Bill & LaVonne Lee
Present
|
The
Baseball Necrology
The
Time-Life
OTT in Indiana
Compiled
and prepared by Bill and LaVonne Lee.
177 pages, double-columned, full-name index, softcover (8 1/2 X 11)
2006.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9795830-1-8.
ISBN-10: 0-9795830-1-2.
The four W's of
family history are Who did
it? What did they
do? When and Where did they do it? These
four W's are covered in detail
in OTT in INDIANA
for the
Indiana counties listed below. This book is not a family
history, as such, for any specific OTT family, but most
assuredly could provide some missing links to your particular Indiana
OTT, or related families. This material was gathered by the Lee's during
the Summer of 1996 when they visited a number of Indiana counties
looking for information on the
name OTT. This book is the next
best thing to actually going to each of these county courthouses
to research the records yourself.
The OTTs were among the earliest settlers in Ohio and Indiana, settling in Preble County, Ohio, as early as 1805 and in Northern Indiana in the 1830s. 200 years and eight generations later descendants of these early settlers can still be found in Ohio and Indiana, as well as throughout the United States.
Included in the book are thumbnail sketches of nearly 1600 public records from various Indiana counties with the highest concentration of OTT records being in DuBois, Elkhart, Huntington, Kosciusko, Lake, Noble, Parke, Wabash, Wayne and Whitley counties. Records searched include marriages, civil and criminal court cases, probates, births, deaths and military discharge recordings. The book also has sections with cemetery inscriptions, directory listings and interesting articles from newspapers and local histories. Every name in the book is indexed - more than 6000 names involved with the OTTs including over 1900 OTTs - A MUST FOR ANY INDIANA OTT RESEARCHER.
Be sure to inform other OTT researchers who would like to benefit from this easy to use, informative book, and keep in mind that OTT in Indiana would make an outstanding gift for any OTT family tree researcher.
The cost of OTT in Indiana is $27.95, including shipping and handling.
SOLD OUT
Bill Lee
9501 West Business 83, Suite 871
Harlingen TX 78552
All orders will be sent via USPS Media Mail
Introduction to
OTT in Indiana
Strange as it may seem, two OTT sisters were both great-great-great
grandmothers to LaVonne. Sally OTT (16 May 1787-7 Dec 1864) and Catherine
OTT (29 Apr 1790-6 Jun 1866) were daughters of Franz Jacob OTT (11 May
1754-25 Apr 1821) and Catharine NEAD (27 Jul 1759-6 May 1829). The parents
died and are buried in Preble County, Ohio, but a good many of their
descendants migrated into LaVonne's home territory of Northern Indiana to
Elkhart, Huntington, Kosciusko, Noble, Wabash and Whitley counties.
Sally OTT married Abraham HAPNER, a marriage that two generations later
resulted in one of LaVonne's great grandfathers, George HAPNER. The other
side is a bit harder to follow. Catherine OTT married Michael PRICE who
had a daughter, Anna PRICE. She was the first wife of Baltzer JUDAY, a
marriage that produced one of LaVonne's great grandmothers, Matilda JUDAY,
who married the George HAPNER mentioned above. Abraham and Sally (OTT)
HAPNER lived their entire adult
lives in Preble County, Ohio, died and were buried there, although their
descendants moved on to Elkhart County, Indiana. Michael and Catherine (OTT) PRICE moved to Elkhart County early, died
and are buried in Jackson Cemetery there.
The surnames OTT, HAPNER, JUDAY, PRICE, ROOKSTOOL and BUTT are all
prevalent in early Preble County history, as well
as Northern Indiana history, and in LaVonne's genealogy. In 1987 LaVonne,
and her husband, Bill Lee, began traveling
from county to county throughout the Western United States, doing research
on a number of family names, OTT, JUDAY and HAPNER among them. The result of this research has evolved into this book,
HAPNER in the West, JUDAY and JUDY in the
Pacific Northwest, JUDAY and JUDY in Indiana, plus nearly twenty similar
books on our family names. Our books can be
found in many libraries and may be purchased from us, using information
found on our website:
http://www.baseballundertaker.com
We plan on publishing the results of more of our research findings from
over 800 county courthouses in the Western
United States in the future, as time permits.
Time and resources did not allow us to search the records in all of
Indiana's 92 counties. The counties where we did
perform extensive searches were Brown, Carroll, Dubois, Elkhart, Fountain,
Henry, Huntington, Kosciusko, Lake, Noble,
Parke, Vermillion, Wabash, Warren, Wayne and Whitley. There are other
counties included in the book, but information on
those counties came mostly from sources found in libraries instead of from
an extensive search of courthouse records.
The county records we concentrated on most were marriages, civil and
criminal court cases, probates, births, deaths and
military discharge recordings. Conspicuously absent from this list are
land records. Even though we recognize the genealogical value of
these records, we did not include land records in the book because of the
volume of this type record. We also did not include court records from any of the lower courts. Only cases from the Circuit and Superior
courts are included. Records in city courts and lower county courts are
too voluminous and contain such things as minor
(and some not so minor) traffic violations. Not only does searching these
records take an inordinate amount of time and
book space, the maintenance of these records is inconsistent from one
jurisdiction to another, and are often not available. However, the presence of OTTs in a particular area can be determined
from the records we have included, and
further research in a specific area can be performed if one desires.
Besides the Northern Indiana counties mentioned above in the first
paragraph we found a concentration of OTTs in
four other areas. In Parke County there was a prominent OTT family that
settled there in the mid-nineteenth century.
