The Ancestral Home

Lots of people ask me what my name means. Zickefoose is a corruption of the German name Ziegenfuss, which means goat foot. It's not derogatory, not based on our looks. It refers to a nimble way of walking. Much better! I have had only two bad falls in my life, and both were when I was hugely pregnant. Amniotic fluid is a great cushion. Just ask my kids. As for the falls, I'm sure I can arrange more as I get old and doddery. But for now, I'm getting around pretty good. That was always what my grandparents said when asked how they were. It was all about mobility. I never understood why they emphasized how they were "getting around" then, when I was a little kid, and I moved as easily as I breathed. I get it now. Oh boy do I get it. 

Zickefoose is quirky enough that, when I got married and the pressure was on to change my name, I didn't. Wouldn't. Couldn't. I am a Zickefoose and will always be. Actually the decision had been made when I was very young. I loved my name, even though I was last in every line. I loved being my father's daughter, of being identified in some tangible way as his. He was a very cool man. My mom knew we'd have a special bond, with me being the last of six kids. She wanted my middle name to be Dale, to honor him. My dad voted it down. So my middle name defaulted to Sue. Which honors no one. A placeholder. Damn, and oh well. Why DOD, why?? Well, you know now that it would have been the right thing to do.

 Once I started doing freelance art as a freshman in college, I figured if I was going to hang out my shingle, I might as well have a memorable last name, one that, once learned, isn't forgotten.

What follows here is a small and shallow exploration of Zickefoose roots in America. I'm doing it mostly so my kids and family and I have a record of the things I've been told about our line. I don't expect it to be particularly interesting to anyone who isn't a Zickefoose, but I'm glad to know these things. Some people, like my brother Bob and especially our first cousin Brad Braga, have an aptitude for genealogy. Brad has an entire climate-controlled room in his Marshalltown, Iowa basement devoted to family photos and original records. He can answer any question we throw at him about who's related to whom and how.  He is a meet keeper of the Zickefoose flame and records. I am thankful for Brad. We all are.  He can explain what a third cousin, once removed, actually is. I can have something like that explained to me a hundred times and still not get it. Genealogy is like math to me. Genealogy lore goes through me like a dose of salts. So I'm determined to record it so I have it.

In 1751, Johan Jacob Ziegenfuss came to America from Germany. It's thought he had a son named Peter, who settled near the little town of Blue Grass, Virginia, in Highland County. At that time, Blue Grass was called Crab Apple Bottom. I guess I can see why they changed the name to Blue Grass.

  Peter had a son named George. George settled near Pipe Stem, West Virginia, with a land grant. At that time, Greenbriar County, WV, encompassed Pipe Stem. Larry Zickefoose, historian and genealogist for the West Virginia clan, says that during the time George was living there, you could be born, live and die in the same spot, but the county lines were changing such that you'd have lived in three different counties.

 So whether the Ziegenfuss/Zickefooses come from Virginia or West Virginia is a bit muddled. George's son, Benjamin, married his first cousin, Susannah Buzzard. DOD had told us this, and West Virginia genealogist Larry Zickefoose, who's written a book called From Zigenfuss to Zickefoose, confirms this. Marrying one's first cousin is forbidden in the Old Testament. 

This photo of Benjamin and Susannah entrances me. As I look at the pair, the set of their wide mouths and the shape of their heads, with prominent cheekbones and high foreheads, is very familiar to me. Susanna in particular looks like my dad's sisters, in a big way. 

The cheekbones alone belie their bloodlines. 

My father always said that he thought Ben and Susannah went west to escape the disapproval of their family. I'm glad they did.   They lived for a short while in Ohio (!) and Indiana, then settled in Henry County, Iowa, near Olds, around 1837. They had eight children. The first three were born in Virginia, the fourth in Ohio on the way to Iowa.  Their sixth was Western Summers Zickefoose, born near Olds, Iowa in 1842. That would make him just the right age to get caught up in the Civil War. He fought for the Union, with the 25th Iowa Regiment.

Western Summers was my great grandfather. 

