MORE GRANDPARENTS

MY DIRECT forbears

Jacob Bolender (my great great grandfather) was born to Stephen and Margreta Bolender, January 9, 1793, in Pennsylvania. He came to Ohio on the flatboat with his parents as a young boy. Jacob married Anna Hoss December 16, 1812. They had six children, one being Joel Bolender (my great grandfather). Anna died September 15, 1826 at the age of 33. She was buried at Zion Methodist Church Cemetery near Felicity, Ohio. Jacob married again on April 5, 1827, to (Mrs.) Sarah Jeffers Joslin. Jacob and Sarah had four children. Jacob died February 15, 1860. Sarah died October 29, 1879.

My great grandfather, Joel Bolender, son of Jacob and Anna Bolender, was born January 15, 1823. Joel married 16 year old Melissa Trisler on March 13, 1845. Rev. John Vincent performed the ceremony. Joel and Melissa had ten children. Joel was a farmer except for two years in the mercantile business. They attended Zion Methodist Church about two miles from their home.

One Sunday at the Methodist Church, about 1868 or so, during the sermon, the pastor stated, "There is no room for Democrats in this church." After the service several of the members who were Democrats, including Joel Bolender, gathered by a stone wall near the cemetery. Someone suggested they build their own church. One man offered an acre of land nearby, another donated three trees, another offered the use of his sawmill, while another offered to bake the bricks for the chimney. In a short time Benton church was built. Col. Hatfield was the first pastor. The church was affiliated with the Christian Union denomination.

Joel and Melissa's seventh son, Peter Cartwright, never married having died prematurely while still in his twenties. My grandfather, John Jacob, their fifth son, and 'Wrighty' were very close. I have heard my grandfather mention Wrighty many times. My brother, Leon, gave me a copy of a handwritten poem which we believe was written by Melissa, their mother about their deceased son, Wright.

LONELY SOLEMN THOUGHTS

One lonely solemn thought

Comes to one oer and oer

That smiling face I used to see

Is gone to be no more

Those sparkling eyes I used to see

Are closed and laid away

That tongue that used to sing God's praise

Lies silent in the grave

This voice is hushed and still

No merry whistles heard

That never comes at noon or night

Or speaks a loving word

How lonely Johny looks

When he comes from work at night

No brother here to help him sing

Or read at candle light

Our darling Wright is gone

To view that [land]so fair

To eat of the tree of life

And live forever there

Sweet land of rest for thee I sigh

When will the moment come

When I shall see my son again

And rest with him at home

Joel’s wife Melissa, died September 12, 1903, and was buried at Zion Cemetery. Joel died Aug. 20, 1907 and was buried along side his wife.

John Jacob Bolender (my grandfather), son of Joel and Melissa, was born January 5, 1858, in a log cabin on a dirt road near Benton Christian Union Church. John Jacob attended a one-room school near the Benton church. However, he did not go far in school due to vision problems. Instead, he helped his father on the farm.

John Jacob met Sylvia Elnora Hill while she was living with the Smith Poe family. Sylvia’s father, Warren Hill, had a twin brother, Austin. Warren Hill was a farmer. Sylvia Elnora, was Warren and Ann Eliza Hill’s only child. When Sylvia was two and one half years old her father, Warren Hill, died unexpectedly of pneumonia at only 23 years of age. In later years Sylvia (my grandmother) told my sister Eleanor that she still had memories of that time. In the casket her father's head did not seem to be quite high enough, so someone had put folded newspaper under the pillow to make it higher.

When John Jacob and Sylvia made plans to be married, John Jacob’s father, Joel, purchased a 120-acre farm near Felicity and gave it to them. When John Jacob began courting Sylvia, they rode in a horse-drawn buggy. John Jacob carried a nickel-plated 32-caliber revolver. When questioned about it years later, he defensively said, "Any self-respecting gentleman would carry protection when he took his lady out."

John Jacob wanted to provide a wedding ring for Sylvia. He remembered a story his father told about his purchasing a ring, which was supposed to be gold, but when his wife wore it, it turned her finger black. So John Jacob took a twenty-dollar gold-piece to the jeweler and watched while the gold was hammered and fashioned into a wedding ring. John and Sylvia were married December 21, 1887. They had three children: Josie Melissa Bolender, born August 2, 1889, died June 8, 1982. Herbert Joel Bolender (my father), born August 15, 1890, died November 5, 1959. Harry Hill Bolender, born September 29, 1896, died October 12, 1996 just two weeks after celebrating his 100th birthday.

About 1889, a visiting preacher came to the area and preached against using tobacco. John Jacob stopped smoking cigars prior to this time after making an agreement with his brother, Billy. Soon after that time, John Jacob and Sylvia quit raising tobacco for their living. He decided if it's wrong to use tobacco, then it's wrong to raise it. This was a step of faith because tobacco was the main moneymaking crop in those parts. In place of raising tobacco they planted orchards of apples and pears. It takes new fruit trees from six to eight years to produce fruit. During the intervening years they planted, grew and sold blackberries, raspberries and gooseberries.

John Jacob became known in the area as 'Apple Johnny' because of his orchards.

