Vernon Bramel's Big Inheritance

One story that my father and some of his siblings passed along surrounded a mysterious inheritance that my grandfather received in the 1970’s. Unfortunately, nobody could recall the name of the relative who passed along the inheritance and no records could be located. But with some persistent sleuthing, help from my cousin Jennie, and a lucky hunch, the mystery was at long last solved.

Grandpa (Vernon Bramel) at home, 1969

As the story goes, my grandparents, Vernon and Marietta Bramel, had planned a trip to their tiny fishing cottage on the Sandusky River north of Fremont, Ohio. They stopped at the post office on their way out of their home town of Bettsville to pick up the mail. Grandpa opened an envelope from an attorney’s office and discovered a check along with a letter explaining that the payment was for settlement of the estate of a deceased family member. My grandfather, at first glance, thought the check was in the amount of $4,500. But then Grandma, upon closer examination, realized that Grandpa had overlooked one of the zeroes. The check was actually for $45,000!

My dad (Vernon, Jr.) with sons Randy and Mike, at the cottage, 1959

Grandma Bramel (Marietta Semer) with my cousin Tim Bramel at the cottage, 1959

Our investigation identified the benefactor as Vernon's aunt, Nancy Mae Bramel, a native of Maysville, Kentucky and the daughter of Wood and Amelia Bramel. The Bramel families in Maysville and Mason County descended from Jonathan Bramhall, who migrated to Kentucky from Southern Maryland in the early 1800's. 

Nancy Mae resided in Detroit after a stint in Akron, Ohio where she had worked as a dance instructor. She met Benjamin F. Jones, a successful businessman from Ravenna, Ohio, and a widower with two grown sons. After divorcing Warren Willkinson, Nancy Mae married Mr. Jones in 1931 at Mackinac Island, Michigan. They resided in Ravenna for the remainder of their lives.

The life and times of Benjamin Jones

I was contacted by Holly Beazley, a granddaughter of Mr. Jones, who stumbled upon some of my research on Ancestry.com. She shared some photographs and her recollections of Benjamin and Nancy Mae:

"They were very private people and I hardly knew them but they took me ice skating once. They were avid figure skaters. They lived in a mansion on Main Street in Ravenna that had a ballroom where Nancy would roller skate. My grandfather had a 6th grade education and worked in the coal mines in Ohio before he took a correspondence course in engineering. He and his brothers then founded Jones Brothers Structural Steel Company in Ravenna which became a very successful business. They were all well respected in town."

The former Jones home in Ravenna became Sugar Maple Inn, a Bed and Breakfast

Benjamin and Nancy Mae Jones, Lavern Jones, and Harlene, 1930's

Mr. Jones died in 1967, followed by Nancy in 1976. As far as I know, my grandfather had never met his aunt. He and his two younger brothers were placed in an orphanage near Toledo after their mother died near Cincinnati in 1925. The boys were subsequently separated and maintained almost no communication during their lifetimes. My grandfather never shared any information with us about his childhood other than that his family was from Kentucky and that he ran away from home at age twelve. My research has since lifted the veil on this complicated chapter in our family history, and a link at the end of this article takes the reader to that story.

The Akron Beacon Journal - 26 Feb 1976

With his inheritance money, my grandfather was able to retire from Basic, Inc. in 1976 after 49 years of dedicated employment. He and my grandmother purchased a large RV camper and traveled around the country, often visiting with their children and grandchildren in Florida, Virginia, and Oklahoma.

Grandpa in his workshop, ready to try out a new fishing pole

Marietta and Vernon with their mobile home, 1987

LINKS:

More about Vernon's siblings and ancestors: The Search for Malcolm Bramel's Heirs

Bramel DNA Project: Our Link to Medieval Times

Jeanette DNA Project

The good news is that we have a match. A perfect match!

