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Preiss Family in Germany
Price Immigrants
Ancestors of Louie Price
The Price Family in Ohio
NICHOLAS and MARGARET PRICE
Nicholas E. Price was born March 6, 1836 in Ohio to Nicholas and Anna Elizabeth (Reimund) Price. (1)
Married Margaret Tracht. (See below.)
Children: (2)
John W., born 1860.
Adam, born 1866.
George Henry, born Feb. 10, 1870.
Peter, born 1874.
Emma, born 1877.
William Edward, born December 1879.
Nicholas married Margaret Tracht on Feb. 17, 1859. (3) Margaret Tracht was born in Ohio on Nov. 27, 1839, in Madison Township, Hancock County. She was almost certainly the daughter Johann Philipp and Anna Katharina (Schaller) Tracht. (4)
Nicholas was a farmer and owned a mill, according to information supplied by his grandson Elsworth Price Sr. (5)
``At one time, Grandpa Nicholas E. Price and Margaret (Tracht) Price owned a grist mill or flour mill - just south of Arlington, take Waterloo Drive west to Eagle Creek. The Price farm was on the south side of the road and this was where Dad (George Henry Price) was raised. The mill was run by water power. A raceway carried part of the water form the main stream to the water wheel; the wheel turned the machinery that ground the wheat to make flour. I remember my mother saying that Nicholas never turned anyone away empty-handed, not caring if they could pay or not.�
A newspaper reporter visited the site of the Price mill and interviewed Nicholas� son Edward in 1952. The resulting story describes the mill, which had long since fallen into disrepair and was being used for grain storage. (6)
�Although small, Waterloo, in Madison township, a half mile south and three miles west of Arlington, was a busy place back in the mid-1800s. A saw mill, a grist mill, a general store and a scale house for weighing cattle enroute to market constituted Waterloo�s business district. The village might have been called a one-man town. For it all revolved around Edward Price�s father, Nicholas. It was he who ran the mills, owned the general store and weighed the cattle for the farmers. It was his oldest son, John, who rode horse back to get the mail for the little settlement. ...
��We always had good business on mail day,� he (Edward Price) mused. �When the neighbors would see John approaching on his horse they�d flock in to the store. John would dump the contents of the mail pouch into a box and then the addresses on the letters and papers would be read and the different people would step forward and claim their mail.� ...
�The grist mill was built and operated by Martin Funk and was then called Funk�s mill. It was first put into operation in the early �50s. It was a water mill, the shaft being perpendicular and three water wheels transferred the power to the machinery above. So elated were the people of that neighborhood at the prospect of having a grist mill so close to home that they donated their time and labor in digging the mill race. ...
�The mill was bought my Mr. Price from Mr. Funk soon after it was in operation and, until his sons were old enough to help, he ran it alone. The mill was a large one, two stories above the power room. A large hand bell was in the building near the door. When a customer came he rang the bell to call the miller up from below or down from the upper floor.
�The old saw mill stood just south of the grist mill and was in use many years. The Price family purchased the Funk home when they purchased the mills and the mill yard was in front of the house, which otherwise was surrounded with a primeval forest typical of Hancock county in that long ago day. Mrs. Price remembers that for many years after she came there as a bride huge logs were strewn over the front yard.
�All that remains of this activity is a deep impression the logs made in the yard, after they were dragged there by oxen. The mill itself is gone with its saw which Mr. Price described as �An up and down saw - it worked so slowly it was up today and down tomorrow.�
�The grist mill was dismantled nearly 70 years ago. Peter Traucht purchased the saw mill building, had it dismantled and removed to Arlington where it was rebuilt and steam power put in.�
The newspaper story also recounts Edward�s description of the general store: ��This curved piece of walnut,� he pointed out, �is a corner of the original counter. Here we sold square-headed cast iron nails, sulphur matches and beeswax. Over there sat the whiskey barrel, and over there the cracker barrel. They dipped into the whiskey barrel oftener than they did the cracker barrel,� he laughed.� The story later noted that some people claimed the village was named Waterloo �because so many men met their moral �waterloo� at the spirits barrel in the general store during the early days of Hancock county.�
Today there is little evidence to indicate a thriving business center once existed at the site along Eagle Creek.
The Prices worshiped at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jenera.
