An astonishing discovery

Once I learned about my husband's Ruby ancestors, I traced more lines on his mother's side of the family.  One of his great great grandmothers was a woman named Mary Ann Landon (1820-1889).  Tracing her line led to one amazing discovery, followed by a disappointment, followed by an even more amazing discovery.

I traced the family back seven generations from Mary Ann Landon to her father Samuel Landon to his mother Experience Cooke, to her mother Rebecca Edgerton, to her mother Experience Bearse, to her mother Experience Howland, to her father John Joseph Howland, to his father John Howland.

When I learned that  John Howland (1592-1673) and his wife Elizabeth Tilley (1607-1687) were both passengers on the Mayflower, as were Elizabeth's parents, John Tilley (1571-1621) and Joan Hurst (1567-1621), I was dumbfounded and certain the information was wrong.  He couldn't be related to anyone on the Mayflower.  After all, his ancestors were Catholic, as were mine.  And Catholics did not come to this country on the Mayflower.  But I had forgotten that my husband's mother converted to Catholicism and that her ancestors were not Catholic.

Still, I found the possibility hard to believe so I went over my records again, and sure enough, there was a glitch.  One of the names in the line is a controversial figure.  The person in dispute is "Experience Howland" whom the Mayflower Society does not recognize as a verifiable link in the ancestry chain.   

Even though some genealogists believe there is a good case to be made for the existence of Experience Howland, I realized this is not something that could be proven, so I returned to my research to see if anyone else from my husband's family came from the early 1600s.  

I found three more Mayflower passengers and this time, the information was not in dispute. 

Again, the trail started with Mary Ann Landon, only this time it led back through her great grandfather Elisha Cooke, instead of her great grandmother, Rebecca Edgerton.  From Elisha Cooke, the line went to his father William Cooke, to his father Jacob Cooke II, to his father Jacob Cooke I, to Francis Cooke (1584-1663), a passenger on the Mayflower.  His wife, Hester Mahieu (1585-1666), did not accompany him but came later with the children, one of whom was Jacob Cooke I, who later married a woman named Damaris Hopkins. Her parents, it turns out, were also Mayflower passengers, Steven Hopkins (1581-1644) and Elizabeth Fisher (1595-1639).

 

While this discovery astonished me, as no one in the immediate family had any knowledge of a Mayflower connection, I was still skeptical.  I had found a glitch in the first trail.  Perhaps there was a glitch in this one. 

Then I received a message through ancestry.com from a third cousin of my husband, someone he had never met.  The man, who has been doing genealogy research since the mid 1980s, had seen my husband's family tree on ancestry, where he also has one, and he wanted to talk. He had information to give me and wanted to ask some questions about my husband's branch of the family. I learned from him that my discoveries were accurate and that my husband's mother's family is definitely descended from Francis Cooke, Steven Hopkins and Elizabeth Fisher of the Mayflower.

But there was still more to discover-- this time on my side of the family-- and to say that it blew me away would be understating it. 

Tribute to a war hero

With Memorial Day two days away, I've been searching for relatives who may have served during wartime.  There are many, including my father and father-in-law who served during WW II, though not in combat. 

I do, however, have a 1st cousin, 2 x removed, who was killed in the Battle of Flavigny in France during WW II.  Ralph T. Brennan was the grandson of Ned and Mary Brennan, my great great grandparents, and the brother of Father Robert Brennan, whom I have mentioned in a previous post. 

Ralph was born in 1912 and enlisted in the Army in 1941.  He was a 1st Lieutenant when he was sent overseas in May of 1944.  He was wounded in a battle in France and sent to England to recuperate.  In  September of 1944 he returned to France and was killed four days later in a horrific battle in which 1600 men were killed, wounded or taken  prisoner.

There is a plaque on a bridge in France, the site of the battle, that honors his memory. 

Were it not for my interest in genealogy, I would probably never have learned this.  And in learning it, what was once something I read about in history books, is something much more real.  Members of my family, like members of so many families, grieved for a son and brother who gave his life in battle. 

