Ricky Cottman
Ricky Cottman's Grandmother
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
Ricky Cottman's Great-Grandfather
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
Great-Great Grandmother Mary Kendall Rickman
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
Ricky Cottman's Grandfather
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
Aura Jane Okey Mason
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
Jem Cottman
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
Ricky Cottman's Grandma Dottie
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
Ricky L. Cottman New Castle, IN. 1-11-52
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
36th Wedding Anniversary of Jon and Eva Cottman
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
Photo collage of three Burden men
from the collection of Ricky Cottman
An interview with Ricky Cottman
So I brought photographs of the Rickmans, including the one picture with my grandmother, Ora Francis Bass Rickman. I brought pictures of my grandparents, Dottie and Thomas Cottman, but Dottie being a Burden. Three sides of my family came from this area: the Cottmans, they lived on the Indiana side, and my second great grandfather Hiram Cottman and his wife Agnes Robbins Cottman are buried in the Alexander Cemetery on the Indiana side, which is not far (about 2.5 miles from here down where the ULI’s at). But they’re buried in what’s known as the Alexander cemetery, which was a cemetery tied in with the Alexander African Methodist Episcopal church. And my second great grandparents, Hiram and Agnes, were caretakers and house parents for students that attended the ULI, grounds keepers, took care of a lot of stuff back in the 1860s and 1870s.
Read more of this interview