OTown History

Sometimes I feel like I should of been a detective. Once I jumped into that rabbit hole of “who lived in our home” “we finally know who!” I was itching for more & needed to know which family remained. After many google searches and many hours later, I found one remaining relative, let’s call her Janice (for privacy sake).

Janice is James’s great granddaughter who lives in the Midwest. His great granddaughter reminds me a lot of how James would of been… a hardworking farmer who knows what they’re doing. I searched Janice on Facebook and finally found her profile where I messaged her a whole paragraph explaining the whole story on how my husband & I live in the home her great grandfather built & lived in, how we are restoring the old farmhouse and telling her all the history and background I knew of her family since she did not know much. Janice definitely was intrigued and impressed with all we knew, she was also appreciative of how proactive we are in ensuring the Clarke / Haring legacy lives on.

After months of gaining her trust, Janice kindly sent us one of the photo albums she had that was inherited from her mother. We made a promise to professionally archive every photograph & to put together a beautiful photo album filled with every photograph along with captions so she can treasure them forever.

She still has more albums & diaries in her possession. We asked if we can one day obtain those and archive them just like we did prior but unfortunately she is not willing to part with them just yet which we do totally understand. Janice’s family played such a huge role in the development of our town & our goal is to preserve as much history as we can especially since we are trying to put our home on the national registry.

Another thing I want to touch on is how much she reminds me of how her great grandfather James was. James was a smart individual who was a hard worker & farmer.. he had a green thumb & was a handy man according to his multiple diary entries. Janice also has a green thumb and grows her own produce, it must be a Clarke/Haring family “thing”. Janice’s great great grandfather Cornelius Clarke was also a farmer who ran the family business first.

Someday, we hope to obtain those remaining albums and diaries to further preserve and recognize the history and accomplishments the Clarke/Haring family achieved.