Tomorrow I am visiting the cemetery to place flowers on the graves of my father, mother and brother.  But on Monday, I will think of all the men and women who gave their lives for our country, and it will be just a bit more personal to me as I think of my cousin Ralph.  

The Brennans

My father was a Brennan and the Irish tradition was strong in his family, even though he was only one fourth  Irish.  Since my mother's ancestors are from Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, I am only one eighth Irish, and yet the Irish story is what I have always identified with as well.  Perhaps that is because the Irish are extremely proud of their heritage and try very hard to keep their legends and traditions intact.  One needs only look at St. Patrick's Day parades to realize that.


While my father made sure I knew I was Irish, and often sang Irish songs as I was growing up, I knew very little about my extended Irish family.  We had moved away from the Brennan stronghold (Lima, Ohio) when I was quite young, coming to California when I was only ten.   I knew my grandfather Keech was Irish, and my Dad spoke often of "Grandma Brennan," my great grandmother, but I knew little beyond that.  I guess my parents never thought to educate me about my relatives. 

After my father died, I searched through his genealogy records and found much valuable information. Included in his papers was a story written by a distant cousin, Father Robert Brennan, about his grandparents Ned and Mary (my great great grandparents) and their life in Lima.  He also named his brothers and sisters, and mentioned some of his aunts and uncles, including my great grandfather, John.

This much I know: my paternal great great grandparents, Ned Brennan and Mary Fahey, emigrated from Ireland in 1861 and raised six children in Lima, Ohio.  Five of those children, including my great grandfather, John Brennan, married and had large families.  My great grandparents, John Brennan and Theresa Graff, had seven children, and though I met some of their sons and daughters, I never really knew them.  After my father died, I asked my aunt Sheila to give me a family history so that I could at least know some of their names.

From there, I started my own search through ancestry.com.  I found a few family trees that had information I could borrow, and I examined census reports.  The census data available online, however, stops at the census of 1930, in order to protect the identities of the living.  (The 1940 census will be released next year, and genealogists everywhere - including me - can't wait!)  After that, I began searching the issues of the Lima News to find stories about my relatives.  This was an incredibly rich source of information.  From marriage announcements, obituaries, and simple stories about relatives visiting other relatives, I pieced together a much more comprehensive picture.

Now I know the names of all of Ned and Mary Brennan's children and grandchildren, and the names of some of their great grandchildren.  I also contacted a third cousin, whom my parents met several years ago, and learned more about her branch of the family.

And to this day I continue to gather stories from those newspaper articles.  Stories about ancestors who died young and those who lived to old age.  Stories about female ancestors who died in childbirth.  Stories about ancestors who became priests and nuns.  I learned the occupations of many ancestors.  Several women were nurses.  A good number of Brennan men worked for the railroad.  One was a cigar maker.

However, there are still gaping holes that I hope to fill. Some may be resolved with the 1940 census.  Others may remain mysteries.  It has been impossible, for instance, to find out anything about Ned's parents, though Mary's mother came to America with her, so at least I know something about her.  My own parents traveled to Ireland to see what they could find, but census records there are mostly destroyed.  They did meet a distant cousin while they were there, however, and recently I contacted him by mail and asked for more information.  He is a great grandson of Mary Brennan, Ned Brennan's younger sister, and he gave me some names without dates.

I have decided that the only way I can learn more is to visit Ireland myself and use the detective skills I have developed over the past year to see if there is anything I can find.  Recently, I learned the name of the cemetery where the Brennan family was buried. Fr. Robert Brennan (who wrote the story about my great great grandparents) also wrote An Irish Diary, where he mentions it.  Perhaps that's a place to start. Even if I find nothing, it will still be a valuable - and no doubt emotional - trip to one of my ancestral homes.

Solving my first mystery

One of the things I hope to do with this blog is inspire others who want to look into their family history.  And what has always inspired me is the solving of a family mystery.

I had just started working on my husband's family tree and had hit a brick wall with the Eterovich side as the trail seemed to end once his grandparents immigrated to America.  So I began to research his mother's side of the family.

