Richard Lemmers:
CLASS OF 1970
Cleveland Heights High SchoolClass of 1970
Cleveland heights, OH
Teton Science SchoolClass of 1975
Kelly, WY
Teton High SchoolClass of 1972
Driggs, ID
Monticello Middle SchoolClass of 1967
Cleveland heights, OH
Oxford Elementary SchoolClass of 1964
Cleveland heights, OH
Richard's Story
Hello:
Western Wyoming is without a doubt my favorite place and I hope to retire to either Jackson Hole, WY, or adjacent Teton Basin, Idaho. It was out there that I met my wife Cathy in 1981. Well I'm retired now (as of September 1, 2017) and still living in PA.
During my last year at Cleveland Heights High I was diagnosed with Ulcerated Colitis. I spent the winter and spring being tutored at home.
After graduating from High School in 1970 my education continued first at Cuyahoga Community College and then Kent State. I changed my major a couple of times and graduated in December 1977 with a bachelor of general studies with a concentration in biological science.
I made Jackson Hole, Wyoming, my residence for several years. In 1975 I worked at the Triangle X Dude Ranch near Moose, WY. In 1978 I had my first park ranger job at Grand Teton National Park.
My interest at this time in my life was mountain climbing, backpacking, hiking, and wildlife photography. My favorite wild animal is the moose.
With friends I made over 20 climbs in the Tetons, scaled the Grand Teton 4 times, made it to the top of Devil's Tower once, and climbed the Royal Arches Route in Yosemite.
In 1981 I met and fell in love with my wife Cathy in Jackson, WY. We got married Nov. 27 that year. She was a divorcee with 2 children, Trish and Derrick, whom I adopted. Together Cathy and I had three more; William, Andrew, and Susan. We have five grandchildren, Heather, Bridget, Jay (step grandson), Nathan, and Brandi. Another grandchild, Crystal, died from heart trouble at age 7 months. Heather recently had a baby boy, Caige McAllister Noland, so we are great grandparents!!!
We lived in eastern Wyoming near Ft. Laramie for several years, then in the St. Louis, Missouri., area. Susan was born in MO.
We transferred to Gettysburg, PA., in 1988. I have a strong interest in American Civil War history, though my job is located at President Eisenhower's Home.
If you are not too interested in our family history and genealogy just skip over the next 35 paragraphs to the last part. I wrote the following section while trying to write down a record for my relatives. It mentions Yanks, Rebs, Patriots, and Pioneers in the family tree.
My wife's great great great grandfather Lt. Samuel Henry Ewalt was a Confederate in Captain Hobb's Company of the 2nd North-East Missouri Cavalry. His mother, Ketturah Stamps Ewalt Bailey, was a sister-in-law of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President. Ketturah's brother William Stamps III married Lucinda Davis. Cathy's first cousin Capt. Isaac Davis Stamps, Company E, 21st Mississippi, was mortally wounded near the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.
Cathy also had a cousin, Pvt. James Ewalt, 5th Kentucky Cavalry, who rode with Confederate raider General John Hunt Morgan in the 1863 incursion into Indiana and Ohio. James was captured at Salinesville, Ohio, 7/26/1863, and survived Camp Douglas POW camp in Chicago, IL.
Cathy's relatives in Missouri during the Civil War suffered greatly. Two of Ketturah's six sons in Confederate service died in the war, one at the Battle of Athens, MO, in 1861, and another at Pea Ridge, AR, in 1862.
Ketturah did not live to see the war, having died in 1855 from a fall off of her horse. 1855 was also the same year her son Samuel returned from the California gold rush. The war ruined the Ewalt family's fortunes. They had owned a plantation and several slaves.
In contrast Cathy's father's side of the family served the Union cause and some were abolitionist.
My mom and dad both had several closely related ancestors and many distant cousins in the Union Army, one of whom, 17 year old Private John Adams, was in the 23rd Ohio Infantry with future U.S. Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley. John's war experience must have been nightmarish, as he appears to have suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome in later life.
John had been in several hard fought battles, including Second Kernstown, Third Winchester, Fisher's Hill, and Cedar Creek, VA. In April, 1865, as soon as he heard that General Lee had surrendered, he deserted his post at Cumberland, MD, to walk back home to Ohio where he became a farmer again. In 1868 he married Olive Booth in Milan, OH. In 1895, after several major set backs, he abandoned his family and wondered about homeless for a time. He became a petty thief and got caught steeling some property belonging to my maternal great grandfather Conrad Nuhn, who happen to be a constable. John was jailed but his wife bailed him out. They divorced in 1904. John lived in various soldier homes over the years. He died in August, 1922, while living with his daughter Rosa in Clyde, Ohio. He is buried in the McPherson Cemetery there. He was perhaps too young to go off to the war. His father had to give parental permission. His motivation may have been that his two older brothers, Orin and Henry, were already in the service. Henry was a prisoner of war at the time of John's enlistment.
