"The Mistake on the Lake" - Cleveland

Traveling in the east coast is such a joy—distances are short so you’re never too far from the next interesting city. We came “home” to Cleveland and arrived in time for a thunderstorm. The storm seemed to clear the hot humid air out and the next few days were gorgeous.

We were, once again, on the trail of the family history. We visited Lakeside Cemetery and the East Cleveland cemetery, did a tour and house hunt of all of the Cleveland properties of both families. We stopped for lunch at Night Town, Eleanor’s favorite restaurant. And, we had to stop at the West Side market – for a huge gyro sandwich and some fresh fruit.

The 4th of July found the campground packed with families – fire pits, grilling and screaming children. They all arrived on Friday afternoon/evening – spent most of the evening getting everything set up. On Saturday and Sunday, they all sat around most of the day- cooking, talking, swimming and fishing with the kids. Then, early on Monday morning, they were all packing up and getting ready to leave.

On the 4th, we took a trip to Hiram, Ohio—and the home of John Johnson. Johnson was one of the first members of the Mormon Church in Ohio. In 1831 he invited Joseph Smith to move into their family home. While there, Joe worked on his revision of the Bible and received 15 revelations. It was also from this house that he was dragged, beaten, and tarred and feathered by an angry mob in 1832.

We found John’s grandmother and great-grandmother’s houses (next door to each other) both for sale. We couldn’t resist getting the chance to see the interiors. We set up an appointment for Tuesday morning and arrived to find the alarm on one of the houses blaring while the two “realtors” were scrambling to try to figure out how to get it to turn off. Attempting to divert us from the blaring alarm, one of the realtors offered to take us into the other house. With absolutely no qualification- and not a single question, she let us wander through the house while she sat in the living room talking on her cell phone. The dark tan, cut-off midriff top, the skin tight black Capri pants, the 3” high cork heels and the blonde streaks in her dark hair should have been a tip-off that we were not dealing with the top echelon of realtors. Her partner in crime was a virtual look-alike. We spent an hour wandering through the two houses, taking photos- amazed that neither agent seemed the slightest bit interested in what we were looking for or what we thought of their properties.
The houses were both in excellent condition- solid construction – and coming from our Boston housing perspective, seemed to be great deals ($379K and $399K). John spent time in the basement of his grandmother’s house with fond memories of playing ping pong and hiding from the adults.

With all of the family research done so far, we were able to share some of the findings with John’s cousins, Jay, his wife Janet, cousin Nancy and husband Bob and their mother (John’s aunt), Ida. They invited us for brunch on Sunday at Jay and Janet’s home. Aunt Ida was remarkable! At 80 something, she was sharp as a tack. It was particularly interesting to show all of the family research to her- as she had first hand knowledge of all of these people. She reminisced, “Oh, I remember Uncle Ike…” She told wonderful stories of J T Sir and Edith. Evidently Edith was quite a character. J T Sr. used to say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it would have been if Edith had been in charge”.