John
Minard Burditt
(1876-1925)
John
Minard Burditt was born in 1876 near Tontogany, Wood
County, OH, the son of William J. and
Jemima (Minerd) Burditt.
In childhood, John attended school, unlike other local boys of German heritage, whose parents thought there was no need for "book learning." Because he had more "schooling," he often was consulted when a letter arrived written in German, needing to be translated, because he knew how to do it.
John married Yettie Vollmar (1878-1961), a Tontogany native and the daughter of George and Mary (Wires) Vollmar. They were the parents of seven daughters, who all had unique nicknames -- Evelyn "Eb" Fuller, Myrtle "Skeeter" Long, Edna "Mike" Keller, Clara "Ret" Mozena, Cora "Tom" Digby, Helen I. "Bunk" Williams and Nellie "Duke" Peters.
Nettie's mother is said to have been upset that she married a man who was English, and not German, although John's roots were most definitely German.
The Burditts resided on the "old homestead" farm three miles north of Tontogany, where John had grown up, and which previously had been in the Minerd family. According to a 1990 feature article in the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune:
All seven of the girls were born in a log cabin on Tontogany Creek Road. The cabin is no longer standing. The seven sisters all grew up in the Tontogany area and graduated from Tontogany High School, which was consolidated very early in comparison to other area districts. It was three miles from their house to the school, but they didn't ride the bus because there was no bus. The girls made the journey on foot for many years. And when the first bus did make it out their way, it wasn't the big, yellow vehicle we see today, but a small, horse-drawn one.
Seen
here, John and his nephew (and longtime neighbor) Ross Robinson hold up what
appears to be a string of varmints they had trapped.
The Burditts were members of the Tontogany Presbyterian Church. John always instructed his daughters to call him "Papa" and not "Father," saying that they only had one of the latter, their "Father in Heaven." He also was reluctant to allow his daughters to cut their hair until they became teenagers.
In the 1910s, John's mother resided in their home, and died there in 1914.
According to one of their daughters:
We seven ... were always known as the 'Burditt Sisters.' All 7 played basketball in high school. When the 4 youngest were in high school we were second in the Wood County Tournament. Three sisters -- Evelyn, Cora and Nellie -- were educators.
Tragically,
John became very ill after becoming soaked to the skin while walking home one
night. He suffered "sinking sickness" from July to October 1925.
Fearing he was dying, Nettie kept their daughters at home on days she feared he
would go. He would ask, "Am I worse today?" She would reply, "No,
I kept the children home to help me dig potatoes." But sadly, he did not
recover, and passed away at the age of 49. He is buried at Tontogany Cemetery.
Yettie outlived her husband by more than 35 years. She died at age 82 of a cerebral hemorrhage on Jan. 20, 1961. She is buried beside her husband.
At the time of Yettie's passing, she and John had produced 17
grandchildren and 36 great-grandchildren.
In June 1990, six of the seven Burditt sisters, all in their 80s, gathered at Haskins Park for a get-together. A reporter from the Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune attended and wrote a lengthy feature story on the unusual gathering. The article said that "despite such a large family, once a year they all manage to meet somewhere within the 50-mile radius in which they live for a good old-fashioned family reunion."
By the time of the 1990 reunion, the sisters' families had swelled to a combined 58 grandchildren, 63 great grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.
Daughter
Nellie E. Burditt (1910-2008) married Luther Peters ( ? -1995) and they were
married for nearly 64 years. They resided on a 10-acre farm near Oak Harbor, OH.
They had two children, Shirley Rice and Luther J. Peters. Nellie was a longtime
educator in Carroll Township, considered "strict and well-respected,"
said the Toledo Blade, "who first taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Oak
Harbor after graduating from Bowling Green State University... She would later
rise to school principal, and would receive a master's in education from BGSU in
1965." Among Nellie's students were Spanish-speaking children of Mexican
farmers brought from Texas to labor in tomato fields for H.J. Heinz Company.
Nellie passed away at the age of 98 on May 1, 2008. Following a funeral at St.
John Evangelical Lutheran Church, she was laid to rest in Union Cemetery in Oak
Harbor.
Copyright © 2002, 2005, 2007-2008 Mark A. Miner