This family operated a prosperous hardware store on the Square in
Rockville, and included in its members was a doctor
and a pharmacist. We can find no relationship of this family and those
most prevalent in this book, and they all seem to
have disappeared from the area before the last half of the twentieth
century. There also was a family of OTTs in DuBois
County during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Once again, they seem to
have disappeared from the area, and there is no
obvious connection with their namesakes from the northern counties. A
larger concentration of OTTs appeared in Lake
County, and seem to be there to this date. The majority of these seem to
be of recent European extraction, and with the
exception of scattered incidences, seem to have no obvious connection with
LaVonne's cousins. The fourth area is Wayne
and Henry counties that is no more than a spillover from neighboring
Preble County. It is in this area that we found
most of the UTTs, which may well be an entirely different family.
The book is divided into four main sections. The first section contains
selected articles from local histories and
newspapers (mostly obituaries). These are copied verbatim, except in a few
instances where we felt compelled to correct
atrocious grammar (ours isn't that perfect either, but occasionally we had
to interfere) or obvious errors in content.
These articles are presented chronologically by date of publication. A
good many family connections and a great deal of family and local history
can be found in these articles. At the end of this first section is a list
of tombstone inscriptions for OTT and some related families from cemeteries in the
surrounding areas. We have visited most of these
cemeteries at one time or the other, and personally observed a good number
of the inscriptions, but most of those shown
came from publications found in libraries, and published by local
genealogists who have walked the various cemeteries.
The second section contains abstracts of county records from each county
where we did research, along with some entries from a few counties that were found in libraries. This section is in
order alphabetically by county. Within each
county we have presented marriage records first, civil and criminal court
records next, followed by probate records,
then birth records, death records, and finally, military discharge
recordings. Each group is in chronological order by
date of occurrence or date of recording. On occasion you will discover the
same person married two or more times in the
marriage records, then later in the book, the person's divorce in the
court records. Then, still later in the book, his
or her birth record. Obviously, the birth occurred first, and the divorce actually happened between the two marriages
that appeared earlier, but appears afterward because of the grouping of
the records.
The next section in the book contains directory information - street
address and phone number of OTTs living in
Indiana. We make no claim that these names include every OTT living in the
state, or that the names, addresses or phone
numbers are current. We only hope that the listings, which were taken from switchboard.com on the internet, are relaatively accurate. This section is presented alphabetically by name within
city.
The last section in the book is the full-name index. Our index is,
literally, an every name index, and then some.
Every person in the book is indexed, including both the married name and
pre-married name for brides, making the assumption that the bride has followed the old-fashion custom of taking the
husband's surname. We have also indexed the maiden and married names of those women where both names are obvious. Some
examples - Terry Lee LEWIS married Mary Ann OTT.
We have indexed Mary Ann under both LEWIS and OTT. George W OTT married Dora L EPPERT. Dora L is indexed under both OTT and EPPERT. George W OTT's parents were Jacob OTT and Sarah SHULL. Sarah
is indexed under both SHULL and OTT.
A few words need to be said about research at county courthouses. First, a
researcher is totally at the mercy of the
personnel working in the various courthouses. Some counties have personnel
who are both knowledgeable and helpful, while
other counties have personnel who are neither. The norm is somewhere
between these two extremes. We have been in courthouses that were so enjoyable that we hated to leave, and in others where
we were sorry we ever went. Research of our
public records is a challenge! Secondly, the quality and content of county
records vary widely from one jurisdiction to
another and also over time. In general, the counties included in this book
had reasonably good records, but a marked
difference can be seen in the content of marriage records from the earlier
times to more recent times. In a few cases
we were denied access to records, some for valid legal reasons, others
because of misinterpretation of a law or clerk
indifference, or sometimes because the record in question could not be
found. These are indicated in the book.
We have made every effort to report the data as we saw it. However, some
of the source material is sometimes in
error, and other times difficult to interpret. In some instances the same
name is spelled differently on the same form,
for instance JUDAY and JUDY. It's easy to write JUDY for JUDAY when the
person giving a clerk information says JUDY,
and most of the JUDAYs pronounce their name JUDY. In some cases it was
obvious to us that the record said JUDY when it
should have said JUDAY, or HEPNER when it should have been HAPNER, but in
most instances, we are reporting what we saw, NOT what we THOUGHT it should be. The names OTT and UTT fit this category.
There are times when the record said UTT when we knew it was supposed to be OTT. There are lots of other times when
we didn't know whether it should be OTT or UTT, so in all cases we have reported what we saw.
There are also times where we have introduced errors in transcription of
the data, although we have attempted to minimize this type error. Some of the records list a great deal of
information, others very little. We have attempted to
report all the information contained in the original records. Some
of the court records are subject to individual interpretation. We are not attorneys, and have only attempted to summarize
the content of the court cases. Any individual
interested in more detail on any of these cases may find the case files
available to the public(?) at the indicated
county courthouse by requesting the specified case number.
As mentioned above, we have done a great deal of research on family names
that have a connection to LaVonne's family.
The names on her mother's side of the family, and consequently, those
related to the OTTs are HAPNER, JUDAY and HOSHAW.
We have a great deal of information on these names and some books on the JUDAY, JUDY, HAPNER, HOSHAW and HUSHAW names
are now available. We are currently working on more similar books. Anyone
interested in these names should not hesitate
to let us know and we will keep you informed of our progress on these
exciting projects. In the meantime, we thank you
for your interest in our publications. Please let others know about us and
our work.
Bill and LaVonne Lee
Harlingen TX
June 2006
Return to Top
OTT Genealogy and Family History Data at mycinnamontoast.com.
OTT
Genealogy and Family History at OneGreatFamily.com.
OTT Cemetery Records at Findagrave.com.
OTT Records at Footnote.com.
OTT Cemetery Records at Interment.net.
OTT
at Genealogy Today.
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