Ohio Roots

A note on Ancestral Place for the Ecotone Wiki.

Both my parents grew up in Ohio, they meeting as undergraduates at Ohio State University in Columbus. My father’s side was the more recent arrival in the state; my mother’s side arrived first and settled in Lorain County, a bit west of Cleveland, around 1840 or so. There they stayed for well over a hundred years, apparently staying out of the limelight, working as small farmers and laborers.

One of these years I’ll poke around Lorain County to learn what I can about the lives of my ancestors and their land. In the meantime I’ll content myself with resources such as the Lorain County Genealogy page, and a memory of a winter birding trip up to Lake Erie during which I saw my first rough-legged hawk and northern shrike, and returned via the ancestral territory.

Oh, and I pronounce “root” with a short vowel. Is that an Ohio thing?