We compared a sample of 37 DNA markers from two men in our family tree who have never met each other. Tom lives in Colorado, Gary in Ohio. Both men are believed to have descended from Richard Hezekiah Jeannette, sometimes spelled Jeanette, who lived most of his life near Thompson's Station in Williamson County, Tennessee. All 37 markers were exactly the same, so science has now confirmed that Tom and Gary are indeed second cousins, great grandsons of Richard Hezekiah Jeannette. Actually, they are "half" second cousins, since Gary descended from Richard's first marriage and Tom from the third. This verifies that the Ohio branch of the Jeanette family is definitively linked to the Jeanettes from the Nashville area. So, hello cousins! It seems we can move forward with that family reunion we've been discussing for a few years.

Family Tree DNA, the company we selected for this project, offers several types of DNA testing for genealogy purposes. We chose the Y-DNA test because it's the test being used in an established project tracking a Jennett family from Cape Hattaras and other areas of Eastern North Carolina. The paper trail indicates that our Richard Hezekiah Jeannette's father, believed to be Joseph W. Jennett, was born in North Carolina. Some researchers, myself included, have suspected that our Tennessee-Ohio branch is connected to that North Carolina Jennett family, even though a common ancestor has never been identified through paper records.

The Y chromosome is found only in males; it's what makes us males. This makes Y-DNA analysis a powerful tool in researching one's paternal line. The Y is passed down from father to son, so its make-up remains the same through the generations, with the exception of slight mutations that can rarely happen from one generation to the next. The frequency of these mutations when comparing Y-DNA allows us to see not only who we might be related to, but how deeply into history we might need to research in order to identify the common ancestor.

In a perfect scenario, that Jeanette Y-chromosome would follow the paternal line of the family tree for hunderds of years to the days when surnames first came into use. That leads us into the bad news.

DNA markers from two Jennette men on Hatteras Island, cousins to each other, did not match the markers for Gary and Tom. For that matter, the Hatteras men did not match any of the other seven participants in the Jennett DNA project; nor did Gary and Tom. Initially, this would suggest that there was something called a Non-Paternity Event, perhaps an undocumented adoption or an illegitimate birth, sometime in the 1800's or earlier that makes our family tree not match our DNA tree. These events, while not always openly discussed, are not uncommon. Family Tree DNA estimates that somewhere between 3.5% and 10% of us were not fathered by the man we called Dad. Compound this over 6 or 8 generations and you can see why many researchers run into problems when attempting to verify genealogy research with DNA testing.

When Tom tested, it was at the 37-marker level. So we took it a step further when we tested Gary. We compared 67 markers just to see what would happen. Because of this, we discovered a new match, someone named William F. Cole, Jr. Gary and Mr. Cole had a small variation in five of the 67 markers, but that's close enough to predict a common ancestor somewhere in time. There is 60% chance that this common ancestor can be found about 12 generations back, or approximately 300 years ago. It increases to 90% at 18 generations, about 450 years ago to just after the time when surnames in Europe first came into widespread use.

Cole's family tree traces back to his earliest known paternal ancestor, Robert Cole, who lived in Duplin County, North Carolina in the late 1700's. Ironically, that's not far from an area where a pocket of Jennetts lived. This is not to say a Cole was adopted into a Jennett family, or vice versa, or that some form of hanky-panky went on. It's just something that warrants further research and investigation if we're to solve some of these mysteries.

At the 25-marker and 12-marker levels, there are lots of matches, either exact or with a difference in one or two markers. This adds several new surnames to our research list, including multiple appearances of Austin, Boswell, Calloway, Frisbee/Frisby, Irby/Erbe/Yerby, Laidlaw/Ludlow, May, Mustard, Patterson, and Wyatt/Wiatt. There are lots of explanations how someone with a different surname could show up on our match list. I'm not going to get into all of that, but here is a nice article that lays it all out.

Y-DNA Testing - Why Do I Match Different Surnames?

As more men in the Jennett/Jeanette line participate in the DNA study, things will become more clear. The next step is to identify and test someone who descended from a brother of Richard Hezekiah Jeannette, or perhaps from an uncle. Keep digging!

A special "thanks" to everyone who contributed toward the cost of the testing! Follow this link for a recent post about the Jeanette family from Williamson County, Tennessee.

Update: We've had two more matches to our DNA tree, and we can now confirm our most distant common ancestor, Hezekiah Jennett born about 1772 in North Carolina! Here's our family tree... and more volunteers are needed to move the project further...

