DNA Testing: Hype or Help?

Have you ever wondered if  DNA testing is the answer to all of your genealogical prayers?

DNA Testing: Hype or Help?  is one of the educational sessions at this Friday's Genealogy Lock-In at the Medina Library.

Popular TV crime shows and genealogy programs all tout the miracles that DNA testing can accomplish.

But what is the reality??

Richard Spector of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Cleveland will  teach us the finer points of DNA testing for genealogical research.

• What are the realistic expectations? 
• What can you learn? 
• What isn't possible with DNA testing? 
• Which companies offer which DNA tests?

Several years ago, I received a DNA test as a Christmas gift. I can't tell you how thrilled I was! 

Yep! That's me!!

My daughters had given me National Geographic's DNA test called Geno 2.0. This test reveals your DEEP ancestry. As in Neanderthal. Which I have 1.8% Neanderthal DNA, just slightly lower than the average of 2% for people of European descent. (I LOVE telling people I am 1.8 percent Neanderthal! Most people just nod their heads. As in "That explains so much!") With this test, you learn how your ancient ancestors came out of Africa and traveled across the Middle East and Europe, eventually covering the whole planet. Fascinating stuff.  

But not very useful for genealogy research.

So I had my results transferred to FamilyTree DNA. And while it was also very interesting and has helped me to connect with distant cousins, none of my brick walls have come tumbling down. But I just did learn the name of my 4th great grandmother on my Dad's side. I wasn't looking for her name just yet. But that still counts as a breakthrough, right??

But I am not sure I am getting everything out of my tests as I should, and I am hoping for some guidance from Friday's class.Want to join me, Lisa and Liz at the Lock-In??  Call 330-722-4257 to register. Or register online at: http://bit.ly/1yP2Hn9 

Have you seen this???

HUGE u-shaped iron embedded in the sidewalk on Smith Road

When walking around Medina, have you seen this in the sidewalk on Smith Road, right next to Castle Noel's parking lot??
Have you wondered what it was and why it was there?
Did you wonder if it was some kind of utility marking?
Or some relic from the Civil War?
Or did you wonder if it was a giant horseshoe and just HOW BIG was that horse??

Did you know there is another one in town? Do you know where this one can be found?

I have to admit, I wondered about this curiosity a lot on my lunch time walks around downtown/uptown Medina.  Until last fall when I went on the South Court Historic Neighborhood Tour. 

If you haven't ever taken any of the historic home  tours in Medina I can highly recommend them. We toured around 15 homes in the neighborhoods south of Route 42. They covered a range of architectural styles and decades. One of the last homes we toured was this one:

514 South Broadway
http://www.historicholbenhouse.com/

I have always admired the house for its cheery seasonal decorations along the picket fence.

The owners of the house are very enthusiastic keepers of the history of their home. It was built by Jabez Holben  in  1884.

Jabez lived from 1852 until 1933. He doesn't show up in the county histories, but by tracking him in the U.S. Federal Censuses from 1870 through 1930, we see that his occupation is listed as....

BLACKSMITH!!

His blacksmith shop was located on Smith Road and the horseshoe embedded in the sidewalk there marks where his shop once stood. The other one is placed in the sidewalk in front of the house he built.

Jabez' obituary states that he was "known by thousands" in Medina.

P.S. Bob Hyde grew up in the area of the Holben House and tells me that Jabez Holben built at least 5 houses in the area of South Broadway and Wadsworth Road.

UPDATE!
 During the spring and summer of 2018, the section of Smith Road between South Court and South Broadway underwent extensive renovation and the horseshoe was removed from the sidewalk.

When this was brought to the public's attention, thanks in large part to the Facebook page, Roadside History of Medina everyone wanted to know what had happened to the horseshoe and decried public officials who were seen to be insensitive to the history literally beneath their feet.

Member, Don Williams took the high road and contacted the City Engineer who was VERY aware of the situation and was working to track down the horseshoe. It was found with the contractor that the Gas Company had hired to replace the lines and it is now zooming its way back to the City Engineer.
Don further urged the City Engineer to make sure it was reinstalled.

WAY TO GO, CITIZENS OF MEDINA!

28 AUGUST 2018 UPDATE!

Originally, City Hall was planning on giving the horseshoe to one of the museums in town.  But the members of the Roadside History Of Medina Facebook page again had very definite ideas of where the horseshoe should go. The feeling was that the horseshoe in a museum loses some of its context. The horseshoe should go back to the sidewalk.

City Hall was listening and when Don Williams and Doug McClure of the Facebook page, attended the City Council meeting last night, City Officials were prepared!

The horseshoe is going to be installed near the sidewalk where it originally had been placed.

The Medina Gazette account can be read HERE.

CITIZEN ACTIVISM AT ITS BEST!

ANOTHER HORSESHOE REVEALED!
3rd Ward Councilman, Eric Heffinger, revealed that there is also a horseshoe on his property on Wadsworth Road in a post on the Facebook Roadside History of Medina page and included this picture!