He was at Vicksburg and other battles along the Mississippi, and was with Sherman around Atlanta and on his famous march. As they marched through the Carolinas Wes got malaria, and was sent north on a boat. He regretted missing the grand mustering in Washington D.C. Western's older brother, Clark, was killed at Arkansas Post and died in Wes's arms. He had been hit in the temple by a spent Minie ball. I remember DOD saying, "It never even broke the skin."  

Western was in Buell's Army of the Ohio, reinforcing Grant after the first day of fighting, when troops were being boated across the Tennessee River all night long. But Wes never got off the boat to join the fight at Shiloh. Good thing. 

My sister Micky has a tin plate and cup that had belonged to Western Summers, part of his mess kit. He lived through that terrible war and went on to live a full life. Missing Shiloh might have been the key there. Attaining the age of 83 is remarkable for a man, for those days. 

Western Summers' grave, Asbury Cemetery, Henry Co., Iowa

Western Summers Zickefoose, my great grandfather.

Martha Jane Yancey, my great grandmother.

Wes went on to marry Martha Yancey and have a son named Charles Summers Zickefoose. He was born in 1878, and remained unnamed for two years. Not sure what that's about. What do you call him until you decide what to name him? Hey You??  I remember Grampa Charlie Zickefoose being pretty crochety, but then he wasn't feeling well by the time I came along. My grandmother Elnora Zickefoose was the sweetest person you could imagine, so she more than made up for that. Whenever Nora would hear us Zickefoose kids singing in harmony, she would say, "They got that from the Yancey's." That's still a catch phrase in our family. It came from the Yancey's. Thank you, Martha, for giving us our musicality. It somehow escaped my dad. He loved music and could sing just fine, but had little sense of rhythm. Singing (or dancing, Ida said) with him was an adventure in compensation.

My DOD, Charles Dale Zickefoose

He may not have had much rhythm, but there was a lot he could do. Like, everything.

 I love the fact that my immediate family originated in Iowa, my grandparents and both my parents being born there, thanks to Ben and Susanna's moving west. When we moved from the Midwest to Richmond, Virginia in 1962, we were coming back to the homeland, though that fact was lost on me then. I remember missing terribly the big skies of the Great Plains. I was born in South Dakota and lived my early years in a suburb of Kansas City, Kansas. We were used to seeing the weather coming. In Richmond, we had to look straight up through the trees to see the sky, and storms always took us by surprise.

So you might imagine the feelings that coursed through me when my brother Bob gave me and Liam a route home from his place in Mt. Solon, Virginia, back to Ohio, that went right through the ancestral Zickefoose home along the Virginia/West Virginia line. (We were heading home from the wedding of Bob and Bonnie's daughter, Holly).

There are not many places in this world that I look at and say, "Yes. I could live here." But this was one of them. Rt. 250 went up, down and around through gorgeous healthy national forest with scattered agriculture and mountain vistas. 

Speeding car out the window photo. Near Blue Grass, Virginia. Ohhh yeah. It's sooo beautiful here.

Liam loved the ride so much he rolled down the window and hung his head out like a dog. He couldn't get over the views and the beauty of this place.

Before long the highway, which was all but deserted, rolled down into a valley where beavers had made a beautiful series of ponds, like beads on a big watery chain.

The clouds and reflections were perfect.

I've never seen Liam respond to a landscape the way he did to this one. We pulled over and got out to revel in it. 

I loved to think that our ancestors may have ridden or driven wagons along this route and loved this valley, too. I wondered if the beavers were there then.

I don't know if a landscape or a place can be so deep in your genes that you somehow know your ancestral place when you see it, but Liam and I knew something special was going on here.

I am grateful to have children with a sense of place, genetic or not. Who know beauty when they see it, and stop to wallow around in it.

Here's a little movie of Route 250 near the Virginia/ West Virginia line. I hope you've enjoyed this exploration of Zickefoose roots as much as I've enjoyed ferreting out the information and photos. Many thanks to Bob Zickefoose and Brad Braga for keeping the genealogical flame for know-nothings like me.

And because it was the song in my head the entire drive, here's Jonathan Edwards and the Seldom Scene with "Blue Ridge."