Genealogy

[flaja]

Anyone here have any direct ancestors who played an important (but not necessarily well-known) role in U.S. history- apart from simply serving in a war or being president? What about family members who are no in your direct ancestral line?

[Dilloduck]

Anyone here have any direct ancestors who played an important (but not necessarily well-known) role in U.S. history- apart from simply serving in a war or being president? What about family members who are no in your direct ancestral line?

yes---mine homesteaded farms in South Dakota. Busted sod and helped feed the country.

[PostmodernProphet]

yes---mine homesteaded farms in South Dakota. Busted sod and helped feed the country.

really?....my paternal grandmother grew up in a soddy in South Dakota.....was your ancestor named Toma Vanden Bosch? maybe we're related.......he had a big family, 15 kids....grams was number 14.......

[5stringJeff]

Anyone here have any direct ancestors who played an important (but not necessarily well-known) role in U.S. history- apart from simply serving in a war or being president? What about family members who are no in your direct ancestral line?

My g-g-grandfather was a judge in Ozark County, MO.

[Dilloduck]

really?....my paternal grandmother grew up in a soddy in South Dakota.....was your ancestor named Toma Vanden Bosch? maybe we're related.......he had a big family, 15 kids....grams was number 14.......

I dont think so---one side all Swedes and the other side Mennonites who got run outta Russia.

[82Marine89]

My mom's side of the family came here from Italy in 1904. My dads side from Poland in 1910. They were part of that flood of immigrants that actually wanted to be Americans and make this country great.

[manu1959]

mom's side

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=leander+sherman&btnG=Google+Search

dad's side

LESLIE McGEE FRY was the son of Octa McGee Fry, one of the early settlers of Pike County, Missouri, and Sarah Jane Wilcoxen, the daughter of early settlers near Clarksville, Missouri. Leslie M. Fry attended Buffalo County School, a little white country schoolhouse with less than twenty students. He graduated as valedictorian from Louisiana High School and went on to the University of Missouri in 1930.
On May 2, 1934, he was commissioned in the U. S. Army as a 2nd Lt. in the Field Artillery. In September 1935, he went on active duty with the Civilian Conservation Corps. His first assignments were Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and Marysville, Missouri. Subsequent CCC assignments took him to Moapa, Nevada, where he met Jean Sauer, a school teacher at Overton, Nevada. They were married May 2, 1936.
In December, 1937, he left the Civilian Conservation Crops. and returned to law school at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. In 1939 he received a Bachelor's of Law Degree (LLB) updated to a Juris Doctor Degree in 1969.
From 1939 through 1941 Leslie M. Fry practiced law in Hartford, Kentucky, in a partnership with Walter Continna representing farmers and bootleggers.
On April 15, 1941, Leslie Fry was recalled to active duty as a reserve officer with the 36th Field Artillery, 37th Infantry Division at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. He was sent to the Pacific on May 26, 1942. His overseas assignments with Field Artillery units included New Zealand, Fiji, Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bougainville. In the Philippines he assumed command of the 140th Field Artillery. After the war he remained in the active reserves serving as director of the Field Artillery school for Nevada, California, Utah and Arizona. In April, 1967, he was commissioned a Brigadier General in the Nevada National Guard.
After the war, Leslie M. Fry returned to Reno, Nevada, where he practiced law with George Lohse as Lohse & Fry. In 1963 he established his own firm and in 1965 formed a partnership with his son, Leslie Mack Fry. Leslie M. Fry had been a lawyer in the State of Nevada since 1946 and was authorized to practice in the United Sates Federal District Court and before the United States Supreme Court.
Mr. Fry has always been active in civic and community activities. From 1930 to 1931 he served as national president of the Future Farmers of America.
From 1946 on he took an active role with the Boy Scouts of America as a Cubmaster, Vice President and President of the Nevada Area Council, Regional and National Boy Scout Representative and as a member of the Special Awards Committee for Region XII. He is a recipient of the prestigious Silver Beaver and Silver Antelope Awards.
He served as county chairman of the Washoe County Republicans from 1956 to 1958 and from 1964 to 1966.
As a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Leslie M. Fry served as Post Commander of Battleborn Post #9211, Department of Nevada's Chaplain, Department of Nevada Senior Vice Commander, Department of Nevada Commander, and as a member of the VFW National Council of Administration, National Resolutions Committee, National Rules and Procedure Committee, National Constitution and By-Laws Committee, and as the National VFW Junior Vice Commander-in-Chief and Senior Vice Commander-in-Chief. In 1966, Leslie M. Fry became the National Commander-in-Chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, His years with the VFW brought him into personal contact with Presidents Johnson, Ford and Nixon and enabled him to travel worldwide. He met with foreign dignitaries and heads of state, including Pope John Paul, Franco of Spain and President Thieu of Viet Nam. After his service as the National Commander-in- Chief of the VFW he remained active with the VFW, continuing to serve on the National Security Committee of the VFW and on the Advisory Committee for National Memorials and Cemeteries.
President Nixon appointed Mr. Fry to serve on the American Battle Monuments Committee in 1970, a position he held for six years.
Mr. Fry was a member of St. John's Presbyterian Church, Reno's Host Lyons Club, and Reno Executives Club, serving on their Board of Directors and as their President in 1972. He was a member of Mount Rose Lodge #40 F&AM, the Scottish Rite, Kerak Temple (AADNMS) of the Shrine and the Nevada State Bar Association. In 1976 he received the renown Service to Mankind Award from the Sparks Sertoma Club.

[flaja]

One of my direct ancestors was a close relative of the man that served as the governor of the Roanoke Colony while Raleigh was back in England. If I remember what I’ve read right the governor didn’t have any children, but he was an uncle or something to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World.

Another direct ancestor was a shareholder in the Virginia Company that financed both the Jamestown and Plymouth colonies. In the 1620s he settled in the Jamestown Colony and at one time headed up an investigation of an Indian raid.

I have a 10th great-grandfather who moved from Bavaria around 1730 and was one of the first European settlers in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. He bought his land directly from the sons of William Penn. He built a stone house in what is now East Greenville, Pennsylvania that is still in use. A Conestoga Wagon in a museum in Pennsylvania is said to have been built by his son who was my 9th great-grandfather.

One of my direct ancestors was from the Lawrence family in England. He was a crusader with Richard the Lionhearted and he married a woman named Washington. Since Lawrence was a very common first name in George Washington’s family, some genealogists maintain that my Lawrence family is connected with George Washington’s family. However, I’ve yet to find anything to tell me what the direct link is. As nears as I can tell I must be something like George Washington’s 9th cousin, 9 times removed. And then by adoption I would be related to Robert E. Lee who married the granddaughter of one of Martha Parke Custis Washington’s children while George Washington adopted either the children or grandchildren.

I am somehow cousins to the family of Dale Earnhardt; one of my 4th or 5th great-grandmothers was an Earnhardt from North Carolina.

Before the Rebellion a brother of one of my 4th great-grandfathers in North Carolina moved to Georgia and ended up with a plantation that included land that is now Calloway Gardens in Pine Mountain.

After the Rebellion one of my direct female ancestors in Georgia married a man named Cobb after she was widowed, but I haven’t been able to determine if this Cobb has any connection to Cobb County, Georgia or Cobb’s Legion.

I have Talon Soft’s Battleground Gettysburg game and I always play the Union side and it’s amazing how many cousins I can do away with among the Confederate unit commanders. I have a 3rd great-grandfather who was assigned to a Confederate artillery unit that at Gettysburg, but based on I get from published records of his service he spent a lot of time absent due to illness and he died in October of 1863, so I don’t know if he was actually there.