around town I have a better understanding of why buildings were placed where they were and the people who once populated them.
To get started, visit your local historical society or library. Use the references provided in any books or pamphlets to lead you to additional information. Definitely check out online resources but be wary, as they may be wrong! I discovered last year that Wikipedia claims the location of a nearby city’s first orphanage address to be wrong based on documents I found in a university archive. Property records supported the archive information. Like always, double and triple check your findings. Drive or walk around, if possible, or use Google Maps to get a visual of what you discover.
I’ve considered this a treasure hunt in my own backyard. After being home for the past year plus, it’s a wonderful way to reacclimate to your community.

Hunting Down a Harbaugh

I was catching up on my reading last week when I came across an article in the May 2018 Smithsonian magazine mentioning a George Harbaugh, an oil magnate from Cleveland who was involved in an automobile accident with a streetcar in 1913. This led to an engineer, James Hoge, inventing traffic lights.

Now when you do genealogy for awhile and you’re reading for pleasure, surnames are certain to pop up from time to time and you just lose the drift of the story to think, “How is that person related to me?” or “Do I have that individual in my tree?” I have entered every Harbaugh that I’m aware of in my Main Tree on Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com so I decided to try to hunt down this George Harbaugh and attach the citation.

I thought this would be a quickie find but it took a few minutes longer than I anticipated. My first problem was that I have 132 George Harbaughs in my tree. I tried to eliminate by location and death dates but it was still a lot to go through.

Seeking a shortcut, I went to the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America site in an attempt to find the newspaper article the story mentioned. Couldn’t find it. And of course, they didn’t reference it in the magazine.

I could have checked other newspaper sites but I suspected the article didn’t have much more information I could use to identify George so I simply googled “George Harbaugh” oil Cleveland. Interesting, what came up was a pdf from the Cleveland Landmarks Commission of all of the demolished homes. Sure enough, there were 4 residences for Harbaughs and that gave me a clue. The first was for a A. G. Harbaugh. The home had been built in 1888 at 2022 E 89th Street. I guessed that the “G” might have been George and I had been looking for a first name George and not a middle name of George. George is a favored name with the Harbaughs and I should have remembered that many of them use their middle name as their first name. I have no idea why they do this. The family isn’t German, however, they did live among the Pennsylvania Germans for many years and maybe that’s where it started.

The 2nd Harbaugh on the pdf was George Harbaugh and his home had been built in 1898 at 2021 Cornell Road.

The 3rd Harbaugh was entered as Harbaugh Residence. Built in 1903, it was located at 11402 Bellflower.

The 4th residence was of most interest; it belonged to Charles Harbaugh who built it in 1904 at Euclid near Cornell.

I knew I was on to something as Euclid was the street where the accident occurred. I might be able to find a connection between Charles, the mystery George and A. G. Maybe that dinner party had been at Charles’ home!

Back to my list of people in my tree, I decided to check out A. G. first. Aaron George Harbaugh (1845-1897) was born in Ohio and died in Cleveland. He had 1 daughter, Malinda, and 3 sons, George Edward, Charles Reiber and Frederick. My mystery George was George Edward.

Born in Cleveland in 1871, he eventually moved to San Diego, California where he died in 1940. Which is why I didn’t quickly find him. I erroneously thought he would have remained in Ohio.

This fun little exercise reminded me of the importance of not making assumptions; I had wrongly excluded George Edward based on his death location.

It also reminded me of how impatient I often am waiting at traffic lights. I’ve often joked my favorite country in the world is Belize because UnbBelizably, they only use 3 of their 7 traffic lights and I’ve never had to wait at any of them.

So the next time you’re waiting for that light to change, think of my husband’s 5th cousin, 3 times removed. Because of George Edward Harbaugh’s lack of paying attention, the world’s a little safer (and slower) today.

Artifacts on eBay – A Must Read

I recently read a fascinating story in The Weekly Genealogist, the online edition published by AmericanAncestors.org about stolen artifacts being sold on eBay. The blog, Rare Colonial Documents Found on eBay, originally published by the Smithsonian, is a must read if you search for documents on eBay as I do.

Although I knew that each state has laws regarding record retention, it never occurred to me to search them when I discovered something that just wasn’t quite right. I assumed (ahem, wrongly!) that the document must not be an original or had been disposed by the government and some nice person saved it from a dumpster.

I discovered my several times great grandfather’s indenture records on eBay a few years ago. There were other individuals listed on what appeared to be a court ledger page. The price was steep and I didn’t buy it. I did cite where and when I found it and using the snipping tool, saved a picture of it. The seller was overseas and it never dawned on me to report him/her. Now I know better.