Looking for your ancestors in Champaign County, Ohio?
Hi, my name is Sandi (Evilsizer) Koscak, I have dedicated the last 20 years to extensive research
in this county and its neighboring counties of Clark, Logan, Miami and Shelby.
Using all of the resources available, I have created a
database with hundreds of
Champaign County families. I want to share that information. Please feel
free to send me additions, and corrections. Most all of the material is sourced
and appears in the source notes. You can read more about
me here.
New for 2011
The focus of my research will be to compete vitals for the existing people
in the database. Birth dates, death dates, marriage dates and burial locations
will be the prime objective. I will not be adding any new families, or any folks
that leave the area. Exceptions will be made for any families that are missing
documented children. I will always add those.
As my fellow researcher, Lew Ellingham says,
"Together
we shall assemble a great ship of knowledge breasting the high seas of genealogy
to truth and delight for the waiting multitudes of genealogy buffs hovering on
the byways awaiting just such wonders!"
PLEASE READ Source Coding Disclosure (Software flaws)
We are the chosen. In each
family there is one who seems called to find the ancestors. To put flesh on
their bones and make them live again. To tell the family story and to feel that
somehow they know and approve. Doing genealogy is not a cold gathering of facts
but, instead, breathing life into all who have gone before. We are the story
tellers of the tribe. All tribes have one. We have been called, as it were, by
our genes. Those who have gone before cry out to us: Tell our story. So, we do.
In finding them, we somehow find ourselves. How many graves have I stood before
now and cried? I have lost count. How many times have I told the ancestors, "You
have a wonderful family; you would be proud of us.". How many times have I
walked up to a grave and felt somehow there was love there for me? I cannot say.
It goes beyond just documenting facts. It goes to who I am, and why I do the
things I do. It goes to seeing a cemetery about to be lost forever to weeds and
indifference and saying - I can't let this happen. The bones here are bones of
my bone and flesh of my flesh. It goes to doing something about it. It goes to
pride in what our ancestors were able to accomplish. How they contributed to
what we are today. It goes to respecting their hardships and losses, their never
giving in or giving up, their resoluteness to go on and build a life for their
family. It goes to deep pride that the fathers fought and some died to make and
keep us a nation. It goes to a deep and immense understanding that they were
doing it for us. It is of equal pride and love that our mothers struggled to
give us birth, without them we could not exist, and so we love each one, as far
back as we can reach. That we might be born who we are. That we might remember
them. So we do. With love and caring and scribing each fact of their existence,
because we are they and they are the sum of who we are. So, as a scribe called,
I tell the story of my family. It is up to that one called in the next
generation to answer the call and take my place in the long line of family
storytellers. That is why I do my family genealogy, and that is what calls those
young and old to step up and restore the memory or greet those who we had never
known before."
by Della M. Cummings Wright; Rewritten by her granddaughter Dell Jo Ann McGinnis
Johnson; Edited and Reworded by Tom Dunn, 1943."