The April Family Story

Where We Come From

Alsace, Bavaria, and the Fields of Ohio

This family's roots stretch back to the border country of Europe — to Alsace, that narrow strip of land between France and Germany that has always been more German than French in its culture, its language, and its cooking. Generations ago, this family's ancestors made the long journey from villages like Soultz-sous-Forêts across the Atlantic, eventually settling in the farmland of northeast Ohio. They brought their faith, their work ethic, and their recipes with them — and those things took root right alongside them.

On Mary April's side, the story winds through the coalfields of southeastern Ohio first. The Ross and Sheron families put down roots in Nelsonville — once one of Ohio's great coal boomtowns — before eventually making their way north to Medina County. Two very different roads, the same destination, and one family table.

The Family Names

Five Surnames, One Table

When you see the names April, Neff, Schaeffer, Ross, and Sheron attached to recipes in this collection, you're looking at different branches of the same family. The Aprils, Neffs, and Schaeffers came out of the German and Alsatian immigrant communities that settled in Medina County. The Rosses and Sherons came up from the coal country of southeastern Ohio. They married into each other's lives, and their kitchens merged just as naturally.

The Heart of the Kitchen

Elwin & Mary April

Elwin and Mary April are the reason this cookbook exists. Their recipes were the ones that defined what family food meant — the dishes that filled the house with a smell that pulled everyone to the table, the things that showed up every holiday without fail, the food that meant home.

At some point, the family made a decision that many families wish they had made sooner: they sat down and captured those recipes before time and memory could carry them away. The result was a printed family cookbook — gathering not just Elwin and Mary's recipes, but those of the generations before them and the generation that followed: their children, the aunts and uncles and mothers, and the spouses who married in and brought their own traditions to the table.

This website is the next chapter of that effort. What started as a printed booklet is now a living collection — searchable, printable, and open to every branch of this family.

Where the Family Rests

Resting Places

A large portion of the April, Neff, and Schaeffer families are buried at St. Martin of Tours Church in Valley City, Ohio — a parish founded in 1840 by German Catholic immigrant families, the same community this family was part of. There is even a Neff Road near the church, a quiet reminder of how deeply rooted these families became in that corner of Ohio. Elwin and Mary April, along with other great-grandparents and grandparents of this family, are buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Norwalk, Ohio.

Visit the St. Martin of Tours Parish Website →

The Food That Tells the Story

Where the Recipes Come From

Alsatian and German home cooking is honest food — hearty, slow-cooked, and built for families who worked hard and ate well. Many of the recipes in this collection carry those fingerprints: braised meats, rich gravies, root vegetables, breads baked from scratch, and desserts that could anchor a holiday table. Others reflect the broader American Midwest table that this family became part of over generations.

Each recipe includes the story of where it came from — which family member made it, what occasion it belonged to, and what made it theirs. Those stories are still being gathered.