A Study In "Jennettics"

I'm from an Ohio branch of this family, and we spell it "Jeanette," like the girls name. My maternal grandfather was Joseph Benjamin Jeanette, Jr. Joe was the first of seven children born to Joseph Benjamin Jeanette, Sr. and Sally Ida Booker Jeanette. Joe was born in Tennessee, but the other siblings were all born in Ohio.

Brothers Joe, Richard, Donald, and Robert Jeanette
with their mother Sally (Booker) Jeanette ca. 1927

For some reason, they dropped an "n" from the name in the 1930's or so. Why'd they do it? Who's to say? Maybe they just liked it better that way. Anyway, Joe graduated from Bettsville High School in Seneca County, Ohio in 1933. Here's his senior yearbook picture with the "Jeannette" spelling.

Bettsville yearbook photo from 1933

Joe's parents, who were known as Ben and Sally Jeanette, came from a small town south of Nashville, Tennessee called Thompson's Station in Williamson County. Ben worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad there. A friend taught him Morse code and a bit about how a telegraph works, and these skills launched Ben's career with the railroad. They moved to Ohio, and over the next couple decades, they alternated between several small towns along the railroad between Columbus and Toledo.

From Joe Jeanett's memoirs. Click photo
to read about his dad, Ben Jeanette.

Ben's father, Richard Hezekiah Jeannette, lived his entire life in middle Tennessee. He was known as Dick Jeannette, and he was from a family of blacksmiths there. Dick Jeannette was married three times; the first wife was Ophelia Hargrove. Ben was born of this union in 1890, and he had six sisters. After Ophelia died in 1895, Dick married her sister, Sallie Belle Hargrove, but she also died. Dick married Nettie Angeline Johnson in 1897, and they had six children together.

About the time our Ohio Jeannettes were becoming Jeanettes, the same phenomenon was happening with the Tennessee branches of the family, seemingly by sheer coincidence. Again, none of those descendants can say for sure why it changed, but it did. The name change seems to affect all the Jeanette lines who descended from Richard Hezekiah Jeannette, whose name also changed from Jeannette to Jeanette.

Dick and Nettie Jeanette with grandson George Atkinson

Not far north of Williamson County, in the counties surrounding Bowling Green, Kentucky, we discover another branch of this family. But that branch and the generations to follow spell the name "Jennett."

The Tennessee cousins of present day, a few of them anyway, have gotten their hands on the original birth records of their parents and grandparents to find the original spelling, "Jennett." That's right! The name was actually Jennett, and we kept changing it to get it how we wanted it over all those decades.

Once these revelations came to light, there was some chatter between near and distant cousins via our Facebook group, "Jeanette Family Ancestry," about whose idea it was to change the spelling and whether or not it should be put back the way it was.
"Aunt Irene or Aunt Gertie had it changed, is what I was told."
"Can Aunt Jeanetta change it back for us?"
"After all these years, why? If the Ohio Jeanettes and the rest of the Jeanettes are happy with it why change it now?"

Richard Hezekiah Jeanette's given name was actually Joseph Hezekiah Jennett. He was the son of Joseph W. Jennett and Elizabeth Nickens Jennett. Over the course of his life, sometime before 1900, Joseph Hezekiah Jennett became Richard Hezekiah Jeanette, but not consistently. What a nightmare for genealogy researchers!

We know that Joseph W. Jennett was born in North Carolina about 1818, and we know this from studying the Census for Williamson County, Tennessee in the years when everyone's place of birth is recorded. In my line of the Jeanette/Jennett surname, Joseph W. Jennett is our earliest known forefather. Prior to this person, everything is speculative and not supported by records with any degree of certainty. My hope is to connect this family to a large "Jennette" family located on Hatteras Island in North Carolina's Outer Banks. I wrote about this family in a previous blog, Jennette Family of Lightkeeper Lore.

I believe that Joseph W. Jennett's father was Hezekiah Jennett, born in North Carolina about 1772. It seems that Hezekiah relocated to Kentucky around or just before 1820. Prior to 1850, the Federal Census did not include everyone's name, just the head of each household. But close inspection of the 1820 and 1830 Census for Simpson County, Kentucky shows Hezekiah near the town of Franklin, just 75 miles north of the town of Thompson's Station where my Grandpa Joe Jeanette was born.