Margaret died July 4, 1899. Her obituaries reads: ``Mrs. Margaret Price, of Arlington, met death Tuesday in a peculiar manner. She was preparing to attend the Fourth celebration at Arlington, when she ruptured an ulcer on her limb, death resulting from a hemorrhage before medical aid arrived.� (7)
Nicholas died March 28, 1910 of an ``obstruction of bowels.� (8)
Nicholas� obituary read as follows: ``Nicholas Price, well known in this city and throughout this county, of which he was for at least the last half century a resident, died at him home, two miles west of Arlington, Monday afternoon at four o�clock, of Bright�s disease (a kidney disease) from which he had suffered for some time. Mr. Price was seventy-four years of age and had spent a large part of his life upon his farm near Arlington. ...
``Since early youth Mr. Price has been a member of the German Lutheran church with which organization he was connected at the time of his death. He was an earnest Christian worker and always had a kind word for a friend.
``He was well like by his neighbors and had a wide circle of close friends. Mr. Price was industrious and left as a monument to his industry a large farm on which he died.� (9)
The Prices are buried at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jenera.
(1) Hancock County Record of Death 4, page 74. Also named as son in Nicholas Price�s papers of administration, Hancock County Probate Court Case No. 3380. (2) Children listed in 1880 Census of Hancock County, Ohio. (3) Hancock County Marriage Record 3, page 503. (4) Date comes from Hancock County Record of Death 2A, page 200. The previously mentioned marriage record doesn�t mention the name of Margaret�s father. However, other evidence strongly points toward Phillipp Tracht. ``The Tracht Family Tree,� Page 23, lists the same birth date for a Margaret who was the daughter of Johann Philipp Tracht. Philipp�s daughter was the only Margaret Tracht of the right age, in the area, at that time, according to the 1850 Census for Hancock County. The 1880 Census for Hancock County says Margaret Price�s parents were born in ``Hess-Darm� - where Johann Philipp Tracht and his wife were born. Also, this Tracht family and the Prices attended the same church and lived near each other. (5) Elsworth Price Sr. wrote a letter concerning his parents and grandparents in 1990. (6) The Courier of Findlay, Ohio, July 22, 1952. (7) Death record and obituary in July 6, 1899 edition of Findlay Union. (8) Death record. Administration of estate is in Hancock County Probate Court Case No. 9434. (9) The Republican Jeffersonian, Thursday, March 31, 1910.
GEORGE and MARTHA PRICE
George Henry Price was born Feb. 10, 1870 in Madison Township, Hancock County, Ohio. His parents were Nicholas E. and Margaret (Tracht) Price. (1)
Married Martha May Tracy on March 26, 1891. (2) Martha was born May 31, 1873 near Arlington in Hancock County. Her parents were Joel H. and Eliza (Beagle) Tracy. (3)
Children: (4)
Louie Edward, born Oct. 17, 1891.
Lida M., born in 1892.
Clara, born 1894.
Pearl LeRoy, born 1895.
Joel Nicholas, born 1896.
Anna Belle, born 1898.
Marion, born 1899.
Edna Marie, born 1901.
George Everett, born 1902.
Lester Robert, born 1905.
Elsworth Raymond, born 1907.
Francis Floyd, born 1914.
George was a farmer and worked various tracts in the Arlington area, according to his son, Elsworth, who described his parents� way of life in a letter written in 1990.
Things were difficult for the Prices in the early years.
``When Louie was just a small boy, eight or ten years old, he went to live with Bert Reinhart. Mr. Reinhart was a farmer and lived a couple miles north of Arlington. I guess you could say Bert and his wife raised Louie. I remember my mother saying they would take Louie to the end of the dirt lane and leave him off, and Lou would walk up the lane to the house, a distance of about one-half mile. It was heart-breaking for them to leave him, my mother said, but with several kids and more coming it seem the best way, as we were financially burdened. The Reinharts gave him a good home and were good to him.
``I (Elsworth) was born in Arlington in 1907. Dad worked for Bob Dorney at the time. Mr. Dorney was a prominent farmer who lived just west of Arlington. Dad worked on a hay bailer and bought hay.
``My father liked his drinks now and then, but Mother would not touch it. This caused problems at times. When I was two years old, we lived about three miles east of Arlington on one of Bob Dorney�s farms. We lived there about four years. During that time Dad gave up drinking, or nearly so. He worked very hard and was in good financial shape.�
Elsworth Price outlined the methods of farming used in the early 1900s.
``The following was a typical day on the farm while I was growing up. We were living on the Abe Chase farm, three and one-half miles south of Mount Blanchard. We lived on the same farm twice, once when I was five or six years old and again when I was 16 years old.
