The Things I Don’t Remember, Part 1

I was born in Kokomo, Indiana. I have no recollection of the event, but my family told me all about it. Since then I have discovered some things that happened even before I was born.

A group of settlers left the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania in about 1835. Many of the party had lived in Ten Mile River area for several generations, near Clarksville, in Washington County. They probably floated a barge a few miles down Ten Mile to where it flowed into the Monongahela River. The Monongahela carried them 60 miles north as it snaked its way to the confluence with the Allegany River at Pittsburgh - after that it was known as the Ohio River.

The barge load of people landed in Cincinnati and loaded their possessions into a wagon for the fifty mile trip to Ripley County, Indiana. John Thomas Buckingham and John Mullan were two of the group. They were married to the Horn sisters. John Buckingham’s son, Thomas Jefferson, married Sarah Muir. The Muir and the Joseph Logsdon families had come into Indiana even earlier via Kentucky. Sarah Muir’s mother was the daughter of John Mullan, and her Great Great Grandfather was Joseph Logsdon. Thomas Jefferson’s son, John Harrison Buckingham married Dorma Manlove. Their youngest son, William Ralph Buckingham, was born in 1912. He was my father. He married Hazel Mae Frank in 1936, and I was produced three years later. Mom’s ancestors, the Jacobs, Austin, Bailey, and Thornton families had resided in Kentucky for many generations. The exception was her grandfather, George Albert Frank, who was born in France and came to Kentucky as a young man in about 1870.

I don’t expect any body to have absorbed all those names, or who was begat by who, but I wanted to make a point as to why I was born in Indiana. If I were an ego-maniac I might conclude that the convergence of all those people was for the express purpose of producing me, but I’ve lived long enough to know I was, like many of my ancestors, just another unplanned event in Indiana. Both sides of the family had migrated north to Connersville, Fayette County, Indiana by the time Dad and Mom met.

Dad’s family had moved the 50 miles distance, from Ripley County, over a couple generations. Mom’s family had bounced north from Kentucky, landing for a while near Cincinnati, Ohio. They went to Connersville in 1922, but my Grandfather, Lewis Albert (Bert) Frank, left the family shortly thereafter. He was a troubled man with a drinking problem. Mom said he could be charming when sober but became meaner than a snake when he drank. They didn’t see much of him after that, and Grandma Della Frank raised their three children by herself. She didn't get any support and had to take in boarders and do laundry to make ends meet. Dad grew up with two brothers and two sisters on a small farm a few miles north of Connersville, near the village of Harrisburg. He graduated Connersville high school in 1930, Ball State Teachers College in 1934, and then took a month to hobo across the country. He had some adventures going to California and back; then returned to Connersville in time to meet Mom. I don’t know exactly when they met, but he was teaching night school, and she was his student. I don’t know anything about their courtship, but it must have been brief, because they were married in a small ceremony in June of 1936 . My Uncle Joe Frank and his future wife, Gail Williams, were the attendants. I think they were the only ones present because the newspaper announcement stated the wedding was performed in the manse of the church. The article went on, “A high noon dinner of bridal note was given Sunday at the home of the bride’s mother for the members of the wedding party and the immediate relatives of both families. Garden flowers formed the centerpiece for the table and decorated the home.” I found the newspaper article many years later, after dad died. Mom said the part about the dinner was a fiction made up by the woman who wrote it - there had been no dinner.

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