ASHLAND – Tammy Pelton gathered her family around the headstone of her great-grandfather, John Elmer Sloan.
“This is important,” she said. “This is where we came from.”
Pelton has spent more than a year researching her family’s history and working to find the headstones of various Sloan family ancestors scattered throughout Ashland Cemetery.
Sunday, she led her extended family on a walk through the cemetery to see the burial sites and hear the stories that have become Pelton’s passion.
Pelton took the family into the mausoleum where her great great grandfather, David Hurst Sloan, was laid to rest. Alongside his tomb is that of his wife, Mary Emma Sloan. Her maiden name was Steele, and it was for David and Mary that Ashland’s Sloan and Steele avenues were named.
The Sloan family once owned a farm off East Main Street, where the two parallel streets now run.
In the course of her research, Pelton learned that a portion of the Sloan farm (later the Siler farm and hatchery) was reported to have been acquired by The Latchlaw Brothers Company in 1916. The company intended to build a mausoleum there but never did because of an injunction after several plaintiffs who had bought crypts said the site was too far from the cemetery. Ashland County has no record of the property being sold, but Pelton said she suspects a transaction with Latchlaw Brothers was the source of much of the family’s money.
Pelton also told a story of two female Sloan cousins (one of them the mother of David Hurst Sloan) who each married men with the last name of Sloan. The family believes and hopes those married Sloans were unrelated, she said.
Pelton said a distant relative, James Sloan, was instrumental in naming of Ashland, coming up with the name for the post office after it was discovered there was another Uniontown in Ohio.
As members of the Sloan family trekked through the cemetery, they placed small stones on the graves of ancestors.
Unlike flowers, Sloan said, stones last forever.
“I hope that someday, my kids place stuff on my headstone and keep my headstone looking nice and talk about me,” Pelton said. “They (our ancestors) were alive just like us, and when you start researching them, it puts flesh on their bones.”
Pelton said her interest in genealogy research began after she planned a family reunion last year. Leading up to the reunion, she created a Facebook group for the extended family and posted facts about family members each day.
“As the year went on, we all kind of got to know each other again,” she said.
The reunion attracted 112 family members, many of whom hadn’t seen each other in decades or had never met.
Several of the family members present at Sunday’s cemetery walk wore t-shirts from the reunion that read, “Sloan Family: Members of the Round Barn Dynasty,” a nod to John Elmer Sloan’s round barn in Nankin.
Pelton’s father, Dave Sloan, said he was surprised when his daughter became so interested in the family’s history.
“She would call me just about every day. It almost got to be a pain,” Dave Sloan said.
Pelton would tell Dave Sloan about her latest discovery from her genealogy research and cemetery records, and Dave Sloan would set out to find the headstones.
Dave Sloan said he appreciates that the research culminated in an event to share the findings with the family.
“It’s very special,” he said. “We like to keep especially the younger ones in our family informed, so they can pass it on to their family.”
Pelton’s sister, Kelly Dull, explained why keeping the memories alive matters so much to the family.
“Everybody has a story to tell,” said Pelton’s sister, Kelly Dull. “It may not be important to the next person down the road, but it’s important to me.”