``In 1912, when I was five a typical day would begin about 6 a.m. We had about 12 horses and approximately eight milk cows. Dad would feed the hogs, Pearl would feed the horses, and Joe was in charge of the milking with Marion, Anna, Edna and George helping. I did not help with the milking until I was eight years old.
``The cows were milked, the milk was put through the separator - the milk came out one spout and the cream came out another spout. The skimmed milk was fed to the hogs and the cream was put in a cream can and stored in an upground cellar. A few days later it was taken to town and sold. We churned butter for our own use. Sometimes Mother would make a roll of butter weighing six or seven pounds and sell it to the store.
``After breakfast and all chores were done in the morning, they were ready for a day in the fields. The first crop to be planted was corn. Dad used a two-row planter and no fertilizer attachment. He checked the corn in such a way you could plow it both ways: lenghtways and crossways. The farm consisted of 240 acres. There were 40 acres of woods, and about 40 acres of pasture land along Potato Creek. This left about 160 acres off arm land. We planted about 60 acres of corn, 30 acres of oats, 35 acres of hay and 35 acres of wheat. Most farmers used a four-crop rotation: corn to wheat, wheat to hay, hay to oats and oats to corn.
``The corn was cut by hand and put into shocks. The corn was then husked by hand and the fodder shocked and fed to the cattle.
``Wheat was cut by a wheat binder. The binder cut the wheat and put it into bundles. The bundles were then shocked: ten in a shock and one on top called the cap. You took one sheaf and spread it out for the cap. Later the sheaves were put through the threshing machine. In the 1800s, before the threshing machine, the wheat was cut with a cradle and bound into bundles by hand. It was then threshed out by hand using a flail. A flail is a wooden staff about four feet long, from the end of which another piece of wood about two feet long is tied with a rope and hangs free. This is used for striking grain and thus threshing it by hand. The grain was spread out on the floor and beat with the flail.
``Oats were reaped the same a wheat.
``Hay was mowed with a five- or six-foot mowing machine, left to dry two or three days, then loaded on a wagon by a hay loader that was pulled behind the wagon. The hay was put into the hay mow and later baled or fed to the animals.
``At noontime you unhitched the horses, tied them in their stalls and fed them hay and grain. We ate dinner, then it was back to work in the afternoon. About 6 p.m., the horses were unhitched, unharnessed and fed. Then they were turned out to pasture in the summertime or kept in their stalls in the wintertime.
``The milking was usually done just after the evening meal, the milk separated and the hogs fed. Work ended for the day.�
George farmed until about three years before his death in 1938, according to his obituary.
In the early years of the 20th century, the horse was still an important form of transportation as well as key to farming, Elsworth Price explained.
``My dad never owned an automobile until Judy (Lester) and I were seniors in high school (1925). It was a used Model-T Ford and you had to crank it by hand. Dad never drove an automobile. Before we got the Model-T, we used to drive a horse and buggy to school at Mount Blanchard, which was three and one-half miles away. At noon we went to a nearby barn and fed the horse hay and corn.�
Religion played a mixed role in the Price family life, according to Elsworth Price.
``My father was a Lutheran. My mother was a Dunkard. The Lutheran church was located two miles west of Arlington. The Dunkard church was near New Stark ... about six miles south of Arlington. The only way to travel was by horse and buggy. To my knowledge, my parents did not attend church often. Mother did not want to go to the Lutheran church. I don�t think my dad wanted to go to the Dunkard church, so it was very difficult for them both. Mother saw to it that we attended church regularly and all the children became Methodists.�
Martha�s obituary gives some more insight into her life and beliefs: ``Mrs. Price was converted in early youth and became a member of the Dunkard church. In this denomination she lived a faithful and consistent Christian life, growing grace and goodness until the last hours of her days on earth. ...
``Unfortunately from her early married life, impaired health, home responsibilities, and excessive fleshy condition, made it an impossibility for her to attend public church services and hindered her doing many other things she would have delighted in doing. But she never lost her ambition. Many times she would sit and work when unable to stand.
``She was the ideal mother, giving her entire life unselfishly to properly caring for her children, spending a part of the time reading good literature to them, being content to give all of her time and attention to her family.�
Martha died April 30, 1922.
