Searching history, finding family

CELINA - A Huntsville woman's mom told her she could learn everything she needed to know about her family's history by visiting Mercer County.

Compelled to go, Vanessa Hunter planned a trip with her mom, Janice E. Kenner, but her mother died in 2017 before they had the chance, she recently told Mercer County's chapter members of the Ohio Genealogical Society.

After her children moved out to start lives of their own, Hunter remembered what her mother had said and decided to visit Carthagena herself.

"I found the graveyard. That was so emotional," she said. "I got in the car and cried because my mom couldn't be here. I said, 'Mom, we didn't make it together, but now I'm here.'"

Walking around the Carthagena Black Cemetery, she was moved when she found many of her family members' gravestones.  Although talking about slavery may have been uncomfortable for them, she talked to many area historians to learn more about her heritage.

"I am who I am today because of my freed ancestors I am extremely proud of that. I am now standing on the backs of my ancestors," she said, smiling.

By working with local residents and digging through documents, Hunter learned her great-great-grandparents were John Jennings, who was born in 1810, and Mary Jennings. Their son, John H. Jennings, was born around 1848 and married Martha Bond, Hunter's great-grandmother. Martha Bond's parents were Silas Bond and Larcetia Goings.

"I don't think they look enslaved," Hunter said, holding up a picture of Goings and Silas Bond.

The couple were dressed in formal attire, a detail Hunter said is evidence of the lifestyle they had lived. She learned Silas Bond had fought in the Civil War and died a month after the war ended.

Hunter was able to trace Goings' ancestry back to John Goings, an indentured servant from Africa born in 1615.

His son, Michael Goings, was born in 1635 in James City, Virginia, and was the first freed slave in Virginia, Hunter said.

John H. Jennings and Martha Jennings had a son named Lewis in 1886, who married Bertha Mae Madden, born in 1888. She was confirmed at St. Aloysius Catholic Church and was buried at the Black Cemetery near there.

Lewis and Bertha Mae Jennings's son, Clyde H., was born in 1913 and was Hunter's grandfather. He married Elsie Cannon, Hunter said.

Carthagena was founded in 1835 by a Quaker teacher named Augustus Wattles who traveled throughout the state to establish schools for African-American boys and worked to abolish slavery, according to Ohio History Connection.

Wattles bought the land in Mercer County and gave freed slaves titles to the land parceled into small farms, according to "Mysteries of the Underground Railroad" by Wilbur H. Siebert.

He also built a schoolhouse in Carthagena, called the Emlen Institute, and taught boys there on his own dime, the Rev. David Hoying wrote in a historical paper.

Many of Hunter's family members settled throughout Carthagena, she said. The Jennings family moved to Lima in 1969, marking the end of the black settlement in Carthagena, Hunter said.

Everyone who contributed to her search for information about her family has been helpful, she said.

"I have fallen in love with this area," she added. "Working with the people in Coldwater, Celina, New Bremen, St. Henry everyone was open and receptive and extremely genuine. It was like I was more than welcome, and they all work hard and still are helping me connect the dots."

She chose to give the presentation in February to honor Black History Month.

"This I felt would be a good time to share and shine a light on the impact that the black settlements made in this small area, I was equally proud to learn that Carthagena's black settlements either already here or brought here to settle was the largest at that time in Ohio," she said.