Richard Noble and Charlotte Stowe
I have always been intrigued by history. I was a history major in college and loved to study 19th century history. That interest in history is what probably has led me to compile this family history.
For a long time I had collected bits and pieces of family history — old handwritten family trees, newspaper clippings, and old photos. They were just sitting in a box just waiting probably to be tossed out in some estate sale down the road.
Then in the spring of 2009 a letter came in the mail. It was from the South County Historical Society in Arroyo Grande, California. The Society was erecting a monument to my ancestor, Francis Ziba Branch, and was asking for donations in the form of a paving brick with an inscription. I called the Society to order a brick and found out that a retired American University professor had recently written a biography on Francis Ziba Branch. The person I was talking to offered to send me a copy.
The biography really got me excited about family history. As I started to gather information on my family’s genealogy I found a common theme –families moving west first from Europe to America and then later out west to the Pacific Ocean. Thus, when when I decided to set up this website I decided to pick FamiliesHeading West.com as the domain name.
I had three family trees in my file box. My grandfather, Murray Leitch, back in the 80′s had given me a family tree for the Leitch family which had been compiled in 1980. He had also given me a family tree that had been given to my grandmother, Eva Rutherford, back in the 50′s which detailed the history of her mother’s family. And finally, from my dad’s mother, Mary Branch, I had her family tree.
The Branch family originated in England and arrived in Massachusetts Colony in 1638, migrated to western Connecticut, then to western New York, and finally, in 1836, Francis Ziba Branch walked overland via St. Louis, Sante Fe, the Great Salt Lake to Los Angeles finally settling in Arroyo Grande, CA, north of Santa Barbara.
The Schell family originated in the Rhineland in Germany and emigrated in the 1740′s to the Mohawk Valley in New York. They fought off Indians, the French and finally the British in the late 1700′s. They migrated via Ontario, Canada to Michigan.
The Leitch family originated in Scotland and arrived in Ontario, Canada in 1819 where they farmed. In the 1920′s my grandfather, Murray Angus Leitch, emigrated to the United States, where he attended dental school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and then settled in Detroit.
The Miller family originated in central Europe and emigrated to the United States in the early 1900′s as part of the great wave of Jewish migration escaping the pogroms of Russia. They ended up in St. Louis.
It is my hope that the younger members of these families will enjoy exploring these pages to find their roots. At last count there were over 600 people in this tree. So many people over so many centuries have gone before us. Where do you fit into this history?
This is a work in progress. Do not be upset if you turn to your page and there isn’t much there except your name. Over time I hope to fill in as many details as possible. If you have pictures or information that you would like to have included just email me.
Richard Noble, Portland, Oregon