According to Bob Hyde, local historian, and owner of the web site, Beyond the StoreFronts, there could be several more in the neighborhood.

Councilman's Eric Heffinger's Holben's Horseshoe!
(I love alliteration, don't you?!?)

2019 UPDATE!

The horseshoe on Smith Road has been returned to its location! 

Today, 7 May, the Gazette ran this articleon the front page: http://www.medina-gazette.com/Medina-County/2019/05/07/Horseshoe-landmark-steps-into-new-spot-in-Medina.html

and this picture:

Bob Finnan's photo from the article about replacing the horseshoe.

Picture of the horseshoe in its new home on Smith Road.
Photo taken 12 June 2019.

Locked Up!!

Medina Library Staff, Lisa Rienerth & Kathy Petras

Or Locked-In?

Please join Medina Library staff and members of the Medina County Genealogical Society for a Genealogy Lock-In on April 24th from 6:30-10:30 p.m.  Two educational opportunities will be offered:

DNA Tests- Hype or Help?

and 

FamilySearch.org - Best FREE genealogy site

As always, help will be available for personal genealogy research.

Refreshments & Door Prizes will be provided.

Register online at: http://bit.ly/1yP2Hn9​ 

or by calling 330-722-4257

New Year's Resolution Update

How is your genealogy New Year's Resolution going??  I hope it is going as well as mine.

If you don't remember what my resolution was, you can read about it here:
http://mcdlgenealogyspot.blogspot.com/2015/01/genealogy-new-years-resolutions.html

So, I organized, cited & numbered all of my documents, filled out the application to be a member of the Civil War Families of Gallia County, Ohio and sent it all in. And waited...

And then, I received an email from Henny Evans saying I have been accepted!! YAHOO!! I have been invited to attend the Lineage Banquet on October 11th!! I am very excited about this as my father's family has extensive roots in Gallia County.




Lineage Society Application, Part Two:
Apply for the Society of Civil War Families of Ohio -- the application is nearly identical, but their criteria for acceptance is more stringent. I am a little nervous about this one.

A nice aspect of both of these lineage groups is that I can add additional ancestors at no additional cost!


Closed during renovation
Columbus Metropolitan Library - Main Library
As of Monday, April 13, the building will be closed to the public.
On April 20, our Local History &  Genealogy division will open in the old Whitehall Branch at 4371 E. Broad St. while Main Library is being renovated. Once the renovation is complete, the division will return to Main Library. In the meantime, you can email our Local History & Genealogy staff at history@columbuslibrary.org.
Full services at Main Library will be back and better than ever once the transformation is complete in August 2016.
http://www.columbuslibrary.org/buildings/main-library
Cuyahoga County Archives
The Cuyahoga County Archives will be moving during the months of June, July and August of this year.  Therefore the Archives will be closed.    If you happen to be working with a researcher/patron who needs to go there they need to do it before June or they will have to wait. This information is not yet on their website:  http://publicworks.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/Archives.aspx 

Elsie Bennett Wilson

Elsie Bennett Wilson

Elsie Bennett was born in the 1890’s in Medina to THE Bennett family. You know the ones that Bennett Lumber was named after.  Coming from a family of doers and achievers, Elsie did not let her gender hold her back in a day when women were considered “the weaker sex”.  She attended Mather College in Cleveland. She actively campaigned for women’s right to vote, believing it was important to maintain her dignity and femininity while doing so. She was a popular speaker on the Suffragette circuit. After passage of the 19^th Amendment, she joined the League of Women Voters and became active in the Republican Party.  She served as a delegate to the 1932 Republican National Convention.

In 1925, she became a member of the board of trustees for the Franklin Sylvester Library and served until 1975. For those who aren’t “in the know”, the Franklin Sylvester Library is now known as the Medina Library. When the library expanded in 1975, the new addition was known as the Elsie Bennett Wilson Wing.  Her portrait hung in that wing until the library underwent renovation and expansion in 2006.

She also was a member of the Ohio Library Trustees Association and served as the group’s president from 1939 to 1947. In 1947 she was appointed to the State Library Board and served on that board until 1968. She was the first Hall of Fame Trustee inductee honored by the Ohio Library Council in 1970 and she has been inducted into the Medina City Schools Hall of Fame. She passed away in 1975.

Sadie Green

Sadie Green – the Person

1885-1986

     Sadie Green was a pioneer woman in many ways.  When other women her age were getting married, having children and keeping house, Sadie decided to pursue a career in nursing.  When World War I broke out, Sadie Green was among the nurses who reported for duty as a Reserve Army Nurse and nursed soldiers back to health in Englandand France.  

      After the war, Sadie became Medina County’s third health nurse and she served in that capacity until 1935.  She is often mistakenly cited as Medina's First Health nurse, but there were two before her: Miss Constance Hanna, also a World War I nurse, served from May of 1920 through June of 1922, and Miss Musse served from December of 1922 until Sadie Green took over in November of 1924. As the County Health Nurse, Sadie checked the school children for tonsillitis, bad teeth and lice.  She would drive ill children home from school and even found foster homes for children that needed them.  She would visit area jails and nurse inmates. 

