Category: Family History (Page 3 of 3)

Art Specht began his housebuilding career on 9 mile rd. east of Cincinnati. He had the usual woodworking skills that most guys had at the time, and did a pretty good job of building homes of the period. However his electrical skills had something to be desired.

< One day he was working on a house on 9 mile that he was building for my Aunt Betty and Uncle Cliff. He was finished framing the house and was waiting on the electrician to wire it. The guy hadn't showed up for a week. In frustration, Pa Specht started running extension cords through the walls..."this can't be this hard.." he muttered... Along came the electrical inspector who just happened to be driving down the road and he saw what Art was doing. He told my grandpa in no uncertain terms that he was going to kill somebody.. but being a nice guy, he gave Pa a list of materials to get, and drew a diagram on the floor of the house on how to wire it. He said he would inspect it when he was done and he passed it. Art wired all his own houses since then and they're all still standing! greg

Went to Aunt Janie’s funeral today in St Clements Church, in St Bernard. Janie’s the girl in the foreground in picture of my dad’s wedding. What a babe! She had a long life, enjoyed golfing, was married, but didn’t have any kids. However that didn’t stop her from doting on all of us when we were young. Susie (Morton) Walker gave a moving eulogy. She suffered from Parkinson’s for years. She will be missed.

Greg

Back in july, Kathy and I went in search of some property I had in Ripley.. For some background, My Grandfather gave me and my cousin Mike Morris a couple acres of ground in the hills around Ripley for our service in the Vietnam War. He was upset that we didn’t get a parade, so this was his gift. I haven’t been up there in years but we were determined to reunite with it. The roads had been changed since I had last been up there, they rerouted Chicken Hollow Road, and it no longer led to the promised land. However, North Pole Road went through to Howard Ridge, which went through to Howard Hill, which went through to Devore road. We had made it, though on roads better suited to cows and John Deere’s. When we were kids, my Grandpa and Grandma, Art and Nellie Specht settled up there for God knows what reason. He built a house, mostly out of an old barn on the property, and me and my brother Jim had to pull construction duty in the summer time. We pulled down that old barn and hauled all of it up to the house site, which seemed miles at the time, but really was only a couple of hundred yards. We had a lot of neat memories of the place. His dog had gotten bit on the nose by a rattlesnake. My Dad’s old car had plummeted down the hill when the brakes went out. Good times.

I dragged Kathy into the woods in search of the barn’s foundation to make sure I didn’t just halucinate about the past. It was straight down hill the whole way, with all the distractions of the woods… ticks, spiders, giant anthills, deer, webs, stange noises.. She was about to bail till she saw the rocks in the creek… that did it. They would look so good in the back yard. Groan. But like a good soldier, I did my duty and hauled a bunch of them home.

On the way out, we investigated an old house and graveyard that dominated the area on a nearby hilltop. The biggest gravestone in the place belonged to Cyrus Howard, and he seems to be the partiarch for the surrounding area. There were a lot of Howards in that graveyard. It sat on top of a hill with a commanding vista… The house must have been Cyrus’ place. The date on the house was 1848, and that fit’s with his gravestone. His stone was very interesting as it describes his demise as being robbed and mortally wounded in Ripley, on the night of Feb 14, 1877…He died around two weeks later… The oldest gravestone you could still read was 1810, 2 years before Cyrus was born… There were still Indians around then!

All in all, it was a great afternoon, I only got 3 ticks. We have some pics in the Gallery…

greg