RuthG_intro
                Introduction to Ruth Gordon Hastie

Ruth Gordon Hastie.  I was born in Mt. Vernon, OH, the daughter of Kenneth Roy and Martha (Bugh) Gordon.  I graduated from  Depauw University in Indiana and have a PhD in Russian history from Washington University in St. Louis.  I have taught and worked as an administrator at the College of Idaho, Albion College (MI), and the University of Michigan from which I retired several years ago.  My husband Larry owns and operates a financial advisory business.in Ann Arbor, MI where we have lived for over 30 years.   We have two sons, one of whom lives in Ann Arbor with a wife and two really cute granddaughters.  Our other son is a website builder in Chicago.

I found a short barebones outline of my ancestors which was among my mother’s papers.  After I retired, I decided to create a family history since little was really known about my own direct line of descent from John Gordon.  The project grew and grew.  This was partly because I am naturally curious and partly because I had a terrible time keeping straight the many John’s, Elizabeth’s, George’s, Basil’s, etc.  In the process of sorting out my own line from the other descendants of John Gordon and Mary Helen Duke, I ended up with a database full of information about all the other branches on the family tree..  Because I enjoy this project, and because no one else has done it, I decided to try to fill in  the blanks so that all the aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. would also be recorded in one place.  That is how I came upon the Hatcher family.

My serious research began in Perry County, OH where my family farmed for several generations..  (My dad’s generation was the first to leave the farm.)  There were also many, many other Gordon relatives in Perry County, and that’s where I first discovered the Gordon-Hatcher connection.  The connection starts in the mid-1830s when a large group of Gordons migrated to Perry County, OH, including the widowed Eleanor (White) Gordon and her children who are part of my direct line.  Among the other Gordons who migrated was the orphaned Samuel Gordon whose daughter Elizabeth married Isaiah Hatcher in Somerset, OH in 1860.

John Gordon m Mary Helen Duke                      

           Descent to Ruth Gordon                                                     Descent to Hatcher Family

George Gordon (1774) m Eleanor White                                John Gordon (1775) m Nancy Rinehart

George W Gordon (1827) m Sarah Drumm                            Samuel Gordon (1815) m Dorothy Wells

Jacob Henry Gordon (1864) m Isabelle Swinehart                  Elizabeth Gordon (1841) m Isaiah G Hatcher

Roy Edwin Gordon (1891) m M Alice Mohler                        Fred G Hatcher (1886) m Lydia M Storer

Kenneth R Gordon (1914) m Martha Bugh                             Malcolm S Hatcher (1892) m Margaret Fisher

            Ruth Ann Gordon                                                                          M Gordon Hatcher


While pursuing this now very large project, there have been some surprises and some new acquaintances with cousins I never knew existed.  Gordon is one of them, and his work on the Hatcher family is among the most thorough and interesting that I have encountered.  I have relied heavily on it in my own research into the Isaiah and Elizabeth and their descendants.