I believe that Hezekiah brought several family members along, including no fewer than three sons. One son, John Jennett, was born in 1805. He married Mary Barr across the state line in neighboring Sumner County, Tennessee in 1825, and they were the progenitors of that Kentucky branch of the family that never changed the spelling from the original Jennett variation. John and Mary Jennett appear on the 1830 Census for Simpson County, Kentucky near the town of Franklin with two young daughters, and they had at least four sons during the 1830's.

The 1825 marriage of John and Mary Jennett, witnessed by Hezekiah Jennett

I believe Hezekiah Jennett also had two younger sons, Robinson (born about 1813) and Joseph W. (born about 1818). These two brother moved to Nashville during the 1830's. They worked as blacksmiths there and married sisters Hester and Elizabeth Nickens. Joseph's family moved 40 miles south to Thompson's Station. Robinson's family remained in Nashville, and here's a funny thing... the name changed to Gennett, only for Robinson and his descendants, sometime after 1860. Go figure!

And here's a little side note about that "Gennett" spelling. There was another Gennett family residing in Nashville during that same time. They were not related to Robinson, but I think this made things confusing for several generations. Those Gennetts descended from a family that immigrated from Italy. When I researched them to rule out any possible bloodline link to us, one thing grabbed my attention.

You see, my grandfather always thought the Jeanette's immigrated to the United States from France and French Canada. He wrote that they went from Canada to New York to Kentucky and finally settled in Tennessee. He said that they worked in logging camps. However, my research tracks his forefathers to North Carolina, a family of blacksmiths, not loggers. Grandpa Joe's Tennessee cousins apparently shared this same tale of French ancestry with their descendants as well. I always wondered if there could possibly be some degree of truth behind these hand-me-down stories about French Canadian loggers.

Grandpa Joe Jeanette's inaccurate account of our heritage

It turns out that those unrelated Gennetts in Nashville actually did become very prominent in the logging industry. Two brothers, Andrew and Nathaniel Gennett, grandsons of the Italian immigrants, organized the Gennett Lumber Company in 1901 in Nashville. They bought a mill and some land in the southern Appalachian Mountains, and for most of the 20th Century, the Gennett brothers and their heirs speculated in land and lumber in Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. The business expanded to 25 mills, a rail system, and even a company town in Tennesse named Gennett. The brothers relocated to Ashville, North Carolina, but it's possible that stories of these successful lumbermen somehow got infused into our own Jennett/Jeanette legacy. It makes sense to me anyway. By the way, the Gennett Lumber Company still operates out of Ashville, North Carolina today, and here is their website with some history: Gennett Lumber Company

Andrew Gennett's memoirs, published in 2002

While that might explain the origin of the logging myth, it does not explain why everybody thought we were French Canadian. There were similar surnames, families that came into the northern tier states, Michigan, Wisconson, Vermont, and New York. Lots of French Canadians migrated to those areas of the U.S. particularly from the 1830's through the 1850's. I have discovered immigrants named Gennett, Jannet, and the like, who claim Canada as their birthplace, some with French parentage. None of them have any connection to us, so far as I can determine. Perhaps a genealogy enthusiast in our family more than a century ago, someone without access to all the records we have today, made some incorrect assumptions and then passed them on to everyone else.

Did I mention that I've been trying to connect our Tennessee Jennett/Jeanette line to that Jennette family on Hatteras Island? Well it turns out I'm not alone. In fact, the Jennett name has been associated with numerous research projects connected to Sir Walter Raleigh's so called "Lost Colony," dating back to the 1500's. If you don't know anything about that story, look into it. It's quite intriguing, and to think our bloodline could be a part of that story has excited me since I first stumbled upon the possibility. Here's a link to a quick review of the Lost Colony story: The Story of Roanoke, Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony

Researchers of the Lost Colony's families of interest have now turned to science for assistance in connecting the dots and to see if the forefathers became intertwined with the native tribes. In one such investigation, DNA samples have been collected from the male line of the Jennett surname. In other words, if you are a male Jennett/Jennette/Jeanette, then you could participate and potentially connect your lineage to the first Jennetts to settle in eastern North Carolina a dozen generations ago. The paper trail indicates that the Jennett line in the U.S. originated on the mainland along the waterways feeding the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, well before the appearance of the Hatteras branch or the others who migrated further west. There are recorded wills and land grants in Tyrell and Hyde Counties from the early 1700's to support this notion.

