Isaiah Umbenhower and his children

Earlier this fall, I shared several Lenig family photographs donated recently to the Lucas County Historical Society by Gay Hedrick Moffit, of North English, a granddaughter of Thomas C. and Estella (Umbenhower) Lenig.

The collection also included a number of Umbenhower family photographs and I intended to share some of those, too, but am just now getting around to it.

Umbenhower still is a familiar surname in Lucas County, but numbers are somewhat diminished. If you want to get an idea of just how many by that surname there once were, drive out to Coal Glen Cemetery (once the site of Coal Glen Church) in Pleasant Township, the epicenter of Umbenhower activity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

You might want to take along a guide book (if there were one) --- many Umbenhowers are buried there, representing two distinct but related lineages.

The five Umbenhowers in the top photo here are progenitors of what I'm calling the Isaiah Umbenhower line, children of Isaiah and Matilda (Hays) Umbenhower. They are (seated from left) John Clarence Umbenhower (1860-1937), Susan (Umbenhower) Chambers (1855-1933) and Abraham Y. Umbenhower (1864-1944); and (standing) William Andrew Umbenhower (1858-1947) and Anthony Wayne Umbenhower (1854-1917).

Susan Chambers and her husband, John, moved west to Furnas County, Nebraska, but all of her brothers lived in Lucas County and are buried at Coal Glen. John Clarence and Martha Jane (Pelton) Umbenhower were the grandparents of Gay Moffit.

Here's a photograph of Isaiah Umbenhower (1828-1903), father to all of the above. Isaiah and Matilda moved their family from Champaign County, Illinois, to Iowa soon after 1860, but she died in Henry County while en route to south central Iowa and was buried there. Isaiah brought their five children on to the vicinity of Marysville in Marion County where they grew up. Isaiah and his four sons resettled in Pleasant Township, Lucas County, soon after 1880.

Isaiah seems to have been vising his old home in Champaign County, Illinois, when he died --- and was buried in the Old Homer Cemetery --- there. His second wife, Eliza Jane (1830-1890) is buried at Coal Glen, however.

The other Umbenhower line represented at Coal Glen was founded by Abraham (1843-1907) and Mary Elizabeth (Ladd) Umbenhower (1849-1921). This Abraham was a nephew of Isaiah Umbenhower, son of his brother, John. Abraham and Mary had 11 children, eight of whom outlived him.

When you add the output of Andrew and Mary Elizabeth to the output of Isaiah and Matilda you get some idea why, even though the number of Umbenhowers by that name is diminished, their descendants in and near Lucas County still could fill Carpenters Hall if they all decided to track each other down and get together.