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 near Woodville, Ohio

For some reason, they dropped an "n" from the name in the 1930's or so. 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.

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.

Update: New DNA results have now confirmed the link to Hezekiah Jennett.

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 brothers moved to Nashville during the 1830's. They worked as blacksmiths there and married sisters Hester and Elizabeth Nickens. The Nickens sisters were of mixed race, having descended from an African slave known as Richard Nickens. Richard, his wife Chriss, and their three children were freed in the 1690 will of John Carter of Lancaster County, Virginia. The small bit of African DNA in my results, less than one percent, can be attributed to this branch. The Joseph and Elizabeth Jennett family moved 40 miles south to Thompson's Station. The Robinson and Hester Jennett family remained in Nashville. Here is a link to our freed slave ancestor, The Richard Nickens Story.

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

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.

Surviving a Civil War Prison Camp

A couple years ago, I posted a blog entry about Edwin Chapman of the Ohio Voluntary Infantry, my great great great grandfather who fought in the Civil War and was imprisoned from June 1864 through the end of the war in April 1865. After his capture in Mississippi, he was transported to Camp Sumter near Andersonville, Georgia.

On a recent drive through Georgia, I decided to explore the site of the former prison, now preserved as a National Historic Site, National Cemetery, and Prisoner of War Museum.

Me, the author, with my mother, at Andersonville, 2015

The prison was constructed with slave labor and opened in February 1864 on a piece of land large enough to hold 10,000 men. It was expanded by 50% in June, but the prisoners kept arriving by the trainload in nearby Andersonville and were marched into the stockade. At its peak, 32,000 prisoners occupied the encampment, making it the fifth largest city in the Confederacy. The grounds quickly became overcrowded, and diseases ran rampant.

"As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect;—stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and vermin. Many of our men, in the heat and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. "Can this be hell?" "God protect us!" and all thought that He alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place. In the center of the whole was a swamp, occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings, was more than we cared to think of just then." -Robert H. Kellogg, Sergeant Major in 16th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers,camp, May 2, 1864

Indeed, the conditions were deplorable with insufficient food supplies and a single tiny stream to serve as a source of water for drinking and cooking and also as a sink and a sewage system. Our visit to the museum included the viewing of a 28-minute video presentation about the prison, and we were saddened by the human suffering that took place here. Through good fortune and good genes, my forefather survived his incarceration. But nearly 13,000 of the 45,000 inhabitants of the Andersonville prison died there, primarily from dysentary and scurvy.

“Within the circumscribed area of the stockade the Federal prisoners were compelled to perform all the functions of life, cooking, washing, the calls of nature, exercise, and sleeping…[A] considerable breadth of land along the stream…was low and boggy, and was covered with the excrements of the men and thus rendered wholly uninhabitable…The pines and other small trees and shrubs…were in a short time cut down by the prisoners for firewood, and no shade tree was left in the entire enclosure of the stockade…[T]he Federals constructed for themselves small huts and caves and attempted to shield themselves from the rain and sun, and night damps and dew…The irregular arrangement of the huts and imperfect shelters was very unfavorable for the maintenance of a proper system of police." -Dr. Joseph Jones, Medical College of Georgia. (From his testimony at the trial of Captain Henry Wirz in John Ransom's Andersonville Diary by John Ransom, published by Berkley Books.)  

Many prisoners tried to escape by tunneling out, but almost all who made it were quickly recaptured. A fence row constructed 19 feet inside the perimeter of the stockade represented "the dead line." If a prisoner so much as touched the line, he was to be shot without warning by guards, typically boys and old men who were stationed in pigeon roosts atop the stockade. To make matters worse, a group of prisoners who called themselves "The Raiders" roamed the camp and used violence to steal anything of value from fellow inmates.

The Northeast corner of the camp has been replicated.

“[I] walk around camp every morning looking for acquaintances, the sick, &c. Can see a dozen most any morning laying around dead. A great many are terribly afflicted with diarrhea, and scurvy begins to take hold of some. Scurvy is a bad disease, and taken in connection with the former is sure death. Some have dropsy as well as scurvy, and the swollen limbs and body are sad to see.” -Brigade Quarter Master John L. Ransom, 9th Michigan Cavalry and prisoner at Andersonville. (From John Ransom’s Andersonville Diary by John Ransom, published by Berkley Books.)

“Can see the dead wagon loaded up with twenty or thirty bodies at a time, two lengths, just like four foot wood is loaded on to a wagon at the North, and away they go to the grave yard on a trot. Perhaps one or two will fall off and get run over. No attention paid to that; they are picked up on the road back after more. Was ever before in this world anything so terrible happening? Many entirely naked.” - John L. Ransom

The cemetery as it looked in 1864.

The war ended in April 1865, and and Edwin Chapman was freed along with his fellow survivors. Headstones in the cemetery numbering 1 through 12,853 mark the grave sites of those who were buried in shallow trenches. 

Andersonville National Cemetery, present day.

Edwin Chapman was just age 17 when he enlisted in the 72nd Ohio Voluntary Infantry in Fremont, Ohio in 1863. It's difficult to imagine the horror he experienced during the year and a half that ensued. Read more about Edwin's service in the Federal Army and his life after the war here, Edwin Chapman of the 72nd Ohio Infantry.