Corporal Orin Adams was in the 3rd Ohio Cavalry, Co. B, and was wounded twice. He was in General Wilson's Raid through Alabama and Georgia in 1865. He married Harriet Butler after the war and moved to Lacey, Michigan, where he was a farmer.
Henry Adams was in the 100th Ohio and was a POW at Belle Isle for half a year after being captured at Limestone, TN, in 1863. He survived and after being exchanged in 1864 was promoted to corporal in Company K. He participated in the Atlanta Campaign at Kenesaw Mountain and Jonesboro, GA, and later in the Battles of Franklin and Nashville, TN. After the war he moved to Vassar, Michigan, with his wife and children. He, too, was a farmer. The Adams' parents were from Germany.
John, Orin, and Henry were all sons of Andrew and Margaretha Adams. Their mother was the sister of my great great grandmother Anna Christina Zimmer Froehlich, who was the mother of my great grandmother Mary Froehlich Fischer, wife of Nicholas Fischer of Vermilion, Ohio. Nicholas ran a lumber business in that town on Lake Erie.
A very distant cousin of mine on my father's side, Pvt. Solomon Shirk, 107th PA, Infantry, was killed in the Battle of Gettysburg and is buried in the Gettysburg National Cemetery. He had been wounded earlier at Antietam. Solomon's brother, David, survived the war but was captured during the Battle of Weldon Rail Road and spent time as a POW.
Another distant cousin who served at Gettysburg was Corporal Rueben Shirk, 148th PA.,who fought in the Wheatfield. His brother Joseph, same regiment, fought at Spotsylvania before being wounded. Privates David and John Shirk, 62nd PA, also were in the fighting at the Wheatfield. Sergeant Morgan Shirk, 142nd PA, fought at Gettysburg but was captured later in the war and died at the POW camp at either Andersonville, GA, or Florence, SC. Captain William Fischer, 107th Ohio, was badly wounded at Gettysburg but later returned to duty.
My first cousin Pvt. John Shirk was wounded in the left thigh at Chickamauga while serving in the 75th Indiana. His brother George died of a fever in an army hospital in 1863. John, who was a farmer, married Sarah Register, a sister of a fallen comrade, Seth Register,after the war and moved to Lenora, Kansas.
Bugler George Shirk, 36th Indiana, helped rally Grose's Brigade at Chickamauga and is mentioned in dispatches. He was KIA in 1864.
My great great great uncle Pvt. Jacob Bechstein was in the Battle of Spotsylvania and the Siege of Petersburg, where, as a soldier in the 60th Ohio, he witnessed the tragic Battle of the Crater. He spent a couple of months in the army hospital at City Point but returned to duty in time for the Battle of Fort Stedman and General Grant's final assault on Lee's lines at Petersburg in 1865. He was already a family man at the time he enlisted in Co. G of the 60th Ohio. After the war he lived on a farm in Fulton County, Ohio. He and his wife had 8 children. He lived into the 1920s and is buried in the cemetery next to the church that he helped to establish near Delta, Ohio. Jacob's sister Elizabeth was my great great grandmother.
Great great-uncles Frank Bierbrier, George Sultner, and Joseph Shirk were all enlisted in the 115th Ohio Infantry. Frank was in Co. B, George and Joseph in Co. K. Co. K served as mounted infantry and patrolled on horseback. They guarded rail roads in TN. Cousin Pvt. Henry Sultner served in the 3rd Independent Battery Ohio Light Artillery.
Cousin Corp. Augustus Neiding, 41st Ohio, who had been in the Battles of Shiloh, Stone's River, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge, was wounded at Pickett's Mills, Georgia, May 27,1864. Pvt. Henry Fischer, 101st Ohio, served as a stretcher bearer during much of General Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. His brother Lewis, in the same unit, was discharged for frail health. Cousin Pvt. Richard Shirk served in the 104th Ohio. Cousin Conrad Mentel, 71st Ohio, was wounded in the ankle at the Battle of Nashville. He refused to have the foot amputated, which is interesting, as he was a shoe maker from Vermilion, OH. Luckily he survived and together with his wife had a daughter after the war. And cousin Benjamin Fischer, Battery G, 1st Ohio Light Artillery, lost his hearing from the cannonade at Nashville. I've spent many hours researching their records in the National Archives in Washington, D. C.
