Frank Coriell Oviatt was born June 11, 1890 in Kendallville, Indiana, the oldest of five children of B. F. Oviatt and Leta Coriell Oviatt. As a boy, Oviatt worked on his father's farm and attended the Kendallville schools. He made several trips to Cleveland, Ohio, spending his summers with his father's sister and her husband, a Cleveland railroad executive. After graduating from Kendallville High School, Oviatt completed a year of training at the Fort Wayne Community College and then moved to Cleveland where he accepted his first job as an office boy in the Auditor's Office of the Nickel Plate Railroad Company.
During World War I, Oviatt served as a Private 1st Class, from April 1918 to April 1919, then as corporal, from May 1919 to July 1919, in Company D of the 331st Infantry of the United States Army. He was stationed with the American Expeditionary Forces in France from June 1918 to July 1919. He returned to the United States after the war and on January 1, 1920, married Mabel Stowell. They resided briefly in East Cleveland then moved to South Euclid, Ohio. Oviatt held many jobs including clerk, assistant paymaster, and cost accountant. The Oviatts were well known for their work on the Oviatt Family genealogy in which they traced their ancestors back to the 1600s.
Spanish ancestors of the Oviatts first arrived in England in 1066, with William the Conqueror. Some of the Oviatts settled in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, the home of the first Oviatt to sail to America. In 1632, Thomas Oviatt, Sr., sailed from England to Boston, Massachusetts, aboard the ship "Lion." Thomas Oviatt, Sr., and his wife, Isabel, had two sons and one daughter. Thomas, Jr., remained childless throughout his life. His brother, John, started a family and the Oviatt lineage is traced from them. ---About 1797, Frank C. Oviatt's great grandfather came to the Western Reserve on a surveying expedition with the Connecticut Land Company. This Oviatt ancestor came from Goshen, Connecticut, and settled in the area which is now Hudson, Ohio. The Goshen, Connecticut, ancestors are the progenitors of the Ohio Oviatts.
Other Oviatt Family members began to settle in other areas, moving to the following states: Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, and later to Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Utah, Oregon, California, and Montana.
The Frank C. Oviatt Family Photographs, ca. 1890s-1970s, consist of portraits of Frank C. Oviatt and his family and friends. Also includes views of Hudson, Ohio, and vicinity; including the Oviatt family residences, the village commons, Western Reserve Academy, miscellaneous buildings and homes, and the tombstones of the Oviatt and other families. The collection includes 104 black and white and color photographs that measure 6 x 3.75 inches and smaller.
The collection is arranged in three series. Each series is arranged by subject.
The researcher should also consult MS 3952 Frank C. Oviatt Family Papers; MS 3518 Hiram P. Oviatt Papers; MS 777 Oviatt Family Papers; and MS 3381 David Oviatt Hudson Notebook.
None.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] PG 283 Frank C. Oviatt Family Photographs, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
These photographs were removed from MS 3952 Frank C. Oviatt Family Papers. Gift of Frank C. Oviatt in 1981.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.