My mother-in-law's maiden name was Ruby, and several years ago she had given each of her children a booklet containing the genealogy of the Ruby family.  The first line in the booklet was as follows: "Peter Ruby came from Ireland to America before the Revolutionay War." 

Since I had no relatives who had come to this country that early (or so I thought at the time) I found this quite intriguing, so I began searching census records, other family trees posted on Ancestry.com, and other sources. Unfortunately, I could find no one by the name of Ruby who had come to America from Ireland.  So I turned to Google and typed in "Ruby genealogy" and after going down the list of links I came upon the name of a book that seemed promising. It had the title "The Ruby-Rubi Families of Switzerland and America."  However, it was out of print.  So I kept looking and found a website set up by the son of the husband and wife who had written the book.  He had the entire book available for download in a PDF format -- for free.  So I began the long download.

When I began reading, I was fascinated.  These two authors (named Ruby of course) had traveled to Switzerland on many occasions and had done a thorough investigation of a Rubi family that had lived there since the 1600's.  The family tree in their book matched the family tree in the small booklet my mother in law gave us.  When I reached the 1700s, I found the Peter Ruby who had come to America.  However, there still was a mystery to be solved. 

How was it that the family had believed for three hundred years that their origins were in Ireland?  As I read further in the book, and then checked immigration records, I found the answer.  Peter Ruby had made his way from Reichenbach Switzerland (Sherlock Holmes fans will recognize the name Reichenbach) to the Netherlands, where he boarded a ship to America.  The ship, it turns out, was of Irish registry.

This was probably the one discovery that got me hooked on genealogy.  Because of how easy (though admittedly time consuming and occasionally frustrating) research has become with the aid of the internet, I had been able to inform my mother in law of her actual ancestry, which orignates in Switzerland and not Ireland. 

I felt a little bit like Sherlock Holmes. 

Wait until I tell you what else I learned about my husband's ancestors - and mine.  It is almost unbelievable, but you'll have to return to the blog to find out.

My Aunt Dede

My cousin John reminded me that today is his mother's birthday.  His mother is my aunt Kay (I called her Dede) who died in 1992.  She was one of my mother's two sisters and she, along with my mother, was a force of nature.  I loved her dearly and was always amazed at how she raised six sons and maintained an amazingly good humor. 

In honor of my aunt Dede, I'd like to share a funny story my mother once told me.  When I was just a year old, my parents and I lived on one side of a duplex.  My aunt, uncle, and cousins John and Steve lived on the other side. 

When we moved in, the yard was not fenced in and the two sisters and their husbands decided they needed to remedy that so their young children could play outside.  The men said they would dig the holes for the fence posts if the women would order the cement, so my mother contacted a cement company and ordered a small amount.  When the cement truck showed up, the driver still had a large load of cement in his truck, but this was his last stop for the day, so he asked the sisters if they would like everything he had.  "Sure," they said and he left a huge mountain of cement in front of their garage.

When the men got home they moved as fast as they could to dig the holes and fill them with cement before it dried, but there was too much cement and by the next day there was a hard pile of cement blocking entrance to the garage.  The pile of cement remained there for months until a tornado showed up one day and lifted the garage, depositing it several blocks away.

My mother only told me this story a few years before she died, and she laughed until she cried remembering their predicament. And I laughed, too.  I could picture Mom and Dede, in housedresses and aprons, looking like Lucy and Ethel, getting themselves into another fix. 

Croatian roots

My husband's grandparents traveled here from the island of Brac, Croatia, in the early 1900s.  His grandfather's surname was Eterovic, but like so many immigrants who wanted to fit in, he simplified the family name to "Terich."  (Frankly, I like Eterovic better.)  His grandmother's surname in Croatia was Jescheta, though they spelled it Yeseta in America.

Until recently, the family only knew the names of two generations before that, though there were no birth, marriage or death dates, and there was nothing on any family members who had stayed behind in Croatia.  I have done what I could to fill in the blanks.  I was given a written history starting with the parents of the immigrants and moving forward to 1982, and I have interviewed my poor mother-in-law until she is exhausted, but there was nothing on the family back in Brac.

