The surname Hitler is one that remains indelibly linked to human history. For reasons that need not be explained, it is taboo all over the world. In fact, the name Adolf Hitler is banned in Germany. However, there is a small town in the United States with Hitler Park, Hitler’s Cemetery and several Hitler streets and highways.

The town is called Circleville, in Ohio, and if you happened to go there without knowing the story, you would probably wonder if the Hitler escape theory was actually true. But no, the explanation is much simpler than that, and it also has a delicious, funny, and ironic twist.

Why? Famous Hitlers include George Washington Hitler and Dr. Gay Ludwig Hitler. Moreover, the locals don’t care much about this name.

Ohio and Hitler’s proud colonialism

Although we consider Hitler to be a condemned surname and therefore out of use, there are still people who call themselves by this name. There is the case of Adolf Hitler Thomas Patatas or Adolf Hitler Uunona, a Namibian politician who was very involved in the fight against Apartheid. Due to his character, Adolf Hitler’s family tree has been studied in depth and what is interesting is that his grandparents had the surname Hiedler.

In fact, before Adolf’s birth, his family used variations of it, such as Hütler, Hytler or Hittler, but Adolf’s father, Alois Schicklgruber, changed the surname to ‘Hitler’ in 1877. And that’s what his son adopted.

But before Hitler’s father adopted the surname, another story was developing in the United States. The Circleville Herald, the local newspaper of this town in Pickaway County, Ohio, reported a few years ago that a man named George Hitler was born in Maryland on May 15, 1763. At the time, the surname apparently had no connotations.

He married Susannah Gay and came to Pickaway County with their four children in 1799. There they had seven more children and the large family began working. Contribute your grain of sand to the cityThey became rich through flour production and export to other states and their lineage continued, but now as a wealthy family.

As the Circleville Herald noted, in later years the Ohio Hitlers gave large sums of money to local initiatives. Nelson Hitler, born in 1833, had a lot of money and devoted himself to the development of the municipality:

• $5,000 for a school library in Pickaway.
• Hitler spent $12,000 to build a chapel in the Ludwig Cemetery.
• $3,000 to provide for the continued maintenance of the cemetery.

Nelson was a selfless man, and the rest of his money went to the Pickaway County Board of Education. The goal? To maintain the library and invest in book purchases. The newspaper reported in 2011: The school still benefits from this donation. But Nelson Hitler was not the only generous member of the family; other members built homes as Pickway developed, and Martha Hitler set aside 26 acres of land that is now Martha Hitler Park in Washington (not Washington D.C. or Washington, but Washington of Ohio, Washington State).

Speaking of Washington, there was George Washington Hitler, the first president of the United States, whose name was confused with the surname Adolf by a happy coincidence, and whose son was named Gay Ludwig Hitler. Doctor Gay Hitler, in fact, because he worked as a dentist in the municipality for 24 years until 1946.

After the war…

But of course, no matter how good the Hitler family was, the Adolf surname changed perceptions forever. In a story published nearly 20 years ago, Hitler’s descendants describe how they live day to day with the infamous surname. The heirs say it doesn’t bother them when people ask about it because they understand it’s a source of fascination, but not every case is well-intentioned.

One example of this is George Hitler Jr. His father moved from Circleville (where the story is well known) to Akron. He became an executive at Firestone Tire, and obviously outside of his own circle, someone with the last name Hitler… wasn’t all that respected. George said that at one point the president of the company asked his father to change his name, but his father refused.

Hitler Junior also says that his family was subjected to a lot of pressure during the war, and that they even had to change their phone number because of harassment. There are some interesting anecdotes in Circleville“Like people who live or work on a street called Hitler. When they had to give an address, one of the neighbors told the newspaper they always expected a pause and people would often ask a question like ‘Bitler Street?’ to which they would reply ‘no, with an H like Adolf.'”

The truth is that someone who doesn’t know the story and gets this answer must have a curious face. And if There are neighbors who want to change street namesbut there are others, like Jay White, who fought in World War II and says he didn’t want them to change the name of Hitler because it was a “unique” street.

If there’s one thing the Hitler surname evokes in Circleville, it’s the family’s work and the town’s developments. And as the Herald once wrote, the family had been established long before Adolf Hitler was born, and they were good, upstanding citizens.

And in fact, there’s a documentary called ‘Meet the Hitlers’ that explores exactly how the stigma of the surname shapes the lives of those who share it today.

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