See the column from Dayton Daily Newspaper front page cover and
the continuation
second page
By Debra Gaskill
For The Dayton Daily News
Thursday, January 10, 2002
BUTLER TWP., Montgomery County--Two brothers searching for their roots, one from Indiana and one from Texas, have
stumbled on to a bit of a mystery at a Butler Twp. cemetery.
Someone has paid for holiday flowers to be placed on their relatives' graves in perpetuity, but Jeff Anderson of
Greenfield, Ind., and Chris Anderson of Plano, Texas, don't know who.
"We'd like to find out, but we've reached a dead end," Jeff said.
Butler Twp. officials don't know either. It is believed that someone left money to the township a number of years
ago to finance the floral gifts, but the records no longer exist.
Service Director Gary Carroll, who has been putting the flowers out for some 25 years, has an explanation.
"The long answer is that eight families gave us a sum of money years ago and the interest off that sum of
money I use to buy flowers to put them out on graves," he said.
"Butler Twp. is a magnanimous, warm, caring community and this is the type of thing we do for people at the
time of their death," he said.
One family even sends flowers twice a year via UPS along with a disposable camera, so Carroll can take a picture
and mail it back.
"We try to run it as a family cemetery and we do what we can to make it as easy on the family as possible,"
Carroll said.
"The trust fund barely keeps up with the interest--we have a local florist with her own greenhouse who provides
the flowers. The families wanted it to go on forever, but that's not possible. We try to keep it the way people
want it."
Flowers are put out on the graves of two Waymire family members, two Anderson graves, two Jackson graves, two Altimer
graves and two Comer graves on Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas and other various holidays, despite the fact that
the actual funds from the bequest may have run out long ago, Carroll said.
The Anderson brothers have found that ancestors among the Waymires would like to know if anyone in the Dayton area
knows who might have left that money so they can continue their ancestral search.
Jeff and Chris Anderson began their search several years ago. Raised in the Greenfield, Ind., area, Jeff, a senior
systems analyst at Fort Harrison in Indianapolis, and Chris, employed at Texas Instruments in Plano, Texas, began
the search "out of curiosity, basically," Jeff said.
It has become an obsession. Jeff has built a family Web site to detail his search and often takes time off work
to search through old courthouse records. Chris makes the 2,000-mile, round trip to Indiana "once or twice
a year" for genealogical searching expeditions with his brother.
"I enjoy the analytical aspects of the search," Chris said, "to speculate on theories based on prior
research and to research a point to disprove as well as prove these theories correct. This approach has led Jeff
and I to accumulate well over 5,000 people as known ancestors, relations and dependent to our particular Anderson
family.
"It's kind of crazy, but it's true that we know more about our relatives from 200 years ago than we do about
members of our own extended family--cousins, aunts and such."
What they found dates back as far as 1350 in northern Scotland, where historical records first mention the Anderson
family, according to their Web site.
The Andersons lived in the northern-most part of Scotland.
Around 1575, an Anderson named Josey Anderson flourished as a merchant in Paisley, Scotland. He was prominent in
religious circles, being an officer in John Knox's church. His descendants are said to have come to America and
settled in Minnesota.
Other branches of the Anderson family left Scotland during the rebellion and went to Ulster, Ireland, where they
remained for a short time, then came to America and settled in Augusta County, Va.
Another branch of the Anderson family--the James Anderson branch--settled in East Bethlehem, Pa., and migrated
westward as the nation grew.
On Feb. 5, 1817, James Anderson was granted 50 acres in Ohio, part of a military warrant for his service with Francis
Boykin, a major for three years in the Virginia line of the Continental Establishment during the Revolutionary
War with Great Britain.
James Anderson, along with members of the Carmony, Schnorf and Winterrowd families, migrated to Ohio around 1817,
arriving via boat in Cincinnati.
A number of Winterrowd descendants settled in Deerfield Twp. in Warren County and intermarried with the Anderson
clan. Some settled in Darke County and a number moved to Shelby County, Ind., the same time as James' grandchildren.
James Anderson migrated, settling on land obtained from the government for his Revolutionary War service, now the
site of Dayton International Airport.
James' son, Charles B. Anderson, also received land in what was then Butler Twp., but while the older children
of James and Mary Anderson stayed in Ohio with their elderly parents, Charles and the younger children later migrated
from Ohio to Indiana.
William Henry Harrison, Charles' youngest son, was born on July 27, 1841, in Ohio, according to the Web site.
William's descendants in the Vandalia area married into the Carmony and Denmire families. John's family descendants
married into the Teague, Waymire, Carmony, Wegner, Walser and Kinney families.
A number of the Andersons are now buried in Polk Grove Cemetery at the intersection of Frederick Pike and U.S.
40 in Butler Twp.
The Anderson brothers' trips to Ohio have not been completely fruitless. An August trip resulted in a face-to-face
meeting with a direct relative.
John C. Waymire wasn't sure what to expect when Jeff and Chris Anderson knocked on his door, claiming to be relatives.
"You just don't open your door to anybody these days," he said.
But hanging in the entryway was proof of their kinship--an 1870 drawing of John C. Waymire's Butler Twp. farm and
a picture of his wife, Mary Anderson, daughter of James C. Anderson.
"It was amazing to go to the house of an extremely distant relative tied to us by a marriage almost 180 years
ago and to have that stranger open the door and have pictures of our Andersons on the wall of his entryway,"
Chris said.
The three have since stayed in touch. A visit during Christmas week resulted in another significant find, Jeff
said. A family friend of the Waymires has held onto three boxes of Anderson photos and papers, including a family
Bible from 1870 found in an attic, for 19 years waiting for an Anderson family member to ask about them.
"I did ask, and she gave them to me," Jeff said. "The importance of this find cannot be stated in
words alone ... It's hard to believe she waited for 19 years for someone to inquire about Anderson material."
Jeff also learned that another box was donated to the Montgomery County Historical Society last year. He plans
to return to Vandalia in the spring to look over the items.
Yet there is still unanswered questions--like who paid to put those flowers on the graves.
"It's like being a detective," Jeff said. "Sometimes you follow a lead and its not very productive.
I do it for my son, David Alan. I want him to know his family and I want my brothers' kids to know their family."
"It is a family thing. Some just don't understand."
If you have any information or would like to contact either Jeff or Chris Anderson, visit the Anderson Web site
@ jeff.anderson@dfas.mil