John Jennett Land Grant 1773 as surveyed

Location of John Jennett's land in Hyde (now Dare) County, NC

At last check, only three Jennett males have participated in that study. Two have recorded their lineage to the Hatteras Jennettes, and one other is from our line of the Tennessee Jeanettes. The two Hatteras males turned out to be a DNA match to one another, confirming a common direct ancestor. Unfortunately, the sample of the Tennessee descendant did not match the Hatteras samples. It did however match up with two other Hatteras samples from other family surnames, Carawan and Calloway. There could be many explanations for this, perhaps an undocumented adoption or an illegitimate birth in the generations prior. As more participants join the study, our story should become more clear.

Update: We have joined the DNA project! Follow this link for the latest Jeanette DNA results.

All Jennett descendants are invited to join our Facebook group. Just follow this link: Jeanette Family Ancestry

The Disappearance of John H. Semer

He's considered the patriarch of the Semer family in Ohio, the father of ten children. He was fourth generation American from a proud Pennsylvania-German family. He was a pioneer, one of the first settlers in the Western Ohio county of Van Wert, and a leader in the settlement of Jackson Township. He was my great great great grandfather. But sometime before 1860, he disappears from the face of the Earth, appearing on no records from that point forward. So what happened to John H. Semer?

Once I started researching this mystery deeper, it occurred to me that the story should really be about his wife, Keziah Catharine Semer.

The story of John H. Semer begins in rural Berks County, Pennsylvania, in the town of Alleghenyville, south of the city of Reading. The family surname is Ziemer, and the family is very prominent in the German-American community, its roots dating back to 1738. John H. Ziemer is born in 1820. At the age of five, his father dies, and his mother Lydia (Hertz) remarries to a man from Reading by the name of John Shearer. The Shearers move to Reading in 1832, but John H. remains in Alleghenyville, perhaps living with an uncle there and working as an apprentice in the operation of the family business, Ziemer's Tavern. His one living sibling, Salome Sarah Ziemer, moves to Reading along with her mother and step-father.

Salome Sarah (Ziemer) Myers (1823-1899), seated, with her daughters. She was John H. Semer's sister and lived in Reading, Pennsylvania from age 9.

John H. Ziemer marries Keziah Matz, also of German-American descent, and three sons are born, William in 1843, Henry in 1845, and John in 1847. The three boys are baptized in the Alleghenyville Union Church in 1847. Daughters Catherine and Emma are born in 1848 and 1851. The family is enumerated on the 1850 Federal Census, with John's occupation being "Innkeeper." The family leaves Pennsylvania in 1851 to begin a new life in Ohio, and from this point forward, the spelling of the name is Semer, but also Seamer, Semore, Seymore, or even Seymour on a few records.

Ziemer's Tavern in Alleghenyville, Pennsylvania is now a private residence.

The Semer family settles temporarily in Fairfield County southeast of Columbus. Semer purchases 80 acres of land in the northeast corner of Van Wert County, and the family moves there in 1852. Semer's good friend from back in Pennsylvania, Israel Adam, also moves there about the same time. He is married to Keziah's sister, Catharine Matz. The Semers and Adams are among the earliest pioneer families in this part of Ohio.

Catharine Matz Adams, sister of Keziah Semer

Stories passed through generations of the Adam family (later changed to Adams), paint a picture of John H. Semer as a bit of a heavy drinker, not so surprising given his childhood in the inn and tavern business. In one such story, Semer and Adam are walking eight miles to Delphos to purchase an iron kettle. While in town, they have a lunch break, and Semer has a bit too much to drink. On the way home, he loses his balance on a log crossing over a stream, falling in and getting pinned beneath the water by the weight of the kettle. Israel Adam is able to rescue him, a sobering experience, indeed. The two men arrive safely home before nightfall after a long day.