George died in 1938. His obituary says he died at his son Pearl�s home in Richland Township, Wyandot County. ``He had been in ill health for the last year and seriously so for the last five weeks from heart trouble.� George and Martha are buried at Houcktown Cemetery near Mount Blanchard.
(1) George� obituary clipped from undated and unidentified newspaper. Parents also named in ``St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Jenera, Ohio, Church Record Book, 1891-1971.� Also named as son in Nicholas E. Price�s papers of administration, Hancock County Probate Court Case No. 9434. (2) Hancock County Marriage Record 8, page 170. (3) Birth information comes from Martha�s obituary clipped from undated and unidentified newspaper. Parents also listed in 1880 Census, Hancock County, Ohio. (4) George Price family genealogy compiled by Bonnie Jean Almy Price of Findlay, Ohio.
LOUIE and FAYE PRICE
Louie Edward Price was born Oct. 17, 1891 in Arlington, Ohio, to George Henry and Martha May (Tracy) Price. (1)
Married Golda P. Sampson and later Faye Isabella McDaniel. (See below.)
On Oct. 28, 1914, Louie married Golda P. Sampson. Golda was born Sept. 19, 1894, in Delaware Township, Hancock County, to Albert and Lucy (Hay) Sampson. (3)
A few years later, Golda became very ill, so a nurse was hired to care for her. The nurse was Faye Isabella McDaniel.
Golda died March 24, 1922. Louie needed someone to care for his young daughters because he couldn�t care for them and work at the same time. He married Faye on May 15, 1922, with the blessings of Golda�s parents. (4) Louie told Thelma and Dortha to refer to Golda as ``Momma� and Faye as``Mother.�
Faye was born April 13, 1900 in Amanda Township, Hancock County, Ohio, to Thomas Calvin and Olive Elnora (Frederick) McDaniel. (5) She studied nursing in Cleveland and completed her work Nov. 10, 1921 at the City Hospital School of Nursing. Caring for Golda was one of her first jobs.(6)
Louie was a farmer until he and Faye started a livestock transportation business in the 1920s. They both drove livestock trucks to Cleveland and Faye did the accounting. Louie later managed a cooperative stockyard and grain elevator.
In 1949, Louie bought a grocery store in Mount Blanchard. (7) He operated Price Grocery for two years and Faye again did the books. They sold the store when they decided it required too much additional effort.
After selling the store, Louie kept busy by farming a 40-acre plot until the early 1960s. (At one time, he also owned land in Mount Blanchard that had been owned by ``Johnny Appleseed� Chapman in the 1830s.)
Louie bought his first car, a Model-T Ford, in about 1921 for $400. He ordered the car in Columbus and had to take the train there to pick it up. He then taught others in the area how to drive.
Faye and Louie enjoyed raising and training horses. They owned matching show horses and often went to rodeos to display their riding skills. Louie and his brothers sometimes staged their own private rodeos.
Louie also served on the Mount Blanchard Village Council and as a volunteer firefighter. Louie was a charter member of the Mount Blanchard Lions Club. (8)
Louie didn�t usually attend church services unless his daughter Wanda was singing a solo with the choir, at Mount Blanchard Methodist Church. Louie figured he could be as close to God outdoors as in a church. He also said the overly pious people were the least trustworthy. However, he was religeous, reading the Bible every Sunday morning.
The Prices also enjoyed singing. Faye would play the piano and the children would gather around to sing while Louie listened.
Both Louie and Faye were very reserved. However, they were very nice to their grandchildren. Faye always had favorite treats on hand and Louie took some of his grandchildren to the stockyards and the zoo to see the animals.
Louie died Nov. 18, 1968 in Findlay. Faye died Nov. 18, 1979 in Findlay. They are buried at Houcktown Cemetery outside Mount Blanchard. (9)
(1) ``St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Jenera, Ohio, Church Record Book, 1891-1971.� Unless noted, information comes from interviews with Lowanda Bowers, Thelma Smith and Thobern Price. (2) Obituary clipped from unidentified newspaper. (3) Hancock County Marriage Record 14, page 538. (4) Hancock County Marriage Record 16, page 561. (5) Unpublished McDaniel genealogy. (6) Faye McDaniel�s Certificate of Education in Nursing. (7) ``Mount Blanchard Sesquicentennial 1830-1980,� page 33. (8) Obituary clipped from unidentified newspaper. Lions information comes from ``Mount Blanchard Sesquicentennial,� Page 102. (9) Louie�s will is in Hancock County Probate Court Case No. 7148.