101 Best Genealogy Websites for 2010

Click here to view an article from Family Tree Magazine about the 101 Best Websites of 2010. Best of all, they are all free!

G. A. Boeckling

George A. Boeckling was a salesman and a real estate agent. He was born in Indiana in 1862. In 1897 he became general manger of the newly formed Cedar Point Pleasure Resort Company in Sandusky, Ohio. Under Boeckling’s leadership, Cedar Point was transformed from a summer picnic area to a thriving amusement park, attracting visitors from miles away. Mr. Boeckling spent several decades expanding the amusement park, adding flower gardens, rides, and several hotels. Customers flocked to Cedar Point during the summer seasons under Boeckling’s management. They came by the interurban, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and by steamship. Starting in 1908 the steamer G.A. Boeckling started providing local transportation between the city of Sandusky and Cedar Point.

In 1922 the Sandusky Register called him “the man who made Cedar Point.” George A. Boeckling died July 24, 1931, and is buried at Oakland Cemetery.















This portrait of G. A. Boeckling is located in the lobby of the Hotel Breakers at Cedar Point.









Click on the image below to see how the Hotel Breakers appeared in 1905. This painting is also found in the lobby of the Hotel Breakers.














The steamer, the G.A. Boeckling, was named after Cedar Point's general manager. It took passengers across Sandusky Bay, from the city of Sandusky to Cedar Point, from about 1908 through 1952.

Summer is My Favorite Season at the Graveyard

The reason I like to visit cemeteries in the summer is because there among the historic tombstones, we can see:

Lovely green grass and trees




















Patriotic flags flying



















Beautiful floral tributes



















And tranquil shady settings.

J. George and Amanda Buderer

According to records listed in the book SANDUSKY THEN AND NOW, J. George Buderer was born in Reichenbach, Baden, Germany on April 27, 1825. He married Catherine Zipfel in 1847. Catherine Zipfel Buderer died young. In 1871, J. George Buderer married Amanda Sommers. J. George Buderer passed away on December 26, 1908. His obituary, which appeared in the December 27, 1908 issue of the Sandusky Register, stated that Mr. Buderer was "one of the oldest, if not the oldest, grocer in the city." The Buderer grocery store was located at the northeast corner of Pearl and Seneca Streets. The 1908 Sandusky City Directory listing advertised groceries, provisions, fine liquors, as well as cigars and tobacco, for sale at the Buderer Grocery.

Mrs. Amanda Buderer died on May 18, 1936. She is buried next to her husband at Sandusky's Oakland Cemetery. J. George and Amanda Buderer were the parents of two sons and four daughters. Several descendants of J. George Buderer were associated with the pharmacy business in Sandusky. There is still a Buderer Pharmacy in operation in Sandusky today.

Scrapbook Page: Grandma Lena Piehl Yeager's Birthday

Sentimental Sunday: Grandma Irene's Aparment Building

My great grandmother Irene Larkins Risko lived at 146 East Market Street in the early 1950's. She was within easy walking distance of grocery stores, drugstores, dress and hat shops, the post office, the courthouse, and the ferry boats to Cedar Point.









Gram Irene had a good friend, Millie, who lived in the same building, and she also got to know a young married couple very well. She was known for inviting guests in for cake and coffee, after supper dishes were done. Grandma loved to go downtown to the city parks in Sandusky, which were, and still are, filled with lovely floral mounds and decorative plants.














When her great grandson, Paul Orshoski, Jr., was christened, Grandma Irene hosted the christening supper at her apartment at 146 East Market Street in Sandusky.


















On the north side of East Market Street, not far from my great grandmother's old apartment building, is a marker which commemorates the birthplace of Jay Cooke, financier of the Civil War, and the son of Sandusky's first lawyer, Eleutheros Cooke.

Viola Draper Hitchcock and Infant

This lovely tombstone at Oakland Cemetery is in memory of Viola Draper Hitchcock, and her infant, who died in July of 1903, the wife and daughter of Amos Lyndon Hitchcock. According to death records at Family Search Labs, Viola Draper Hitchcock died on July 3, 1903. She had given birth to a baby girl on July 2, 1903, and the infant girl passed away after living only a few hours.

The July 5, 1903 issue of the Sandusky Register reported that the Hitchcock family was particulary sad because of its loss of two family members. Mrs. Hitchcock was only 33 years of age at the time of her death. Amos Lyndon Hitchock, the young man who lost both his wife and child, was connected with the U.S. fish hatchery at Put in Bay.

In June of 1905, Amos Lyndon Hitchock married his deceased wife's sister, Flora Draper. They moved to Cuyahoga County. (Their marriage may have been brief, as we do not see them in the U.S. Census living together after 1910.) According to the Georgia Death Index,accessed at Ancestry Library Edition, Amos Lyndon Hitchcock died in Wayne County, Georgia on October 20, 1976 at the age of 99. Passenger lists, also found at Ancestry Library Edition, indicate that Amos L. Hitchcock was employed as a carpenter on seagoing vessels for at least 30 years. Though he traveled many miles, and died in Georgia, this grave marker serves as a reminder of a young family who lived so briefly in northern Ohio long ago.