A large swath of Northwestern Ohio was the last part of the state to be settled, since much of it was marshy swampland, the Black Swamp, left behind by thousands of years of receding glaciers. The land must be cleared and drained before anything can be cultivated, a very difficult task for these early settlers.

In 1855, Jackson Township is formed from pieces of neighboring townships. John H. Semer is elected Treasurer. John and Keziah have five more children, Edward in 1852, Lydia and Polly (twins) in 1853, Charles Allen in 1857, and Cassie in 1859. The 1860 Federal Census enumerates Keziah and her ten children, but John H. Semer is not listed. So what happened to him?

There are clues. In a 1906 publication, History of Van Wert County, Ohio and Representative Citizens, one of the sons, John Semer, is featured and provides the author with family history. "One of the few white settlers of that wild region, John H. Semer at once became a leader among his fellows, and used his influence for the advancement of the new settlement.... He was treasurer of the township for a time, but his career of usefulness was cut short by death in 1862."

In those days, much the same as we see in more modern times, people often embellished or misrepresented things for the purpose of maintaining the good graces of the family name. This appears to be the case with the information provided to the book's author by the younger John Semer regarding his father.

We don't know whether or not John H. Semer truly did or didn't die in 1862 at the age of about 42 years. But the recent discovery of court documents in Van Wert County shed a bit more light on this part of the Semer history.

Fast forward to the 3rd day of January, 1866...

Keziah Semer, now known as Catharine, along with her attorneys, appears before the Court of Common Pleas in Van Wert to petition for divorce against John H. Semer. The grounds? Abandonment. John H. Semer has been absent from the marriage for more than three years, probably the minimum for abandonment charge at the time. The charge goes on to state that "... for the last nine years she has supplied said children with her own labor and industry."

The petition asks the Court to decree to Catharine, as alimony, ownership of the 80-acre farm owned by John H. Semer, "...that at the time of abandonment of her said husband said land was unimproved but that by the labor of herself and her children she has made lasting and valuable improvements therein."

Since the location of Mr. Semer was not known, a notice is placed in the local newspaper, the Van Wert Weekly Bulletin, for the next six weeks. He fails to respond to the notice, and on March 26, 1866, the marriage is dissolved, with Catharine awarded ownership of the real estate and full custody of the children.

John Semer seems to have vanished sometime about 1858. The youngest of his offspring, Cassie, was born in June of 1859, and he's not on the 1860 Census. I wondered... could he have been the victim of something sinister?

But more documents provide more clues. It is now the 14th day of May in the year 1859, and John H. Semer, now the "late Treasurer of Jackson Township," is named as a defendant, along with Israel P.Adams and William F. Westerfield, in a suit involving embezzlement of the Township's funds.

The suit lays out the merits of the Township's case. John H. Semer is elected Treasurer on April 5, 1858. This position requires him to handle receipts coming into the Township and to make payment of the expenses of the Township and schools. His term expires on April 4, 1859. During his term, receipts total $852.56.2 and payments total $465.02.4. The remaining balance of $387.59.8 cannot be accounted for and has not been reimbursed to the Township at the expiration of Semer's term. That's at least $10,000 in today's dollars. The suit further proclaims that, "John H. Semer has left the state of his residency so that no demand can be made for said sum of money..." In the absence of Semer, the Township sues the oldest son, William Semer. William Semer, my great great grandfather, is subsequently named the primary debtor in the case, with Westerfield and Adams being named his sureties.

So there it is. John H. Semer, entrusted for one year with the funds set aside to pay the Township's bills and establish its schools, appears to have taken the leftover monies and fled Ohio, leaving his wife and ten kids behind. Did he go back to Pennsylvania? Did he join the migration westward? Did he change his name (again)?

After sharing this story, I received from a fellow researcher a handwritten document. It is titled Ancestrial History and was penned by or on behalf of Suzanna Semer Winner, a granddaughter of John H. Semer, and the daughter of William and Emeline Semer. Sometime prior to her death in 1950, Suzanna recorded the following:

"Grandfather Semer went back to Penn. on horseback to collect debts from property there, and is known to have started back to Ohio, but was never seen nor heard from again."

