My great-great grandmother Susan Barton Lutz was born in 1838, the year Queen Victoria was crowned Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Ladies wore their hair in ringlets while indoors and covered with lavishly trimmed bonnets when outdoors. Dresses were designed with sloping shoulders, full sleeves and full skirts often sporting a ruffle at the bottom. These romantic garments were usually constructed of light cotton in various hues of blue, or else of striped or flowered prints. It was thought necessary to don gloves and take one’s parasol when venturing out of the house.

1838 was the year Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, both bestselling novels. “Swedish nightingale” Jenny Lind made her public singing debut in Stockholm. Famous people also born that year were German airship designer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin and French composer Georges Bizet. American mathematician and astronomer Nathaniel Bowditch died, and Frederic Chopin’s (shocking) affair with George Sand began. (Non-fashion oriented facts gathered from The Timetables of History, New Third Revised Edition, edited by Bernard Grun.)

I sometimes wonder how much the citizens of an ordinary American town like Yellowbud, Ohio knew of all that was going on in the big, wide world. We’re so used to the presence of the talking heads we see on TV I think we fail to understand how our ancestors went about viewing their world. What news they did have, they digested without the agenda so apparent in our news media today. How refreshing! But then, what news was actually available to them?

On a recent trip to Ohio to sniff out my roots, I purchased a booklet titled History of Springbank and Yellowbud Community (written by Martha Gerber Rittinger, Loche MacKenzie Kline, Mary Corcoran Harp and Sue Dresbach Gearhart, copyrighted in 1999) which explains the rise and fall of Yellowbud, the spot where my great-great grandmother grew up.Its importance and size were directly proportional to the fact it was a stop on the Ohio and Erie Canal, and its history is inextricably tied in to that of the Canal - Susan's father had a carpenter shop in the little town and often worked on making and repairing canal boats. I quote from the booklet:

The first settlers had little means of sending their produce to market. Produce was sent down the Scioto River by way of “broad-horns,” as the flat boats were called. The journey was possible only when the waters were high enough, usually from February to May….Because of poor market accessibility, legislators of the infant state decided to build the Ohio-Erie Canal….In 1825, wheat was selling for 20 to 30 cents per bushel… A farmer would raise 20 bushels of wheat and would often spend a week with his team hauling his wheat 60 miles to market over extremely bad roads. At the market he exchanged it at 25 to 30 cents a bushel for salt, glass, nails, and other necessities….After the opening of the canal, the price of wheat went up to 50, then 75 cents a bushel. While the price of the items the farmer sold rose, the price of the items the farmer needed was falling. Local residents were able to benefit both in the price of exports and imports.

Unfortunately for its residents, the meteoric rise in status the village of Yellowbud gained from the building of the canal was short-lived, as the railroads soon followed, taking with them the bulk of all this commerce from transportation. At its zenith, Yellowbud was a thriving town of 800 souls. The publication continues,

…it was difficult to imagine the large amount of goods that were shipped on the canal. The stopping point at Yellow Bud was a busy place. Farmer bought many items they needed from the boats and shipped their corn, whiskey, wheat, oats, flour, lumber, cattle, and hogs to market. The boatmen were very busy from late August until Christmas…(p.28)

Yellowbud figures in the story of our family. Not only did Susan's parents Eliza Ann and Levi Barton make their home there; it was where Confederate General Robert E. Lee (Lieutenant Lee at the time) made a disappointing stop to visit Susan’s mother (they were cousins) while en route to the West. Later, it was where my great-grandmother came to live when she met her future husband. It was where my own mother (and her siblings) went to elementary school because it was only about a mile from the family farm. By mother’s generation however, Yellowbud had shrunk into a sleepy little village once more.

Upon her marriage, Susan Jane Barton moved from Yellowbud to Springbank Farm. The move was more than lateral – it was a move upwards in the socio-economic ladder as well. In Great-Aunt Mary’s words,

I had the greatest respect for Grandfather and Grandmother [Isaac and Susan]. All I remember about him is that he was a short, stout fellow with a bald head and he always wore a cap. About all I can remember him doing was directing. He had a comfortable chair and he always sat right over the register and Grandmother would read to him. He would walk out to the kitchen for his meal and back to his comfortable chair. In summer he would be out on the porch or out in the yard, maybe. But he was waited on for everything as far back as I can remember. Grandmother had a deep respect for him because he had more means than her family. Her family weren’t people of means and of course the Lutzes were. But the Bartons were not. I think great-grandfather [Levi Barton] made a good living and all, but they didn’t have a farm or holdings. Grandmother was always very appreciative of Grandfather and the position he provided for her. They did hold an enviable position in the county, I think. Everybody respected them. They were good, honest people, to begin with. They took good care of their tenant farmers.

