Irene and Frank ROPP

My great grandmother, Helen ROPP had 2 half siblings.

Irene and Frank ROPP were the children of Ernest J. ROPP (Helens father) and Mary.  I was told by a distant relative that Mary's last name was Holleran, though I don't have any documented proof of that myself.

Recently a few of us ROPP "cousins" started emailing one another with information we knew and one day, one of these gentleman share this link with us:

http://tiny.cc/ium4k

Since my focus to this point has been on my immediate family, I don't have any information about Irene or Frank, but it seems from this post that the two of them spent some time in an orphange, which makes me wonder if perhaps Helen was there as well.  In recent exchanges with one of Helen's daughters I got the impression Helen and her half siblings were not very close, despite all living in the MA area.

If anyone knows more about the orphanage being refered to in the post above, please take a moment to share with us through a comment here and/or by posting an answer to the original query. 

Sunday’s Obituary - Frances Ramona DOW

Frances Ramona DOW was my grandmother who married Vaughn INGERSON 30 Nov 1954.  She died in 2004 and is buried in Rockland, ME.  For the purposes of living family members, I am omitting the "survived by" section of her obituary. If anyone has an interest in learning more about this more recent family, email me or comment on this post and I will give you what information I can:

"ROCKLAND – Frances Ramona Ingerson, 70, died Thursday, November 11, 2004, at Knox Center for Long Term Care, after a long illness.

Born at Owls Head, September 28, 1934, she was the daughter of Raymond A. and Frances Knowlton Dow. She attended the one room Bear Hill School and was a 1951 graduate of Rockland High School.

In conjunction with raising nine children by herself, Ramona worked as a cook and waitress at the former Log Cabin and Paramont Restaurants. She later worked in area fish processing plants.

For many years she supplemented her income making Christmas wreathes for the holiday season. She also knitted Scandinavian sweaters, hats and mittens, giving many of them to children. This was an activity of compassion she continued until recent confinement due to illness.

She often wrote poetry and stories for her children, enjoyed music, but particularly loved the Christmas Holiday Season.

Ramona's family said their Mom was an awesome cook. They remember her wonderful whoopee-pies, cakes, donuts, potato yeast rolls and the fact that each Thanksgiving she baked each one of her children a pie.

Pre-deceased by her mother, Frances, step-father Floyd Montgomery, Sr. and one step-son, John Ingerson, Ramona is survived by nine children...

[extracted]

A graveside committal service will be held at 11:00 a.m., Friday, November 19, 2004 at McPhail-Hicks Cemetery, Ingrahams Hill, Owls Head.

Those who wish may make memorial donations to Maine Childrens Cancer Program, 100 U.S. Route One, Unit 107, Scarborough, ME 04074.

Arrangements are in the care of Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home, 110 Limerock Street, Rockland."

Calling my ROPP Cousins...

If you are interested in the families (descendants or ancestors) of François and Frederique ROPP and would like to add your own research/findings to this blog, let me know. You can comment on any post, or send me an email.  I'm more than willing to let anyone who has an interest in the family add their own information, and posting is easy as pie!

Don't Believe Me? Helen Ropp's Birth Certificate

Return of a Birth (a.k.a. Birth Certificate) for Helen ROPP
(shared with me by my great aunt ML.)

Well, this isn't a perfect amount of proof, but it's pretty good at showing Helen's mother is the mysterious Mattie Carolina Kelley.  A couple of key things that should be pointed out... Mattie's last name is listed as ROPP which makes me believe the couple was perhaps married at the time of Helen's birth. I have not tracked down a marriage certificate for them yet, but since Mattie's birthplace is listed as Baltimore and Helen was born in Baltimore, I assume IF Ernest and Mattie really were married, it was somewhere around Baltimore.

The second, and perhaps more important thing to note is scratched in pen at the top of the document.  "Given Name Added  11-9-66.  I'm not sure why or how it was added at that time, but it's an important fact to point out "just in case" the document is incorrect. It certainly looks legit, but a birth certificate that was not completely filled out unti 60 years after the birth does leave some room for potential error.

And now we know Helen's middle name, Adline.  Thanks for sharing this with us, ML!

Finally! The ROPP Connection - Helen A. ROPP

My first few posts were more or less background for getting into the ROPP family, which I will start today.

A few days ago, I mentioned my grandfather,Vaughn INGERSON.  What's the connection with François and Frederique ROPP?  Here it is:

Vaughn's mother was Helen ROPP.  Helen's father was Ernest ROPP. Ernest's Father was François ROPP.

Helen ROPP has been an interesting story for me, and a bit of a brick wall, despite her daughter, my great aunt, ML, helping me with what information she knows.


For anyone else researching this ROPP family of François and Frederique, you may not recognize the name "Mattie Carolina Kelley" as being Ernest ROPP's wife and/or mother to Helen.  ML told me years ago the story that Helen was born in Baltimore, MD to Ernest and Mattie (Martha?), but that Mattie left soon after Helen was born. The story as I recall it is that Mattie wanted to pursue an acting career and may have gone to New York to make it big.

1910 Household Containing  Helen ROPP

By 1910, Helen ROPP is living in Boylston, MA with her grandmother, Frederique. (By this time François had already passed away).   But her father Ernest is not listed as a member of the household at this time.

1920 Household Containing Helen ROPP

By 1920, Ernest is back in the picture and the ROPP family is renting an apartment on East Kendall St. in Worcester, MA according to the U.S. Federal Census for that year.  At this time, Ernest has a wife, Mary, and 2 more children, Irene and Francis D.  I believe Mary's surname before marrying Ernest was HOLLERAN, though I am not sure why I have that in my notes. I don't seem to have a source for that bit of information.  At this time, Helen ROPP was 13.  Irene was 5, and Francis D. was 2.

