The historical memories of a Southeastern Ohio storyteller

Meet Ethel

Ethel Elizabeth Ratcliff (née Brown) was a force. Armed with an 8th-grade education, a tremendously strong will, and an outsized imagination, she accomplished much in her 95 years, including:

Raising a family of 8 children (most of whom were born at home) from 1926–1967 (first birth to graduation of the youngest)
Moving everyone north to Columbus, in search of opportunity (which was found!)
Assembling the family genealogy through years of letter-writing and library research, becoming well-known as an authority on the Ratcliff family in America (1682 and onward)
Recording 91 pages of stories about her family and the history of Southeastern Ohio, in particular the Salt Creek and Pike Run valley in Vinton County

Spinning a Yarn

This site contains the stories Ethel documented on a shoebox tape recorder, which were later transcribed by two of her daughters. She named the compilation As Friends They Came, because the family was Quaker and brought those traditions to Southeast Ohio from England.

Ethel’s stories are a mix of Ohio history and cultural folklore. Read on if you are curious about any of these topics:

Pioneer women and how they pretty much ran things
Morgan’s Raiders in Vinton County Ohio
Gypsy (now known as Roma or Romani) caravans and fortune-tellers
Fishing with poles, guns, and bow/arrow
A magician and pack peddler addicted to opium
A dancing horse
A case of stolen slippers (that may or may not have been heard by the Ohio Supreme Court)
Potatoes nearly stolen during a family funeral, crisis averted by a sharpshooting young woman
One murder in a field, one murder in a church, and multiple drownings
A teacher tricked with firecrackers
A family feud that inspired the creation of a new graveyard (so two people who feuded would not have to be buried in close proximity)
Life during the Spanish Influenza outbreak