When I was new to genealogy, I did what a lot of people do: I uncritically relied on the work of others. A lot of what I know about the Huff family came to me via the late Max Huff. Unfortunately for me, by the time I decided to get serious and disciplined about researching my ancestry, Max was in poor health and he died in 2018 while I was in the middle of my Callin Family History project.
Lesson: life moves fast, and you never know how long you have before the universe deprives you of a resource or mentor.
Kansas to Arizona
My great-grandma Merle Witter was born Hannah Merle Huff (1889-1984) in Allen County, Kansas. By 1910, Merle and her family had migrated to the Arizona Territory where they settled in a town called Glendale.
My grandma Nancy and aunt Vickie always said that the Huffs came to Arizona in a covered wagon - and if I hadn’t been so obsessed with Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies, I might have remembered the stories Great-Grandma Witter surely told me about traveling to the desert and staring a new life only a few years after the last of the wars with the indigenous tribes of the Southwest, and during a time when Pancho Villa threatened to bring the civil war in Mexico north into Arizona
.
Virginia to Ohio
The most distant Huff ancestor I have been able to confirm is Lewis Huff who originated in Virginia and moved with his family to Ohio and then Kansas. There are a lot of people to investigate and document, so they will require a great deal of attention.
Someday.
If you’re a Huff descendant, too, I’d love to hear from you.
Be sure to subscribe for any future updates!
Life does move fast in that regard. If only I had thought of the questions I have now, 21 years ago, when my grandmother was still alive.