|
Ripley Roots |
|
|
|||||
|
Ripley
Genealogy Moschel
Genealogy
|
Introduction
Preface When I was a young girl there were three items treated as sacred in our house: a very old family bible, a land grant signed by Andrew Jackson, and the Munro book. The family bible was kept in the red cedar chest in my room. It was fairly large and there were entries of family births, marriages, and deaths from long ago. The land grant was framed, poorly, and was in our combination dining room and kitchen. I learned as I got older that probably Andrew Jackson did not sign all those land grants; but it made for a fine story when you showed the grant to anyone, and I did that often. The Munro book was a collection of photographs and letters of the family that came from Scotland and pictures of some of the relatives that lived in Scotland at the turn of the 20th century. My maternal great grandmother had come from Scotland in 1853 and had moved to Illinois. The Munro book was the one connection that we had to our Scottish origin. The family bible and land grant perished in a house fire in 1977, along with my mother. The Munro book was spared by being on loan at my aunt's house. For years after I did not think much about the Munro book, or the Munros for that matter. I knew it had been my mother's dream to go where her grandmother had been born in Scotland, but I had not thought of that in years. I was too busy in my 30's having a career at the University of Oregon and starting a life that included quite a bit of travel. By the age of 40 I had set foot on six continents and numerous countries. At age 42 I got married and two years later with my husband, who had taken an early retirement from the University of Oregon, went to live in Tucson. The Tucson stay turned out to be only two years, but we did meet a number of interesting people in our small housing development. One was named Alisdair Innes. He had been raised in Scotland and emigrated to the U.S. as a youth. We moved back to Oregon in 1990. I began to write family stories, kept contact with family, and renewed connections with old and not so old friends. Then one day in March 1993, Alisdair and his wife, Sally, called and invited us to visit them in their Highlands castle which had been leased by the Innes Clan. What a novel idea! We pondered and decided to do it. Then I began to remember my Scottish roots and spent quite a bit of time trying to understand my Scottish ancestry before the September 1993 visit. This necessitated reviewing my own genealogy records started fifteen years earlier and contacting my aunt and uncle who also had family records. I was prepared to search out the Munros in Scotland. We succeeded one September day in 1993 when we went to Arbroath, Scotland, and found gravemarkers and went to the church where my great, great, great grandparents were married. We took pictures and upon returning from the trip, I sent a short piece with pictures to my relatives including aunts, uncle, cousins, niece, nephews, and great niece and nephew. An aunt and an uncle sent sincere letters of thanks. My niece-in-law sent the following message regarding the Munro clan card I had sent from Scotland. "Erin (my great niece) was very intrigued by the card you sent from Scotland! Could you, someday write out a simple (or as simple as possible) family tree with not only names but their place of origin? I am familiar with my own clan but am afraid my kids' other half will get all jumbled around if we leave it to memory. Besides, the Ripley history sounds a lot more interesting!" I much appreciated the note and thought about what I could do "someday" for Erin. I knew family trees were not very interesting, and I wanted to make her something that reflected more about the family. At the same time, I went to a quilt class because I had been toying with the idea of making two quilts, one for each nephew. My mother had made them each a quilt, but they had been destroyed in the fire of 1977 and I thought I would like to duplicate the effort. The class was discouraging, and I realized that I would have to start by getting out my Sears Kenmore sewing machine that had not been out of its case in over thirty years and see if it would still work. Then the thought came to me to make a different kind of quilt, a story quilt of our Scottish roots. So here are the pieces of the quilt, and I have put them together in my own fashion. I hope you enjoy it. To The Family Reader I should give a brief explanation before you read this account of our shared history in Scotland. As you read, I am sure you will be wondering how much of this is true. Well, the real answer is probably very little, but I have tried. What is true is this: the main character in the first part of the story is William Munro Sr. We know when and where he was born and died. We know he was married twice. The first marriage had three children, two sons (Archibald and Robert) and a daughter (Euphemia) and we know where those children were born. We do not know his first wife's name. The second marriage was to our relative, Suzanne Cant, and that union resulted in William Jr. It is unknown when Suzanne was born or died, but we do know the date of the marriage to William Sr. and we know when and where William Jr. was born. As the characters age we know some information is factual. We know that William Sr. made an iron gravemarker for Suzanne's father, Alexander Cant. We have the marriages, births, and deaths of William Sr.'s children from his first marriage. I fictionalized one marriage that is not based in fact, and that was for daughter Euphemia. As we go to the next generation we have more information. Our relative William Munro Jr. was married and had a number of children in Scotland before they all moved to the U.S. in 1853. This we know because it has all been recorded in the Munro book mentioned previously. Keep this in mind when you become involved with the Munros of Scotland. The history of the era and times is as factual as I could make it. The family history of owning the Arbroath Foundry is also factual but the particulars as represented in the story could be wrong. I have made a Crazy Quilt pattern, perhaps, but at least some of the pieces are sewn together correctly. Anyone that wants to add to my quilt is most welcome to do so. I just want it to continue to grow and connect us.
|
||||