My wife shares a common ancestor with the commander of the 8th Ohio, Gettysburg hero Lt. Colonel Franklin Sawyer. Also Cathy has common ancestors with Civil War generals U.S. Grant, Alexander Webb, Rutherford B. Hayes, Richard S. Ewell, Ambrose P. Hill, and Roger W. "Old Flintlock" Hanson. She is also related to Corp. Paschal Tripp and Pvt. Frank Curtis,Company F,and Pvts. Aaron Adams and Isaac Lathrop, Co. H, 20th Maine Infantry, all killed on Little Round Top at Gettysburg July 2, 1863. Cathy also shares common ancestry with Lt. ...Expand for more
Holman S. Melcher, who led the famous charge of the 20th Maine at Gettysburg.
Genealogy evidence points to my having had three distant cousins of mixed racial background in Franklin County, PA, who, during the Civil War, served with the African-American troops from Massachusetts, including Private John A. Shirk, Co. K, 54th Massachusetts Infantry. His brothers, James and Casper, were in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry and 5th Massachusetts Cavalry.
Lt. Commander James W. Shirk, USN, another cousin, was a Civil War Naval hero who commanded the gunboat USS Lexington at Shiloh and later led a river squadron after Vicksburg.
In the War of 1812 a John Shirk served under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813 and was one of those who rowed Perry to the ship Niagara when his flag ship was abandoned. For that he got a medal.
During World War II my aunt Claudia's brother, Captain Albert Schlegel, was a P-51 fighter ace with the U.S. Army Air Forces 4th Fighter Group in Europe. He was credited with seven and a half air victories over Nazi pilots. He shared a victory with the late legendary hero Colonel Donald Blakeslee. Unfortunately Albert was reported missing in action near Strasbourg, France, in August 1944.
My great uncle Sergeant Frank Lemmers, Battery F, 130th Field Artillery, 35th Division, U.S. Army, served in France in WWI.
My wife's birth father, Sergeant Hubert Morris, U.S. Air Force, was a Korean War veteran. In the 50s he was stationed in the missile silos in the mid-west.
Cathy's parents divorced when she was very young. Her mother got remarried to Claudell Stull of Driggs, Idaho.
My father-in-law Claudell is our last surviving parent. By chance I found a book on the Pomeroy Family Genealogy in which Claudell is mentioned as a descendant of a Norman Knight named Pomeroy who married one of William the Conqueror's daughters.
Claudell had relatives in the Union army too, including James Brady, 57th PA, who was wounded at Gettysburg, and 1st Lt. Andrew Alexander Pomeroy, 198th PA, who was killed leading a charge at the Battle of White Oak Road, VA, in March 1865. General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain wrote Lt. Pomeroy's parents a heart felt letter of condolence.
One of Claudell's other relatives was one of those present when Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address and got to shake the 16th President's hand after wards. Young Andrew Pomeroy had walked over 35 miles across the mountains from Roxbury, PA, to be at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
Claudell's direct ancestor Hugh Brady (1709-1776) was Revolutionary War frontier Indian fighter and Captain Samuel Brady's grandfather. Samuel Brady of "Brady's Leap" fame once escaped capture by the Native Americans by jumping across the gorge of the Cuyahoga River near present day Kent.
Cathy's Revolutionary War ancestors include Capt. John Hinkson, Lt. Thomas Ravenscraft, Lt. Samuel Thompson, Ensign Henry Ewalt, Corp. Moses Curtis, Pvt. Abraham Fyre (deserted), Pvt. John Ewalt, Pvt. Amos Lyon, Pvt. John Perkins (at Bunker Hill), Pvt. Thomas Hall (at Trenton & Princeton), Pvt. Nathaniel Tyler, and Corp. Phineas Waite (at Saratoga).
My Rev. War relatives were all distant cousins. Sebastian Shirk was a drummer in Col. Slough's PA Regiment. Pvt. Jacob Shirk, German Battalion (PA), fought in Washington's Army at Trenton in 1776. Andrew Shirk (10th PA)wintered at Valley Forge.
Cathy's direct ancestor Pvt. James Lewis Thompson served in Co. C of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War in 1846-7. They marched over 2,000 miles on foot to San Diego then back to Council Bluffs.
Some of my cousins in PA named Shirk were conscientious objectors during the Civil War.
My mother-in-law, Darlene Stull, died of cancer in 1991. She is buried at the small cemetery at Felt, Idaho. She was survived by her second husband and six children. Part of Darlene's family tree on her father's side were Mormon settlers who came west by wagon train in 1852 and hand cart in 1867. Those were the Parsons, Thompson, and Curtis familes. Cathy's great great great uncle Samuel Thompson, a veteran of the famed 1847 Mormon Battalion, was at Sutter's Mill when gold was discovered there and latter led the group that pioneered the Carson Wagon Trail over the Sierra Nevada in 1848. On Darlene's mother's side she was descended from the Smith, Ewalt, and Stamps families.
