The following is an excerpt from a book called "Recollections of a Michigan Boyhood" by Charles A. BRANCH. This is a story of how my KING family came to America, and what happened when they got here. I am hoping that maybe somebody will recognize something here, and we can link up. Thanks for taking the time to read this interesting story. Sincerely, Joe Cook cooks@digisys.net The King family records lie somewhere in England and Ireland. They were known in the Church of England and in the Parliament. Their large land holdings were mostly in Ireland and there, in 1813, a son, Patrick King, was born. It is not known how Patrick King and Catherine Grogan met, but they were married when he was eighteen and she sixteen. Her family disinherited her at once because she was marrying a Protestant, and Englishman, and a savage, while his family disinherited him for marrying an Irish girl and a Catholic. The newly married couple made their way to Limerick, took jobs working on a cattle boat, and about 1832 arrived in Halifax, Canada. They had been told about the free land in the Great Lakes area, so they started to work their way down the St. Lawrence River. When they reached Canton, New York, three sons had been born to them, Patrick Jr., Michael, and Steven. A girl, Susan Marian King was born May 6,1844 in Canton. When they arrived at the Erie Canal, Patrick Jr. was old enough to work driving mules on the tow path hauling barges through the Canal. One of the boys he worked with was James Garfield, later President of the United States. James, John, and Alice were born by the time they reached Wisconsin. They built a log cabin with paper windows, which they had soaked in bear grease to make them a little more transparent. They knew nothing about surviving in this new world and almost starved to death. The boys worked wherever they could. It must have been in the winter of 1856 when Patrick caught pneumonia and died. The snow was so deep that they buried him in the snow beside the cabin, and waited until the weather turned warmer, when he was buried in a cemetery near Port Washington, south of Milwaukee. When Catherine Grogan King became very ill, she asked her son to get a Catholic priest to give her the last rites. When the priest arrived, he asked her for money for his services. When he was told that she had nothing, the priest left. This made her so mad that she decided to recover, but she lost her faith in Catholicism. Three of her sons, Michael, Steven, and Johnny, were paid by others who had been drafted to take their places in the Army during the Civil War. Johnny was very young and mother did not want him to go to war, but he told her he would return. Before the war was over, his mother sat in the cabin one winter night and looked out the window and said "Johnny has come backĀ. Her children took her outside to show her there were no tracks in the snow, and when she returned, she said, "Johnnie said he would return. He has and Johnnie is now dead". A week later she was notified that Johnnie had died, a prisoner in the Andersonville, Georgia rebel prison. It has been said that Catherine had the Irish sixth still possessed by some of her descendants. Michael and Steven returned from the Civil War and took up land in Deerfield and Marathon Townships, Lapeer County, Michigan. Patrick went to a farm outside Fort Wayne, Indiana. Their mother left their Wisconsin homestead to live near Steven and his wife, Lucy. Catherine remarried, this time to a Mr. Smith, and they lived near her daughter, Alice, who married a farmer, Herbert Cheney, who lived in Deerfield Township. Catherine's daughter Susan Marian, had left Wisconsin about 1862, and had gone to Flint, Michigan to learn the trade of seamstress. There she met George W. Merriam who fell in love with this pretty Irish girl and they were married October 24, 1864. George went to Forest Township to open a place to sell boots, shoes and dress goods. They moved there in 1866 and being socially minded, they became members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. When the church was opened in 1868, they were both charter members and deacons. George was a member of the I.O.O.F. and Susan belonged to the Rebeccas. He was very busy making and selling shoes and Susan sold the dress goods and made clothes for men, women, and children. When he married Susan, he had signed his name on the wedding certificate 'Meriam'. Years later his son Charles had it legally corrected to 'Merriam' for the entire family. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cook Family Genealogy and History http://cookfamily.genealogy.org OR http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/1069 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~