Warning: TLDR
I did a bit of searching on a trip to France some time ago. My surname comes from my great, great grandfather on my father's side. He started out training to be a lawyer and switched to studying medicine. Somehow because of failing health it was determined he should try his luck in the gold rush which doesn't make a lot of sense to me but hey, I wasn't there. But he didn't mine, he farmed food for miner's which seems to have worked out well financially.
He had sailed to San Francisco around the tip of South America but he later returned to Paris after crossing US by land. Somewhere near Chicago he met and married a woman from Switzerland. They had twelve children in all of which my great grandfather was the fourth youngest. At least three of the eldest boys became doctors, two of whom moved to Australia. The eldest was involved in founding the first school of epidemiology in England.
But there wasn't money to see them all through school so my poor great grandfather became a minister. When the miner's farmer died his wife along with the four youngest siblings moved back to the US through Walla Walla, Washington. My great grandfather plied his trade as a god-botherer near Hood River, Oregon. His only son, Sheridan Mark, my grandfather apparently tried several occupations including opening one of the first general stores in the area where one could actually gather the items directly and bring them to a clerk to pay. He doesn't seem to have gathered a lot of respect from my mother who made sure that I and my siblings never met the man. Apparently after marrying my grandmother who had been an instructor of women's athletics where he went to college and having seven surviving children he ditched the family to take up with a younger woman. So my grandmother went to work at a cannery until she died in her forties of a high fever. (The name of which escapes me at right now.) The two youngest of my father's siblings were taken in by their only aunt and the three eldest were old enough to make it on their own with the two oldest of my father's sisters already being married. But my father and his just younger brother became wards of the court. My poor father had a pretty rough start.
I told you it was too long and you shouldn't read it.
I did a bit of searching on a trip to France some time ago. My surname comes from my great, great grandfather on my father's side. He started out training to be a lawyer and switched to studying medicine. Somehow because of failing health it was determined he should try his luck in the gold rush which doesn't make a lot of sense to me but hey, I wasn't there. But he didn't mine, he farmed food for miner's which seems to have worked out well financially.
He had sailed to San Francisco around the tip of South America but he later returned to Paris after crossing US by land. Somewhere near Chicago he met and married a woman from Switzerland. They had twelve children in all of which my great grandfather was the fourth youngest. At least three of the eldest boys became doctors, two of whom moved to Australia. The eldest was involved in founding the first school of epidemiology in England.
But there wasn't money to see them all through school so my poor great grandfather became a minister. When the miner's farmer died his wife along with the four youngest siblings moved back to the US through Walla Walla, Washington. My great grandfather plied his trade as a god-botherer near Hood River, Oregon. His only son, Sheridan Mark, my grandfather apparently tried several occupations including opening one of the first general stores in the area where one could actually gather the items directly and bring them to a clerk to pay. He doesn't seem to have gathered a lot of respect from my mother who made sure that I and my siblings never met the man. Apparently after marrying my grandmother who had been an instructor of women's athletics where he went to college and having seven surviving children he ditched the family to take up with a younger woman. So my grandmother went to work at a cannery until she died in her forties of a high fever. (The name of which escapes me at right now.) The two youngest of my father's siblings were taken in by their only aunt and the three eldest were old enough to make it on their own with the two oldest of my father's sisters already being married. But my father and his just younger brother became wards of the court. My poor father had a pretty rough start.
I told you it was too long and you shouldn't read it.