So I decided to find out more about this family that once lived on such a beautiful island and who, for reasons I didn't fully understand, decided to relocate to America.  So I hired a genealogist in Croatia, and slowly but surely we are building a family tree.  We've found the names of three Eterovic's who stayed behind on Brac, and we have the names of their children and spouses.  Just yesterday, the researcher was able to find an entire new generation, born in the 1700s, and there are now eight new names on the tree.  And we're still looking.

For those of you who are Terich's, here's what I've found:

Parents of Anton Terich (my husband's grandfather) are:  Anton Eterovic and Antonia Capkovic
Anton Eterovic's parents:  Nicola Eterovic and Girolama (Jerka) Martinic
Nicola's parents: Giorgio Eterovic and Dorothea Martinich
Girolama's parents: Girolamo Martinic and Margaret Faxinnich

Parents of Madalena Yeseta (my husband's grandmother) are: Tomasso Jescheta and Antonia Rosa Mladinich
Tomasso came from Bohemia (modern day Czechoslovakia) so I only have the names of his parents: Matteo Jescheta and Eliza Pohele
Antonia Mladinich's parents" Antonio Mladinich and Roza Bonaccich
Antonio's parents: Giovanni Mladinich and Lucrezia Harossich
Roza's parents: Nicola Bonaccich and Caterina Filippich

(Yes, Nicola is a masculine name)

I can't begin to tell you what a joy it is to find the names of my husband's ancestors that were once unknown.  I am hoping we can plan a trip to Croatia soon to find living cousins, and piece together what life was like for his ancestors.  Because for me, it is not just about finding names.  It is about finding stories, piecing together lives, and understanding the struggles of my ancestors and my husband's ancestors, without whom we wouldn't be here.    

Welcome

I have been working on my family tree as well as my husband's for over a year.  My father had begun tracing his family (Brennan-Shaw) and my mother's (Mueller-Schulien) and shortly after his death I picked up his files and began exploring.  To say that I have been amazed, schocked, delighted, and thrilled would be understating it.  I have definitely caught the genealogy bug and I believe there is no cure.

I have decided to start this blog to keep my family and my husband's (Terich-Ruby) family informed about what I have found.  Since I have been working on these trees nearly every day for over a year, there will be many posts to help everyone catch up. 

Today, however, I am going to write about something I discovered just yesterday. 

Most family researchers will tell you they periodically hit brick walls and that has certainly been true for me.  When I find myself stumped, I usually go to a different line within the tree, and leave the brick wall for a while.  Then I come back later to see if there are any new records on line or if there is some path I have overlooked. 

I had not visited the Brennan tree in a while because I seemed unable to find anything new, and instead I had been focusing on the Eterovic line in my husband's family.  (More on that later.)  So I decided to return to the Brennans and found two new paths of discovery.  The first was the daily newspaper of the town where my parents and I were born: Lima, Ohio.  I had discovered earlier that every issue of the paper was on line, but in the last few days, I began searching obituaries and marriage announcements that gave me the names of new relatives.  So I have been able to add many cousins to the tree. 

Then I found military records, specifically the WW I and WWII  draft cards and enlistment records of many ancestors. The draft cards gave me both information and insight into the lives of these men.  First, I was able to confirm some birthdates, which were listed.  After that, I looked in the sections that listed marital status and occupation. In the WW II records, a good number of these men were unemployed and unmarried, even at the ages of 40 and 50.  I found this puzzling at first until I realized this could very well have been the result of the Great Depression.  It was, after all, only WW II that finally pulled us out of the long term effects of the Depression and restored full employment. 

I got tears in my eyes thinking of these men who not only couldn't get a job, but probably couldn't marry as they had no means to support a wife and family.  I thought of how sad and lonely they must have been, and wondered how many of them actually went off to war willingly as there was nothing to keep them here. I thought of their poor mothers, watching them go and I felt gratitude that my own father, though drafted during the war, was able to avoid combat and serve one year in Japan after the war. 

So that's one small sample of what you can learn from genealogy other than names and dates.  I hope you will join me in this journey of discovery as I do what many others have started to do -- turn family mysteries into family history.