Obituaries - Death Notices - Funeral Cards

August 28, 1906, Middletown News-Signal, Middletown, Ohio
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL
Some Interesting References To One of The Oldest Families in the Valley
By J. W. Reppeto

Lydia Vannatta
    On August 23, Mrs. Lydia Vannatta, died at her home in Bloomington, Illinois. She was a daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth Hinkle and was born in Madison Township, Butler County, Ohio on March 19, 1816. Her parental grandfather was one of the earliest settlers at Cincinnati and was killed by the Indians while at work on his farm near where Camp Denniston was located during the civil war. Her father and one of her uncles narrowly escaped the fate of their father. Her maternal grandmother accompanied St. Clair's army in its campaign against the Indians in 1791, but she died on the march and was buried near where Elk Creek church and school house now stand three miles north of Miltonville and three miles west of Middletown, and from the time of her burial unto this day no man knoweth her sepulcher. Her uncle, Benjamin DeBolt, was the first white child born in Madison Township. In 1836 she was married to Samuel Vannatta, a potter. They took up their residence in Miltonville and remained there until 1873, when they moved to Bloomington, Illinois, where her husband died in 1880. Her family of eight children were all born in Miltonville. Her husband was a member of the Fifth O.V.I., her sons, Squire and Joseph of Co. C , 85th O.V.I. and Sanford of Co E, 167 th O.V.I. in the Civil War. Joseph gave up his life and found a resting place on the bloody field of Chickamauga, and Squire who endured the horrors of Libby and Andersonville fought fifteen months, fills an honored grave in our village cemetery. During the last five years of her life she was nearly blind and her mind was seriously impaired.
Her daughter, Lizzie, her only living child, and whose whole life had been spent with her, tenderly cared for her in her declining years.
    Other members of the Hinkle family have lived far beyond their three score and ten, and her father passed away at the great age of 96 years. Her brothers, Joseph Benjamin and William Hinkle, of Madison Township, are the surviving members of a family of seventeen children. Her living descendants are one daughter and three grandchildren. Mrs. Sarah Reppeto, of Miltonville, is her sister-in-law. The interment was in the Bloomington cemetery where rest her husband, her son Sanford and one grandson.