    For all of her pioneering accomplishments, Sadie was not a woman’s libber.  She once said, “I remember when women got the vote.  They were going to clean up politics and all they did was dirty up themselves.”

   After leaving the Medina County Health Department, Sadie worked at hospitals in Akron and Columbus before “retiring” to the Veteran’s Hospital in Dayton, Ohio.  There she continued to take care of “her boys” and painted. Sadie died in 1986 at the age of 101.

P.S. Sorry there wasn't a post last week. I was wrestling with bronchitis. I finally have it pinned to the mat...

Women's Clubs

March is Women's History Month and we are going to look at some specialized resources for researching our female ancestors, starting with Women's Clubs.

Women had been meeting in groups in churches from the earliest moments our country’s history.  But it wasn’t until after the Civil War that the women’s club movement as a non-secular entity really expanded.  

The Civil War forced women to become involved outside the home.  Women had to take care of the home front, manage the farms, run the shops, roll bandages, care for the wounded, raise money for uniforms and supplies, and other patriotic activities.  Indeed, it was a woman’s duty to participate in these activities.  Once the war was over, women wanted to continue meeting and improving their communities and their minds, as they had during the war.  

But men were not so accommodating.  Women interested in pursuing literary or educational opportunities often were discouraged.Women were not welcomed in most colleges and universities.

 

When Jennie June, editor of Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly (a women’s fashion magazine that carried household hints) attempted to attend a Press Club dinner in honor of Charles Dickens, she was discouraged by the men of the club.  Even after Horace Greeley refused to preside over the dinner unless the ladies were allowed in, the best the club would offer is to let some of the women attend if they sat behind a curtain!

Perhaps the first women’s group, the Sorosis Club, was formed in New York City in 1868 as a direct result of this snubbing.  The club’s purpose was “to teach women to think for themselves and get their opinions first hand, not so much because it is their right as because it is their duty.” The club objective was “to promote agreeable and useful relations among women of literary and artistic tastes…entirely independent of sectionalism or partisanship.”

The women’s club movement gained momentum as word spread through family contacts and visits.  As the movement became more popular, newspaper editorials vilified the women as self-indulgent and neglectful of their domestic responsibilities for meeting for an hour once a month outside the home.

Because men’s club rooms and public meeting places were not available to the women, they met in each other’s homes.  This necessitated that the groups remained small, 10-12 women at the most. While the groups were known by many different names, what they had in common was the kinds of activities they participated in: self improvement through educational programs, service to the community, and activities related to women’s work.  Often these goals were couched in the notion that better educated mothers made for better educated and more responsible future citizens. 

Not to be overlooked was the social component in these clubs.  They afforded women who often worked in isolation in the home or on the family farms an opportunity to meet and socialize with other women with similar interests. 

Some groups used guest speakers to fill their programs.  But most clubs insisted that the members research and present their own programs.  This practice improved their members’ skills as speakers and educators.  For many women, their participation in a women’s club was their only experience in public speaking.  Occasionally, a group would designate a teacher or librarian to critique each speaker’s performance. This was not a popular practice! 

Eva Johnson

Miss Johnson was the librarian at the Medina Libraryfrom 1887 to 1927.  This made her a natural choice to be the club’s “critic.”  It was the critic’s job to point out any errors in facts or pronunciation in a member’s presentation of a topic.  It was often an unpopular position to hold.  Miss Johnson died after a car accident in 1940 at the age of  86.  She was a member of the Medina Sorosis as well as the Medina Co-Workers Club.  Mrs. Lila Thayer, also of the Club, was her sister.

The clubs took their missions very seriously.  Women could not bring their sewing or knitting to club meetings.  The time was to be exclusively devoted to listening, learning and talking.  Members were not allowed to miss their turn as speaker without a doctor’s note!  But the domestic home front was not to be neglected.  Many clubs only met from September through June, so the women could be home during the summer school recess. One local club fined their members $2 if they served dinner late on club meeting days!

Afternoon Club from 2 May 1969 Medina Gazette

In 1898, the Afternoon Club of Medina was formed.  It is believed to be the oldest woman’s club in the county.  Just a year later, 1899, the MedinaCoterie was formed.  Both of these clubs are still active and thriving.

The MontvilleCo-Workers Women’s Club was one of thousands of such clubs across the country.  Formed in 1922, it started with 24 members.  The Montville Club paid dues to County and State organizations. Although the records do not name these regional groups the state group was likely the OhioFederation of Women’s Clubs and the county group was called the County Federationof Farm Women’s Clubs.  In 1965, the Montville Club ceased to exist due to “lack of interest.” 

Montville Co-Workers Club, a Farm-women's Club of Medina County, Ohio lists all the members of the club throughout its existence, in whose home they met and what the monthly programs were about. 
http://mcdl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/5980919048_montville_co-workers_club