In 1911-12, when Herbert was about twenty-one, they built a new house. Sylvia designed the house herself, after studying several plans. They used some of the brick from the old house for the foundation. The milled lumber was shipped from Cincinnati by riverboat. The lumber was hauled up the mile-long river hill by triple-teamed horses. It took about 40 trips to haul all of it.

In later years Sylvia (my Grandmother) told my sister Eleanor about those times. They saved up the money for the new house ahead of time by scrimping and saving. She said, "I used to have patches on my dress when I went to town, but I held my head up high because I knew we were doing without and saving our money so we could build ourselves a nice new house." They saved $4500, but the house cost them $5000, and they did have to borrow the final $500. It probably was not long before they paid off that small loan.

During the four months of building, the family camped out. Herbert and his brother Harry slept in a bed swung from the rafters of the barn. John and Sylvia slept in a building that used to be a chicken house, but had become the ‘shop.' The woodburning cookstove was placed in the small chicken house in the back of the shop. Josie slept on a cot in that temporary kitchen at night, folding up the cot in the day time.

John Jacob helped found the ‘Southern Ohio Fruit Growers Association.' He became an officer and attended many meetings and seminars over the years. At harvest time they packed apples in barrels, loaded the barrels into the wagon, drove the horse-drawn wagon down the hills to the Ohio River and shipped the barrels to the markets in Cincinnati by riverboat.

When John Jacob was about fifty years old, he fell out of a tree breaking his back. He suffered from back trouble from then on, but it never kept him from the farm work for long. He also was thrown from a horse, which he claimed resulted in a double hernia. He had been blind in one eye for a number of years. Around 1939, the eye socket became very painful. Consequently, he was taken to a hospital in Cincinnati to have the eye removed. After that he always wore a glass one.

When, my dad's brother, Harry, married Bertha Fortner, they went to Florida for their honeymoon trip. Harry’s mother, Sylvia, went with them. While there, Sylvia collected a number of seashells. This resulted in her lifelong hobby of collecting shells. She was very creative in arranging and gluing them into many patterns and objects. She kept her large shell collection in the 'front room' of their home in Felicity. Friends sent her shells from many parts of the world. By the l940’s Sylvia's deafness had reached the point that a hearing aid could no longer help her. One had conversations with her by writing it out on a paper on a clipboard, which she would read and then speak her response. This was time-consuming, but good practice, particularly for her grandchildren just learning to read and write. She had very thin hair and wore a wig on dress up occasions. For every day, she wore caps which she made herself out of floral print cotton with contrasting ruffles, very neat, which had to be starched and ironed, just so. In the family, she never referred to this hairpiece as a 'wig' but always called it a transformation.

During the summer of 1951, John Jacob became weaker. He passed away September 10, 1951, at the age of 93. After John Jacob’s funeral, Sylvia lived alone in the Felicity house until 1957. That was when she went to Clinton, Tennessee, to live with Harry and Bertha who pastored a church there. Later Harry and Bertha were called to another church, moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Sylvia died five months later, on Oct. 5, 1959. She was taken back to Felicity for the funeral, then buried beside John Jacob at Bethel, Ohio.

Note: I have a copy of a handwritten remembrances by my Aunt Josie (my dad's sister). It was written in her later years of life. It reads:

"John Jacob Bolender (Hon Jokup, German spelling) Born Jan 5, 1858, in a log house on a farm on a dirt road, near Benton Christian Union Church. There were two big hills between (about three miles apart) home and church. Grandpa was the fifth child.

Joel Bolender, his father, built his new home soon after my father was born. It had a dark cellar under the dining room floor. In back of the house was a big above ground fruit cellar, where they stored fruits and vegetables. It had no windows and was always cold and damp.

My grandmother Bolender had charge of the honeybees. She took the honey. She was a little frail woman, who sat around in a rocker in the sitting room with a black shawl over her shoulders, and wore real dark dresses, black mostly. She died when she was 72.

Their house was a modern up-to-date house with a long front porch and a brick walk to the road. My Grandpa was a hard worker and very industrious, made most of his money growing tobacco.

Grandpa had a nice big tool shed. He had a wooden "horse" that I believe he used to hold a stick of wood. Then he would take his drawing knife and whittle out ax handles, butter paddle or a potato masher. Aunt Lottie, John Jacob's sister) made some little toy potato mashers.

I remember the old log house where my father was born. It had a large fireplace called a Franklin stove. We sure loved our Grandpa. He would give us candy. We went fishing with Grandpa. He had gray hair and a white beard. I remember how he used to sit in his easy chair and snore. Too, he would trot us on his knees. He had a big candy box in a cupboard in the living room. We would sit around the great fire in the winter and eat candy.

They had nice plush furniture in the parlor. We didn't go in there very often. Just on Sundays, or when special company came. When we were children, we would run across the front porch. That was most too much noise for Grandma.

They had a big cedar tree in the front yard. A big storm came and blew it down. So Grandpa made a lot of butter paddles, rolling pins, and potato mashers. That made a lot of shavings on the floor of his big tool shed which stood just outside the gate that opened to the lane to the barn."