By Fred Steiner First posted on the Icon Dec. 30, 2010 - revised for 2015
To best understand our community, it's helpful to appreciate the musical gene of those who carry a Bluffton birthmark.
Growing up in a household bursting of Swiss traditions, this truth became obvious early on in the shaping of my own attitude toward events swirling around me.
A case in point is the David Rothen New Year's caroling folklore. My parents' reference to this event centered on their teen years in the late 1920s.
As a youngster, Robert Kreider lived in Bluffton from 1926 to 1935 when his father pastored First Mennonite Church. After moving away, he returned Bluffton as a professor, academic dean and later Bluffton College president. In the 1970s he moved to Kansas. Click here for his obituary.
In an opening 1968 school year convocation, Bluffton College President Robert Kreider compared the height of the campus water tower to the timeline of earth’s history.
In the seventh year in the reign of Obama, legislation passed that all U.S. citizens be counted in the county where their ancestors had settled. This unusual census was when Kasich was governor of Ohio and Jordan was fourth district representative.
Jose from Lebanon, Ohio, with his young housekeeper, Maria, who was nine-month’s pregnant with someone else’s child, and who Jose had intended to marry, drove to Bluffton in Jose’s 1996 Mercury Cougar. This was because Jose was a great-great-great-grandson of Swiss immigrant, Jesse Zurflugh, in Richland Township.
This Christmas card was mailed to Bertha Althaus, Bluffton, Ohio, from her brother, Andrew of Toledo. We can't read the postmark date, but Bertha was married in 1899, and after that was Bertha Hahn.
For the address side of the card, check the photo below. There's no street address and no zip code required on this one cent post card.
Bertha Althaus Hahn is the grandmother of Fred Steiner, of the Icon.
