Tracing My Roots

At a glance
What; Tracing your Family's History
Helpful Resources: Cottage Grove Museum, Cottage Grove Church of Latter Day Saints.
Linn County Historical Society: Genealogy Enthusiasts meet once a month at Mennonite village.
Albany Regional Museum:136 Lyon St. S.
Or call:(541) 967-7122



Tracing my family roots is very important to me, I enjoy doing it, and I have found out along the way some interesting family information that I can pass on to my children. By speaking to family members I have found out a lot of family history and I have written this important information down.

My maiden name is Ritter it is German it means chivalrous knight and I found out that my ancestors on my father’s side lived in Deutschland and fought for the nobles.
There is a Ritter castle over in Germany a relative of mine uncle Tex has been there. I someday plan on going there, to study more family history by looking up old records.

I have a cousin that lives in Germany; I probably have a lot of family over in the old country and just have not learned about it yet. I have learned to speak some German and I have learned there culture. My father’s grandparents were born in Germany and lived most of there life in Germany, and then decided to move out to America, they arrived in Jackson Michigan, that is where my father was raised.

I have learned also about my father’s mother’s side my great grandparents came out here from Dublin Ireland the Moore’s, my Great Grandpa John Moore was a boxer that boxed with Jack Dempsey.

Now on my mothers, father’s side the Gambles they came from Ireland and on her mothers side the Johnson’s came out from England. My Great Grandpa Johnson was in the civil war as a general and to this day we don’t know what happened to his swords and uniforms. In fact a lot of family belongings have been lost through the centuries and decades. My grandma gamble had some Native American in her we think it is Sioux, my grandma Josephine used to have a Native American buckskin dress the natives made for her and it was lost in a house fire.

Over the summer my family had a get together, it was a neat reunion we got to have copies of family pictures from long ago. The pictures dated back to the late 1800s, it was a learning experience, we all got to find out who’s whom in our family history.

My uncle Bob and my cousin Flossie have been very helpful in learning my family history, I found out what my ancestors looked like and how they dressed, and what they did for a living. I found out that my Great Grandpa Johnson lived in Wisconsin and owned a nice hotel, I don’t know if it is still standing or not. In a few of the photograph’s there were pictures of homes in North Dakota and I would like to find out if these homes still exist today.

There is an old plantation in Florida called the Gamble plantation; we have a picture of it from a newspaper we do not know if there’s any relation. Unfortunately some of the people in the photo’s we do not know who they are, my grandma wrote on the backs of pictures which were very helpful. I do think it is important to know about our family’s Roots.

I went to the Lane County Historical Society in Cottage Grove Oregon and the Genealogy Society in Cottage Grove also and the museum there to get information but a lot of the information I have received comes from my family asking them questions and also I have found quite a bit of my family’s history on line on Ancestry .com.