(513)576-9369

Personal Stories & Family Histories

Our Products: Personal Stories & Family Histories
Personal Stories & Family Histories
Sort by:
Price: $42.50
A genealogical account of westward migration as recorded in court, census, and military records, newspaper articles, and personal remembrances, traces the descendants of an Iams/Imes family that migrated from the East Coast into Lawrence County, Ohio, about 1810. One of the four members of the family remained in the Lawrence County area. Others moved to Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas. In addition to discussing the history and migration to Lawrence and Scioto Counties, Ohio, the book follows the ancestry of Mary Ann “Polly” Iams/Imes who married Thompson Ward, Peter, Solomon, Thomas, and Michael Iams/Imes. The inclusive name index covers 73 pages.
Price: $22.50
A newspaper reporter once wrote that Clermont County's involvement in the Underground Railroad was like a "hole in the map," meaning that the story of this county's involvement was largely untold. Gary Knepp has plugged that hole with this book. It will make the reader want to follow the Clermont County Freedom Trail. Gary Knepp was the director of the Clermont County Underground Railroad Research Project and, in 2005, appeared as a guest historian on the PBS television program, History Detectives.

See the index here.
Price: $18.95
Howard Gieringer comes from a family of entrepreneurs, beginning with his German-immigrant grandfather, his father and he continued to be part of the business community that served Miamitown, Ohio, located on the banks of the Great Miami River. His reminiscences about the businesses, the people, and the historic events of this small village on the West side of Cincinnati are both informative and entertaining. The location of this town offered opportunities for fishing and gold—both pastimes that ultimately led to many adventures around the globe, well up into his later years. The map of Miamitown, with a key to the various places mentioned in the book, allows the reader to feel as though he is right in the middle of each story.

Click here for the index
Price: $22.50

Jim LaBarbara, dubbed "The Music Professor," a name given to him when he worked in Cincinnati with WLW, WCKY, WSAI, and WGRR FM, among others. The moniker became prophetic as he earned a master's degree in broadcasting and taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati. A respected musicologist on early rock and roll, he was named one of the "Top 40 Radio Personalities of All Time," is listed in the Rock Jock Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Radio/Television/Broadcasters Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio. Working throughout the years under the names of Jimmy Holiday in Meadville, Titusville, and DuBois, Pennsylvania, and J. Bentley Starr in Erie, Pennsylvania, he began using his real name on WKYC and WIXY in Cleveland and Denver.

 

Jim shares his honest firsthand account of his experience during a dynamic and sometimes turbulent life on and off the radio. He was there when the controversy of playing music performed by black artists was coming to an end, and was later innocently thrust in the middle of the payola scandals. When Jim LaBarbara did his first radio show in 1959 he couldn't have imagined it would lead to a Hall of Fame career that spanned more than fifty years; one where he would work on some of the country's most powerful stations. There have been a couple of "Guardian Angels" in his life and a "Hell's Angel" who saved his life.

 

For those who grew up in the '50s and the baby boomer generation, along with others interested in pop culture, this story will transport you back to the beginning of rock music. Jim was with the Supremes, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. He interviewed hundreds of entertainers including Bill Haley, Jackie Wilson, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, James Brown, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Neil Diamond, John Denver, and others. It is with the help of these interviews that he tells his own story and in so doing gives a unique perspective of the history of rock 'n' roll.


 Click here for an index

Price: $15.95
A compelling story about the tumultuous times one Estonian family experienced during and after World War II. This story follows their escape from Communism and the encroaching Russian Red Army in Estonia, their life in a refugee camp in Germany, their arrival in the United States, and their experiences within the following few years thereafter. Ms. Martin also chronicles their visits back to Estonia, both before and after Estonian independence.
Price: $12.95

Patrick and Mary O'Brien came to America from the town of Ballinagar, Kings County, Ireland. It was a quiet town about fifty miles west of Dublin. They were not young when they decided to board the ship for America in 1852 as their eight children were adults by that time. Richard Hidy tells an interesting story about his ancestors and the events that could have brought them, and many of their fellow Irishmen, here to America. The Catholic O'Briens and their family settled in the Cincinnati and Springfield, Ohio, area and the author provides an interesting history as to the possible reasons the O'Briens and others chose these areas. A good portion of the book tells of their grandson Richard's experience becoming a police chief and a history of the turbulent times experienced by local riots and the Ku Klux Klan. The book details the infiltration of the klan members into all aspects of society and its effect on Richard O'Brien.

This is an interesting history told in following an Irish Catholic family and their acclimation to a new neighborhood, a new parish, in a new country.

Price: $14.95
In The Flowers Still Bloom Every Year, James Arthur Williams describes the hardship of his Scotch-Irish and Welsh foreparents who immigrated to America and settled in the Appalachian hill country of Kentucky. Mr. Williams continues to describe how his maternal grandparents who, through good fortune, became moderately wealthy with the discovery of oil and gas on their property, while his paternal grandparents scratched out a living in its valleys and hollows. Later, the Williamses crossed the Ohio River into southern Ohio, overcame death and disease and, through hard work, faith and determination, made a fruitful life for themselves. The author continues the saga with his own generation and how they carried forth the values of their ancestors.
Price: $70.00
The first chapter relates the early history of the origins of the Swangos beginning as early as 1327. The second chapter tells of the Swango family that emigrated from Bavaria in 1747 and their journey. The descendants of one son, Abraham, are followed throughout the remainder of the book with chapters on pioneering, the Civil War, reunions, heroes, and memorials. The family outline and extensive index follow these chapters.
Price: $16.95
The letters transcribed within this volume were written during the American Civil War by Capt. Asbury Gatch to his wife, Mary Etta Hopper Gatch. The span from February 1864 through the end of the war. These letters present the portrait of a man of honor and conviction from Milford, Ohio, who dearly loved his wife and family, who often dreamed of soft bread and porterhouse steaks, who gossiped about the home front, who criticized the stay-at-home "patriots," who derided the Southern aristocracy, and who wrote glowingly of his exploits at war. This revised edition includes new and expanded notes and more than seventy illustrations.
Price: $18.50
Treasured Memories is a narrative account based upon a collection of letters written by members of an extended family and brings to life the joys, the challenges, and the sorrows of everyday life during the crisis of war. These letters, written by Sgt. McLain Montgomery and others of the 33rd and 39th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and by his brothers Del and Newton, from the 64th and 31st Illinois Infantry, were cherished and treasured by Sergeant Montgomery's Civil War widow, Mary Ann Montgomery, in her determination to keep the memory of her husband alive.
Price: $12.95
This fun-to-read book contains humorous remembrances from the daughter of a country doctor about real events that occurred in the office and at home throughout his years of practice.