The Lucas Countyan marks its 15th anniversary

This morning is the 15th birthday of this blog called "Lucas Countyan" --- and by blog standards in this transitory age, that's ancient. Thousands and thousands of words, countless images.

I began on May 4, 2005, by sharing a bit of family history --- and will end this morning by reposting that, my credentials in a way for claiming the title. The faded image is my great-great-great grandfather, William Miller II, who rode here on horseback in the late 1840s with his grandson, Charles, to claim land in English Township.

In the intervening years, I've written volumes about family history, cemeteries, local history and lesser amounts about many other topics, including but not limited to:

Politics --- Make no mistake about it, I'm a lifelong and extremely liberal Democrat.

Religion --- Make no mistake about it, I'm a heretic who occasionally has caused unease in Lutheran, Unitarian Universalist and Episcopalian congregations.

Sexual orientation --- Make no mistake about it, I grew up (and remain) gay in a tribe that was (and is) overwhelmingly heterosexual and continue to be fascinated by the ways gay and straight interact.

Vietnam --- Make no mistake about it, I'm a (non-combat) veteran of Vietnam and for some reason that has proved to be a formative experience.

Although I've claimed the title, "Lucas Countyan," it is by no means mine exclusively. The strength, past, present and future, of a place like this is diversity, new faces, new ideas. It's fun --- and illuminating --- to look back: There really is nothing new under the sun, you know. But it's a grave mistake to get stuck there.

Here's most of what I first posted on May 4, 2005:

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My people have been around here a long time. A great-great-great-grandfather, William Miller, was the first, slipping across the county line from Monroe (where he'd settled during 1843) some time during the latter half of the 1840s after he'd gotten restless again.

He began life in Strafford, Vermont, married Miriam Trescott at Royalton, then headed west and never looked back. After bouncing from place to place in New York and Ohio, the Millers hitched their wagons to Joseph Smith's rising Mormon star and landed with other converts just north of Haun's Mill in what is now Caldwell County, Missouri.

Chased out of Missouri with the rest of the Mormons, the Millers --- renouncing the new faith and reverting to their old Baptist ways --- passed on Nauvoo and sent out scouts of their own, landing in Van Buren County where they and a good number of other renegade Mormons waited not-so-patiently until the spring of 1843 when the Sac and Fox title to what now is Monroe County expired.

Crossing the Des Moines that spring, they landed right at the site of what now is Pleasant Corners Cemetery in Pleasant Township, Monroe County. and settled down --- until Lucas County beckoned.

Old William went back to Monroe County to die (during 1866) and he and Miriam are buried in unmarked graves at Pleasant Corners, but his son and daughter-in-law, Jeremiah and Elizabeth (McMulin) Miller followed his lead to English Township, Lucas County, a year later.

Jacob Myers, my paternal great-great-grandfather, also arrived in 1867. He was a native of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, who made a modest fortune there building railroads. But he really wanted to farm, and brought his large family to Benton Township after the Civil War to do just that. Forceful and restless, he spent his old age chasing silver in Arizona. Quite a guy.

"If any man ever deserved to go to hell, old Jacob Myers did," his daughter-in-law, Mary Belle, told my Great-uncle Raymond Myers once. So we're a mixed bunch --- saints and sinners --- but tough.

Between William Miller and Jacob Myers came the McMulins; the Redlingshafers; Great-grandfather Cassius Dent with his widowed mother, Eliza Jane (Brown/Dent) Chynoweth, and her second husband, Joseph; Eliza (Rhea) Rhea/Etheredge, another of my great-great-great-grandmothers, and the second of her three husbands, Thomas Etheredge. Strong women run in the family.

Those ancestors of mine who didn't settle in Lucas County settled nearby: Peachy Gilmer Boswell and his merry band came from West Virginia via Van Buren County to Corydon in Wayne County soon after 1850; Joseph and Chloe (Boswell) Brown, from Wayne County to Columbia, just across the county line in Marion County, 20 years later. Peachy's mother, Mary Boswell, made it as far as Appanoose County before she died in the 1850s.

William and Mary (Saunders) Clair landed at Columbia, too --- but during 1848, and he settled inadvertently but permanently (death will do that to a guy) in Lucas County just after Christmas 1852 when he was buried, at his request, under a tree on the highest point of ground around. That high point turned out to be just inside the Lucas County line.

So I belong here --- along the Chariton, the Cedar, the Whitebreast, Lost Branch, Wolf and Otter --- but it doesn't belong to me. All are welcome. If someone tries to tell you different --- I'd have issues with that. So let me know.