Genealogy is an amazing door to learn about history. According to the records my wife's direct ancestors include 11 Mayflower passengers, religious leader Ann Hutchinson of Colonial America, Canonicus, and European Royalty. She is also related distantly to many U.S. Presidents including Lincoln, both Adams, Grant, Hayes, FDR, and Obama. Sarah Palin also shares common ancestry. Cathy also is related to comedian Lucille Ball.
In 2007 I hiked into the remote wilderness of Wyoming's Wind River Range by myself. I hiked over fifty miles of back country trails on that trip and had a near run in with a very large animal, either a bear or a...don't laugh, but I believe Big Foot is for real. Several friends have had encounters and one of my wife's ancestors, a cousin named Joseph Ewalt, saw one in Kentucky in 1894, though back then Sasquatch was known as a "man beast." President Teddy Roosevelt had met a man named Bauman, an old fur trapper, in North Dakota who had experienced a frightening encounter with such a beast and TR, believing the story to be true, wrote about it in one of his books that recounted his frontier rancher days.
In February 1991, together with other park rangers attending a training course, I hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We camped out near Phantom Ranch, then took 2 days hiking back out. We saw mule deer and a wild turkey along the way.
Most of my career I have worked as an interpretive ranger, interacting with the public by presenting programs. However, during the summer of 1985 I was a commissioned law enforcement ranger at Ft. Laramie, WY. I only issued one ticket, a $100.00 fine.
In 1978 and again in 1980 I worked as a seasonal fire cache ranger in the Tetons. In the summer of 1979 the park service had me working in Yellowstone. 1981 found me working as a seasonal for the National Forest Service, instead, in Bridger National Forest near Pinedale, WY. That summer I was with a range management crew on the upper Green River. 1981 was also the year I got married.
My son Derrick was in the Army and was in Iraq twice with a support unit of the 3rd Infantry Division where he got shot at. He is a civilian back home again with his family.
Our youngest son Andrew is also a truck driver, currently with the Heartland Truck Co. Another son,Will, works at the Fairfield Inn and is also a guitar player who has a CD out. Our daughter Trish works in a book factory. Susan, our youngest currently works at a printing factory. My wife Cathy presently is looking for another job.
I would remiss if I did not mention our family pets, We have three indoor cats. Lucy is a female short tailed all white cat. Midnight is a black long-tailed male cat. Kitty Lou is a male Tabby. All three cats have been "fixed."
My best friends during my teens were mostly involved in scouts. I still keep in touch with Don Disbro who now lives in Wyoming. My good friend Glen DeRussy lives in Colorado.
My wife Cathy and I met in Church, but the first time I ever saw her she was working in a pizza parlor. Our 1st date was a dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Jackson, WY. We had mutual friends.
If you do a search for the Eisenhower National Historic Site's National Park Service Virtual Museum web page you will see some of my work. I wrote the text for the section on Eisenhower's military career.
My parents are both gone now but my dad was an inventor for the GE Company. He had his name on 78 U.S. Patents, mostly fluorescent lamps and lamp fixtures. He worked with Ed Hammer, inventor of the compact fluorescent. A search on the Internet for A. Eugene Lemmers will help locate several web pages that mention him. He was born in 1907 and died in 1992. He died of heart disease at age 84. He had worked for GE since 1925!
Through my dad I am related to several notable people, Georges Lemmers, a Belgium artist whose art you can find by searching the Internet, and Laura Lemmers, an actress who appeared on stage on Broadway together with Douglas Fairbanks, Senior.
My mom, Eloise Lemmers, was born in 1910 and passed away from colon/liver cancer in January 1993. My mother's father, Conrad Nuhn of Vermilion, Ohio, was the Erie County, Ohio, Treasurer for many years. My maternal grandmother Lydia Fischer Nuhn is the subject of a bogus urban legend ghost story called the "Dark Angel of Maple Grove Cemetery." The vicious lies about her "spirit" haunting the cemetery near Vermilion would be funny if they didn't also mess with her reputation. She died of heart trouble in 1926. The truth is told on the "Ghosts of Ohio" web site which debunks the story.
My older brother Bob still lives in Ohio and my sister Mary Jane lives in Michigan. They were Heights High graduates too.
My family has roots in Belgium, France, Germany, and Switzerland through these families...Lemmers, Bierbrier, Shirk, Nuhn, Goddaris, Fischer, Froehlich, Adams, Bechstein, Holstein, Zimmer, and Vertanghen families, among others. My Shirk ancestors on my father's maternal grandmother's side trace back to Summiswald, Bern Canton, Switzerland, in the 1500s.
On my job I've met and talked with many well known people, such as the Eisenhower family and Dick Winters, a famous WWII veteran who was the main character in "Band of Brothers."
Major Dick Winters was also my distant cousin. His paternal grandmother's maiden name was Katie Shirk. We share common ancestry from Switzerland.
Well, I have probably bored you way too much about me. You know how I am about history.
Richard E. Lemmers
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