Grandmother brought culture to the family. The Lutzes were “Pennsylvania Dutch” through and through. Their business, their livestock, their farms were their interest. They left the culture, if there was any, to the ladies. Grandfather was very fortunate in finding Grandmother. She was very young. (Of course she thought my marriage was alright because Grandfather’s first wife had died and he was a widower for several years and Grandmother was much younger.) Grandmother, in the first place, knew European royalty better than she knew her next-door neighbors. Now, she was very kind to everybody and kind to the people on the farm and all that, but her social interest was her books. Like Queen Victoria: she knew her family as well as she knew her own! There was nothing came out in the paper or magazine that she didn’t get hold of about Queen Victoria that she didn’t read and then discuss.

Grandmother, as I remember didn’t go to church – but she had Grandfather to take care of, and I don’t think he ever went to church. The Lutzes weren’t church people. They were business people. Good people. They did a lot for the community, but they left the church-going to the women, generally. But Grandmother leaned toward the Church of England. Mother felt that that was all wrong – after all, John Wesley had straightened them out, you know. She never discussed it with me.

She was our communion steward and always on communion day Grandmother went to church. She would NOT leave the linens. They had to be laundered after each church service because you had to have them immaculate. It didn’t make any difference whether they had a spot on them or whether they were in perfect shape as far as you could see – they had been used, so they were always laundered, and laundered first-class. In those days you did it from the wash board and so forth, and of course Grandmother had help to do it. She always had one maid – we called them hired girls then – and oftentimes had two.

I remember Cousin Sue Dunlap had said several times what a good cook Grandmother was. Well, I didn’t say anything. I had never eaten very much of Grandmother’s cooking. I remember once in a while as a child I would eat something that I liked there, but whenever there was company Mother always did the cooking. Sue said it once too often, and I said, “Sue, you never ate any of Grandmother’s cooking! “Oh yes I have; I’ve been there to many a big meal.” I said, “My mother did all of that” and Aunt Florence piped up and said, “Yes, Mandane did all the cooking. Mother [Susan Barton] wasn’t a cook at all! She let somebody else do the cooking.” (From recorded interviews in possession of the author.)

Susan and Isaac had six children of their own: Ada Jessie (born 1856), Mary Eliza (1858), Freeman Barton (1862), Fred Lincoln (my grandmother’s father, born 1865), Belle Elizabeth (1869) and Susan Florence (1871). According to Great-Aunt Mary,their oldest son was the student of the family. He studied surveying under his grandfather. The family farm included some walnut trees, and Susan and Isaac had a desk for Freeman made out of this walnut lumber. Unfortunately, he contracted typhoid fever and died at only 19 years of age.

His newspaper obituary states:

LUTZ – Near Yellow Bud, Ross county, last Friday morning, October 21 at 5 o’clock, of typhoid fever, Freeman Barton, eldest son of Col. Isaac and Mrs. Susan J. Lutz, aged 19 years. Funeral services at the house at 11 a.m. last Sunday… Freeman B. Lutz was born June 25th 1862. He attended the Springbank district school and in 1878 began studying surveying under his grandfather, Mr. Samuel Lutz, of Salt Creek township. Since that time he has done work as a surveyor in addition to discharging his duties as a trusted assistant of his father in managing and cultivating his estate….he was stricken down with typhoid fever on the 10th of last July. He struggled manfully with the fell disease for more than three months and continued a patient and even cheerful sufferer to the very end. His last words were addressed to his mother but a few minutes before he died: “Ma, turn my face toward the west.” They seem significant of the parallel between the setting sun and his ebbing spirit.

Freeman was gifted with an unusually bright intellect. He was quick in perception, reliable in judgment and endowed with an abundance of that ready wit which smooths down the realities of life and gives a healthful tone to our sentiment. From early youth we were the companion of his sports. He was uniformly of the same loving and generous nature, “a fellow of infinite jest,” and true and trusty as steel. His impulses were refined and pure, his conduct upright, his friendship sincere. In the two weeks we spent at his bedside shortly before he died we found him, though weak and emaciated, bright, cheerful and entertaining. His laugh was fainter, but had the old, familiar ring. How eagerly he planned the visits we would make together, when he should be well! But he is gone – we hope it is best – but he is gone in the very bloom of his life, our golden dreams of his future are blasted and the sad loss falls heavily upon us all…

I'm sure this must have broken Susan’s heart.