We learn from the 1920 census that Ernest's wife, Mary and the 5 year old, Irene were born in Canada.  Francis D. was born in Massachusetts, which means Ernest was probably in Canada in 1910 (possibly following mill work) where he met and eventually married Mary.  If Irense was 5 and born in Canada and Francis was 2  and born in Massachusetts, Ernest and his new family must have returned to Massachusetts sometime between 1915 and 1918 or thereabouts.


Frederique was still living in Boylston in 1920, though Ernest was now in Worcester, about a half hour drive today on MA-70 (according to Google Maps)  Ernest's occupation at this time is listed as a machinist working in construction.

More to come on Helen and All the ROPPs I know about in upcoming posts.

Stepping Back... Vaughn Ingerson





After our intial contact, my great aunt, ML, sent me this photo of my grandfather, Vaughn.  It's terribly faded now because I had it up on the refrigerator for years before realizing that was probably a bad way to store the only photo I have of my grandfather...

Now  I have this tucked away in a box with some other photos and I use a scanned image to share with people that are interested.  Because I didn't know him, the only thing I really know about my Grandfather is information I heard from other people.

More recently, within the last 6 months, ML sent me more photos.  So, I know Vaughn was in Europe during WWII, at least at the end of the War I was told he was part of the Berlin airlift.  It appears he was part of a Military Police Unit.

In the years since I first corresponded with ML, I also learned that I have a half uncle, Wolfgang who is from Germany.   I have his email now, and he occassionally emails from his worldly travels, but I haven't had the opportunity to meet him yet.  Perhaps some day...

My first Connection

My grandfather Vaughn INGERSON died when I was about 11. I only had a chance to meet him once, and that was pretty much when he told our family he was dying.  My grandmother and my grandfather went their separate ways when my mother was a child, so she wasn't one to chat a lot about him and I didn't really ask. Heck, at 11, I didn't even wonder about my grandfather. I didn't really know any better.

But as I got older and became more interested in my family history, I started asking more questions and realized the topic of my grandfather was a bit of a sore subject in the family.  In 2006 I order a copy of Vaughn's Death Certificate from the State of Massachusetts.  This was the first official record I ordered as part of my family history research.  The information on it was very helpful at identifying exactly where he died.  I'm not sure how, or where I found it, but eventually I came across an obituary for Vaughn that listed his surviving siblings...  I looked online to see if there were people still living in the area with that name, and 'lo and behold I found one.  So, I sat down and wrote a letter to his sister, not knowing if was even still at the address or if she would care to speak with me.

A few weeks later (when I had honestly already forgotten about sending the letter, I received a reply via email. It said "Hello Brian. My name is M. L. You sent a letter to my sister that she gave to me about Vaughn Ingerson. I am his sister...." and it went on to explain a little bit about the immediate family.

By this time I was away at college (if you can call an hour drive from home "away) and very excited to make a connection. Not only that, but M. L. seemed interested in knowing about her family history as well. It was M. L. who first introduced me to François and Fredique ROPP.

Before this I knew my Grandfather's last name was INGERSON, but I knew nothing else about his family.  Now I knew Vaughn's mother's name was Helen ROPP. Helen's parents were Ernest  and Mattie (Kelley) ROPP. I learned Helen was born in Baltimore, but Ernest and his family were "originally" from the Worcester, MA area.  With this information I set about looking through census records and trying to find my ROPP ancestors.

This was the beginning of my journey, and the first of my connection to living ROPP relatives. One side trip...  As I begin to recount my own journey learning about my ROPP ancestry, I expect to post fairly often to this blog. As I get caught up to the present day, I will only be updating the blog when information becomes available.  Hopefully that means I will get to update fairly regularly, but for now let me retrace my steps through memories and documents.

Getting Started

For years I have been working in a vacuum researching the family history of François and Frederique ROPP who came to America in April of 1893, landing in New York with a final destination of Worcester, MA.  I found this information on a ship manifest at www.ellisisland.org and subsequently traced some of their steps in MA after their arrival.  But so much of the story was missing, and although I'm only a few hours away in Maine, I have not been able to spend the time or money to order records or take a trip to the Worcester area to do much research.  Having spent a lot of time looking for information online and not getting very far, my focus on this family had dwindled considerably over the last couple of years.

Then, a few weeks ago I presented a program to our local genealogical society on the power of Social Networking sites when used to accelerate your genealogical research.  After the presentation one of the members offered to help me with a different brick wall that has also plaqued me for some time, and within a few days she had solved that mystery.  That quick win got me to thinking about my ROPP family again, and I picked up the search.

I took my own advice and looked towords the social networking aspects of many genealogy sites.  In no time at all I came across a post on a message board from 3 years ago by someone who appeared to be searching for information about the same family.  I took a chance and emailed the email address associated with the post, and soon received a response, "Yes, this is the person you are looking for."  

We started sharing little bits of information and then he told me he had actually been in contact with another distant cousin some time ago and would try to reconnect with them as well. Within a few days the 3 of us were sharing the little bits about our branches of the tree that we knew and the puzzle has started coming together.  Just yesterday, one of these 2 men said they ran across another post online from someone who they believe we may also be related to and lo' and behold we have a 4th distant cousin.

Thanks to social networking (both online and "old fashioned") there is now a network of 4 of us researching branches of the same family tree and able to help one another fill in the gaps. My hope for this blog is to help us work together to get a better understanding of this family and how they survived and grew after coming to America and possible even trace them back to their homeland.
Shortly thereafter, I connected with a distant cousin through a post they made on Ancestry.com years ago.  They in turn told me they had also been in contact with another cousin some time back but had lost touch...  Those 2 cousins reconnected and the three of us began sharing information about our branches of the family.  Yesterday