One story that has stuck with me is about the Cordonnier family that immigrated from France in the 1840s. The father, Joseph, decided to move his family to Ohio. They left France by ship on Christmas Eve and travelled entirely by water. They traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to New Orleans, up the Mississippi River to the Ohio River, the Ohio River to the Ohio-Erie Canal, then disembarked in Piqua, Ohio. They arrived on Easter Sunday in Piqua, nearly 4 months after leaving. No one in the family knew English, so they went around Piqua asking everyone they met if they spoke French. The first person who said they did directed them to the area in mid to upper mid-West Ohio where even today the majority of people are of French descent.

Another family that's prominent in my family is the Bishop family. The farthest back I could trace the family was to Stephen Taylor Bishop, who was born in Bartholemew, Indiana, in the 1840s. At this time, this was Native American territory, and there are very sparse records that exist from this time period, so I don't know much of anything about his parents or siblings. He ended up moving West as more settlers pushed into Indiana, and finally wound up in Oklahoma, again living in Native American territories. He outlived 4 wives, including the mother of his children, and was married to a Native American woman when he passed.

Lewis Sanders Nobles was a Revolutionary War veteran, who ran away from home at 17 to join the war. He was at the battles of King Mountain, Brandywine, and Yorktown. He was a Lieutenant in the South Carolina militia, and was reimbursed for a horse that was killed in battle. His son (not my direct ancestor) went on to fight in Texas to try to help the Texans win their independence from Mexico.

While this is a little more recent, my grandfather is another person that will have an interesting story that will be passed along with this family tree information. He was born in 1919 in mid-West Ohio. At the age of 14, his mother passed away unexpectedly. My great-grandfather was not equipped to take care of his 9 kids, so my grandfather and his brother who was older were kicked out of the house, while his younger siblings were put into an orphanage. This was during the beginnings of the Great Depression, and many people were struggling during this time. My grandfather was now homeless, and for several years, he migrated from job to job on farms, most of the time working only for a warm place to sleep and something to eat. Eventually, after the economy started to recover, he got better jobs and met my grandmother while square dancing. When World War II broke out, he tried enlisting, but due to hearing damage caused by working in a factory, he was declined. During this time, he and my grandmother had 2 daughters, as he thought that he wouldn't be able to serve in the military. He ended up getting drafted into the Navy in 1945 and served on an LST (Landing Ship Transport) as a radarman. He was on the shores of Iwo Jima on ship when the story of the flag being raised on Mount Suribachi took place. He passed away in 2018 at the young age of 99.