My Aunt Harriett found and shared with me a wonderful biographical sketch of Susan Barton Lutz written by Helen Orr Bitzer, one of Susan’s grandchildren:

Grandmother was a girl of sixteen when grandfather, twice her age and a rich young widower, first saw her and married her. She came from a good family, but had less money. In her youth, she had made fine embroidery for the petticoats of the ladies in the neighborhood, but when she married grandfather, she became a lady herself in every sense of the word.

She was an extremely intelligent person, and almost completely self-taught. When her four daughters were small, she took music lessons herself and practiced late in the night, so she could give the same lessons to them. She real all the classics, and the bedtime stories read to us, when we visited her, were Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and the Uncle Remus Stories.

Her mind was unusual, and she always had servants (hired girls, we called them) to help her with her many tasks, so that she could keep up with more important things. In addition, she boarded the local schoolteachers who taught at Springbank School. Grandfather had donated the land for both the school and the church, which were here. These teachers in turn taught her daughters the little graces which young ladies of that day had to have.

Grandmother was a very religious person and took a leading part in the church at Springbank. My mother played the organ from the time she could reach the pedals, until her marriage. Grandfather had seemingly no religion whatsoever, although he gave the land for the church, paid most of the minister’s salary, and fed him and his family constantly. When harvest came, he had no qualms whatsoever about working his men and teams on Sunday, and as his land surrounded the church on three sides, Grandmother and her daughters were extremely embarrassed when the sound of the wheat binder, men and horses completely drowned out the preacher’s voice! The preacher, well-knowing upon which side his bread was buttered, would pause and say, “Well, the good Lord was known to gather sheaves on the Sabbath.”

Grandmother’s attic was a fabulous place, full of chests and trunks of beautiful velvet clothes, beaded capes, hats with plumes, furs and fancy shoes, and we cousins spent many hours dressing up in them. What a mess we must have made of the place, but Grandmother never seemed to mind!

She too would occasionally hand us money or buy us clothes, but always would remind us, “Don’t tell Daddy (Grandfather) I gave this to you.” Evidently she too was in awe of him.

Grandmother always ‘underwrote’ every church Strawberry Festival by treating all her children and grandchildren to homemade cake, ice cream, and strawberries, and she had a part, in her secret way, in every charitable venture around Springbank and Yellowbud. Even the Yellowbud Field Day found her surrounded by her grandchildren, all of whom she treated to rides on the merry-go-round and the other amusements typical of that day.

They were both stern but kindly grandparents. Ah yes, I remember them well.

Susan and Colonel Isaac loved to entertain guests and did so frequently. We have numerous old, yellowed newspaper clippings describing many of these genteel social events. One example is a dinner party they gave for 125 people on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary, on September 13, 1905. She possessed many beautiful household goods which were used on these social occasions, including a large, ornate silver water pitcher with its own stand, from which she served beverages to the guests who dined at Springbank.

Isaac and Susan also loved to travel. According to information my Aunt Harriett ran across, they visited 28 states from New York City to San Francisco, which must have been unusual for a couple in that day and age. Great-Aunt Mary told me about one memorable trip on which she was taken in 1915 with her grandmother Susan (her grandfather Isaac had died the year before), and a few friends and relations to see the Pan American Exposition in California.

They all traveled first class in a Pullman car from Cincinnati all the way across the country and stayed at luxury hotels along the way. “In 1915,” she said, “luxury meant LUXURY! I learned what gracious, extravagant living was.” Between hotels and train stations and while touring California, they were chauffeur driven everywhere. “It was nothing but Pierce Arrows and Packards. Baxter Tours was first-class,” she reminisced. Great-Aunt Mary celebrated her seventeenth birthday while they were on this exotic trip.

One of Susan’s sayings that Great-Aunt Mary remembered was told to me this way: “Grandmother used to say, ‘Well, you remember So-and-So.’ And I would say, ‘Well, no, Grandmother,’ and she would say, ‘Oh, no. They went west before you was born.’”

Susan’s husband suffered a stroke and died on December 19, 1914. She survived him by six years, during which time she left Springbank moved in with her son Fred and his wife at their farm , so that my grandmother Margaret and her new husband could move into “the big house” at Springbank Farm. Great-Aunt Mary revealed the circumstances surrounding the death of her grandmother this way: In the spring of 1920 Susan got out some petticoats to crimp with and old fluting iron and she “overdid it.” While her daughter-in-law was away planting flowers at the cemetery, Susan had a heart attack. Although she did not immediately succumb, she was an invalid from that point on. Her daughters took turns coming to the Hinman Place to help care for her all through the summer and autumn, but she continued to fail. She died in November. Both the Susan and her husband are buried at Springbank Cemetery near their beloved farm.