Kentucky – Mark Cross Genealogy

Mary Ann French, Research Report by a professional

I attended the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) 2018. One of the sessions was taught by Diana Elder, AG and she used an example with a case study of Mary Ann French. The surname French is very familiar to me, as the French family are my ancestors! It turns out Mary Ann French is my 6th great aunt on my father’s side. She is the daughter of James French. Diana Elder’s husband is descended from Mary Ann French, and I am descended from Mary Ann’s brother, Thomas French. This makes James French, father of both Mary Ann and Thomas, my 6th great grandfather.

French leads down to Mary Ellen French, who married John David Ray; these are the parents of Sarah Catherine Ray, who is the mother of Virginia Vessels. The French family is one of many of the Catholic clans who moved from Maryland to Kentucky in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Diana Elder, AG is an Accredited Genealogist. She did a full research report to prove the father of Mary Ann French. Her research report was the example in her class session of how to write a research report, which I attended at SLIG 2018.

A research report is something a professional genealogist will write up for their client. In Diana’s case, it was a report she wrote for her husband’s ancestors, and if I remember correctly she used it as part of her Accreditation to become an Accredited Genealogist. Many also recommend writing a research report for many research questions that come up in one’s own family tree. In other words, to prove my logic and reasoning on why I say this person is the child of that person, a research report is recommended, so that future generations do not repeat my research, and also have access to the sources I cite in my family tree and in my research reports.

I got permission from Diana Elder to provide a link to her website, so that you can also view her professional Research Report.

Her home page on her website is at family locket. Her services as a Professional Genealogist are at the link here. And if you scroll on down, you will see a link to the Mary Ann French Bryan Atwood research report as a PDF file.

If you are curious about what a research report looks like, read this PDF report. She provides sources that back up her research. Of course, she’s already done some excellent research, and I can use those same sources for my own research, which proves some facts I did not already have. I am grateful for Diana Elder’s research, and with her permission I provide a link to her research report in this post.

I have not yet really written a full research report for any of my ancestors. I will most definitely do so in the future. When I work through the ProGen online study group, mentioned earlier in this blog, I will do at least one research report. Also, should I choose to become a Certified Genealogist in the future, I will need to write more than one research report to achieve that accreditation.

If anyone is confused by some of the alphabet soup, let me clarify that an AG is an Accredited Genealogist, and a CG is a Certified Genealogist, two of the common ways to become “licensed” as it were to be a Professional in the field of Genealogy.

Read Diana’s report, and enjoy! I endeavor to write some reports myself in the future.

The Ray Book: A Family of Central Kentucky, 1705-1993

If anyone has any Ray ancestors from Central Kentucky, who migrated there from Maryland, I encourage you to locate and review this fabulous book.

The Ray Book: A Family of Central Kentucky, 1705-1993
by Ann Tyson Sipes, Louisville, Kentucky: Historical Research Publishers, 1993.

It is a lengthy book, about 1,200 pages with an index. It is well researched, with sources. Some of the information will be quite unique, as the author received letters, family trees, and copies of obituaries from members and descendants of the Ray Family that may be difficult, if not impossible, to locate elsewhere.

I have Ray ancestors and found this book invaluable. My great grandmother was Sarah Catherine Ray, born in Hardin County, Kentucky.

Many of the Catholic families that originated in Maryland in Colonial America days, later migrated together to Central Kentucky. The Ray Family is one of those families. This book is a wealth of information. A researcher can use it as a source and as a finding aid to locate sources she herself used in writing the book.

I highly recommend this book.

Ray Family

My Grandma Cross was born a Vessels in Kentucky. Her mother, known as Granny Vessels, was born Sarah Catherine Ray. The Ray family is a prominent ancestor line in our family.

The Rays also started in Maryland in the early years, before the Revolutionary War. In the late 1700s they moved to Kentucky. There was a large group of Catholics, many families, mostly our ancestors, that moved from Maryland to Kentucky. Why did they move? Many reasons, it turns out.

The Rays also had lots of land in Maryland, grew tobacco on plantations, and had slaves. Many of our ancestors were Catholic, and Maryland was a place of religious tolerance. But, when we were colonies, the British monarchs sometimes hated Catholics and sometimes tolerated them. Often, the Catholics were double taxed for the only reason that they were Catholic. It was a financial hardship to be Catholic. Also, Catholics were often prohibited from having public office; to be elected or to hold any public office meant to take an oath denying the pope and the Catholic faith. This goes back to Henry VIII who wanted a divorce, the pope said no, so Henry started his own church and called it the Church of England, sometimes called the Anglican church. To this day, the monarch is the Head of the Church of England. No pope, no one else ever, will tell the sitting monarch what to do when it comes to religion. Also, to this day, if a prince or princess is in line for the throne, if they marry a Catholic, they are disinherited and are no longer in line for the throne. No monarch can have any affiliation with the Catholic church. There is much hatred there. Which is why Maryland as a colony of religious tolerance was so appreciated.

Also, the British tried to swing a deal to sell Maryland tobacco to France, but the deal fell through. But Britain still enforced a monopoly on the Maryland tobacco, after all Maryland was a British colony. If the tobacco plantations could sell their tobacco to the highest bidder, they could make more money on the open market, but Britain prohibited that.

So, the Rays, and many of our other ancestors, left Maryland for Kentucky for many reasons.

Some of these pressures were relieved when America won the Revolutionary War. But many of our ancestors already had it in their mind to move to Kentucky. Several of our Ray ancestors had already made several trips to Kentucky in the late 1700s, and sometimes even owned land in Kentucky while still living in Maryland. Some were surveyors, who determined whose land belonged to whom. In Maryland, the land was pretty much all eaten up by the large tobacco plantations and there was no more available land. In Kentucky, there was abundant land available.

The trip from Maryland to Kentucky was a long and winding journey. No interstates, no freeways, no railroad. They went by land, with sometimes unmarked roads, to Pittsburgh. This took 5-9 days. From there they got on a flatboat to travel down the Ohio River to Kentucky. This took another 9 days. Right about Louisville they came to “the falls” and the boat could not travel downstream any more do to a rocky falls area, which is a big reason Louisville exists where it does. They then travelled, by land or by flatboat, on smaller rivers, inland from the Ohio River, to the part of Kentucky where our ancestors lived for generations in Kentucky, and where Grandma Cross, born Virginia Vessels, was born.

Lots of other researchers have been stumped by who was the immigrant ancestor who came to America. Our earliest Ray ancestor is William Ray, my 8th great grandfather. He died in Maryland in 1760. Other details are unknown; don’t know when or where he was born or where he came from. His son was also William Ray, he was born in 1705, likely in Maryland, and died in 1782, also in Maryland. But where did they come from? That’s the next research question to answer.

This kind of research is fun, and I’m learning a lot about our ancestors!

I have full source citations on my ancestry.com online tree. Go to my contact page and shoot me an email, and I can invite you to my tree.