Catharine Semer and her children established a successful farm and homestead. William Semer, after presumably satisfying his father's debt, would later own an 80-acre farm one mile to the north of the original homestead, and his brother John had 40 acres to the south of the homestead, both raising families there. The Semer daughters all married and also raised families. Charles Allen Semer raised his family in Defiance, Ohio, where he operated a sawmill, and then Alvordton near the Michigan-Ohio line. The other two sons, Henry and Edward, did not marry; they remained at home and operated their mother's farm. Catharine Semer died in 1900; she is buried in the West Side Cemetery in Delphos, Ohio alongside much of her family.

William Semer, oldest of the Semer children and my great great grandfather

Several generations later, descendants of the Semer children remain prominent in Northwestern Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and across the United States.

Check out my previous blog for more information about the Ziemer Family of Alleghenyville, Pennsylvania.


Sources: History of Van Wert County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens, Thaddeus S. Gilliland, 1906, Van Wert, Ohio

"The Old Iron Kettle," Lawrence W. Adam, History of Van Wert County, Ohio, Van Wert County Historical Society, 1981

"Thanks" to Eric Crawford, a descendant of Emma Semer Hetrick, for providing the county court documents.

William Lampson Semer - Fort Zachary Taylor

William Lampson Semer, my great grandfather, grew up near the northwest corner of Van Wert County in Western Ohio. In 1902, he enlisted in the Army and was assigned to Coast Artillery Corps. He was based at four different coastal fortifications in Florida and New York during his 15 year military career.

William Lampson Semer (1882-1920)

In the decades following the British invasion of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812, the United States took measures to address coastal defense deficiencies that were exploited by the British. A total of 42 forts were built to protect susceptible shorelines and harbors.

One of these forts was Fort Zachary Taylor in Key West, Florida. William Semer was stationed at Fort Taylor from 1902 until 1908, two consecutive three-year assignments. I recently toured the fort and walked around the grounds where my great grandfather walked more than a century ago, now a part of the Florida State Park system.

On the day I visited the fort, I arrived just in time to take the guided tours offered at noon daily, time very well spent.

Construction of Fort Taylor began in 1845. The fort was constructed 1,200 feet offshore of Key West, but subsequent landfill project have since connected it with the mainland. The fort and its sister fort, Fort Jefferson 70 miles west in Dry Tortugas, were strategically important for defense of the waters around Key West, the Straits of Florida, and the Gulf of Mexico. It took 21 year to complete construction because of a lack of construction materials.  Hurricanes and diseases also delayed finishing the fort, but by 1860, it was ready for troops and cannons.

Fort Taylor was originally three stories high

Fort Taylor was occupied by Federal troops during the Civil War. The artillery unit was quartered at the Key West barracks. The fort served as a base of operations for the Union Navy's East Coast Blockade Squadron.  The squadron prevented supply ships from reaching Confederate ports.

Fort Taylor served as a coastal artillery fort during the Spanish-American War, World I, and World War II.  It was also used during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. In the years preceding William Semer's arrival, the fort had undergone modernization, including the installation of larger guns and the removal the top two of the three stories to make it less vulnerable to artillery fire.

Drills were held here in the parade grounds

Each room, or "casemate," housed one cannon

It took a crew of 6 to 8 men to fire one cannon

Some of the artillery that was used in the cannons

While stationed at Fort Zachary Taylor, William L. Semer met a local girl, Nettie Blanche Russell, a worker in one of the big cigar factories there. They were married on December 24, 1903. The couple stayed in Key West until 1908, and three children were born to them there; Florence in 1904, Hazel in 1905, and Charles in 1906.

Baptism record for Hazel Semer in the Key West Library

The Semers relocated to New York City in 1908. For the next six years, William Semer was stationed at Fort Schuyler and Fort Totten, sister forts on the banks of the East River. I'm not sure how they felt about moving from Key West to New York, but I can't imagine they were happy about it. More on this later...

For more about the Semer family of Ohio, check out my article, "Whatever happened to John H. Semer?"

While in Key West, I hopped on the three-hour ferry to check out Fort Jefferson. Click here to follow along on my trip to Dry Tortugas National Park in my backpacking blog.