Corporal Edwin N. Chapman (1846-1913)

72nd OVI reunion, Dillon House in Fremont, 1908

Alexander McIntire - Murdered By Tecumseh's Warriors

My great great grandmother, Mary Amelia McIntire, married into the Bramel family of Mason County, Kentucky in 1885. She and Alonzo Wellwood Bramel (known as Wood and Amelia Bramel) were parents to two sons (George Pierce and Leslie B) and two daughters (Nancy Mae and Miriam Hassel). Amelia was the paternal grandmother of my paternal grandfather, Vernon Bramel, son of George Pierce Bramel and Sallie May (Nolan) Bramel. Amelia's father was Alexander McIntire, who died in 1856 at age 65 from injuries sustained from a falling tree. His father's name was also Alexander McIntire (sometimes spelled McIntyre).

Amelia Bramel of Maysville, Kentucky (1849-1927)

The family's roots in America began when the elder Alexander McIntire emigrated from Northern Ireland at the age of nineteen. He went to Kentucky and settled above the banks of the Ohio River at the town of Washington, near current day Maysville in Mason County. There, he married a Miss Goddard, and they had several children.

In the pioneer days of Kentucky, the threat of Indian attacks was a normal part of everyday life. During the 1780's, these uprisings became less frequent with the arrival of thousands of new settlers. But the Ohio River formed a firm boundary between Indian Country and the safer pioneer lands. The Ohio Country in the Northwest Territory was the arena for skirmishes between the frontiersmen and the natives from the Shawnee and other tribes.

Such was the case in the Spring of 1792, just a few weeks before Kentucky became the fifteenth state in the new nation. It seems that a band of Shawnee crossed into Kentucky to the town of Limestone (now Maysville), and made away with 16 horses owned by Kentuckians. In the days to follow, the famous frontiersman Simon Kenton organized a militia of about three dozen men to travel into Ohio to recover their horses. It was presumed that the alleged horse thieves would have taken up at a well known Indian campsite in current day Clermont County east of Cincinnati.

During the trip that ensued over the next few days, about a dozen of the Kentuckians turned back due to bad weather, but the others, including Alexander McIntire, pushed on with their mission. They approached the camp along the East Fork of the Little Miami River across from its confluence with the Grassy Run. Soon they spotted a brave riding on a horse they identified as one of the stolen. Despite Kenton's orders to not fire guns or do anything to alert the Indians to their presence, one of the militia men fired upon the unsuspecting brave, killing him. At this point, several more deserted the mission to return to Kentucky. The others followed the trail of the dead Indian toward the encampment.

As they approached, Kenton could not get an accurate count of how many warriors they would be up against, but estimates ranged upwards of 100 men along with several women and children. A decision was made to wait until the cover of night to make a surprise attack. They listened as warriors called out to their comrade who had not returned to camp, and a drum beat through the midnight hour to direct the missing warrior back. The men could not have known the Indians in this camp were under the leadership of Tecumseh, perhaps the most famous and highly regarded of the Shawnee warriors.

In the rainy darkness, confusion reigned, and when a warrior stepped out of a tent to stoke the fire, panic-stricken riflemen began firing before the signal was given. From that point, confusion gave way to chaos. One Kentuckian was killed by a strike from Tecumseh's war club. The remainder of the outnumbered Kentuckians ultimately retreated in all directions, with the Shawnee giving chase through the next day. While the mission failed in that their horses were not retrieved, the retreating Kentuckians did manage to make their way safely back to Limestone, with one exception.

Alexander McIntire, known as "Redheaded Aleck" to Simon Kenton, was described as a man of extraordinary strength; another account describes him as a short, robust, middle-aged Irishman. McIntire had taken a lunch break to cook a small animal he had shot over a fire he had built. The shot was heard by the Indians, and he was captured by Tecumseh's men. His captors returned him to the camp, where he was tied and held prisoner.

Tecumseh left the camp to check on horses that had dispersed during the melee, leaving instructions that the prisoner was not to be harmed. Tecumseh had strong beliefs that is was wrong to injure or kill a tied and defenseless prisoner. But McIntire may have gone out of his way to antagonize his captors, laughing at one of the braves who had been complaining about injuries from the battle. The brave killed McIntire with his hatchet. One account paints a gory pictures of the victim's limbs being strung from trees, and the head being planted on a pole. When Tecumseh returned to the scene, he was furious.

Stories of the incident, which became known as the Battle of Grassy Run, have survived through the generations. A historical marker nearby commemorates the battle, during which the two Kentuckians died, along with anywhere from two to fourteen Shawnee, according to various accounts. Today, an annual celebration, the Grassy Run Heritage Rendezvois, is hosted by the Grassy Run Historical Arts Committee in Williamsburg, Ohio.

Sources:

A History of Kentucky and Kentuckians: The Leaders and Representative Men in Commerce, Industry and Modern Activities, Volume 3, E. Polk Johnson, Lewis Publishing Company, 1912

Tecumseh: A Life, John Sugden, Macmillan, Apr 15, 1999

Battle of Grassy Run, Richard Crawford, Clermont County Historical Society