Roots; that which helps to account for all that came later...

Connections. The ties that bind the past to the present, and beyond. Our Grandmother, Mary Elisabeth, has provided me with a strong beginning to the continuing, although not necesarily linear, narrative that is a story of our family.

Mary Elisabeth was born January 24th, 1904, & died March 24th, 2000. She had both intelligence and class. We miss her tremendously.

Mary Elisabeth Fox Quibell, Part 1, written 10/1991 - in her own words:

Mary Elisabeth Fox: her BOOK (1904-1931) or “More than you want to know about her growing up years”

INTRODUCTION

I am definitely a W.A.S.P.

My Fox ancestors came from England (with some French admixture, possibly). My Hobstetter ancestors all came from Germany – Hesse-Darmstadt, and Bavaria.

The German family came over after the 1848 upheavals, and apparently went directly to Iowa. Both of my grandparents were born in this country, but had older brothers and sisters who had been born in Germany.

The Fox line - in this country - started with George, the younger, who came to New Jersey in 1704. He was the great-nephew of the George Fox who founded the Quakers. His son, Absalom, married one Christiana Bonham, one of whose forbears came over on the Mayflower. The Bonham family has long roots, probably going back to a French village (no longer in existence) by the name of Bon Homme. So if, at some future date, anyone wants membership in a Society of the Mayflower, the lineage can be traced in the Library of Congress.

Similarly, if (perish the thought) anyone wants to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, she

can probably do so through David Fox, who was a captain in the 1st Regiment, Company 4 of the Pennsylvania (?) State Militia. David would have been a great-great grandfather of Harvey Newton Fox (Granddad Fox’s father). I don’t have his birthdate, but his wife was born in 1767, and he was probably older at the time of the American Revolution. At that time I believe the state militia were the first sent into the fray.

On the Ayres (Ayers) side of Granddad Fox’s family, the first record is from an account book of a trading post in the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania area. This would have put it at the crossing of the Alleghenies, where Daniel Ayres, the one of whom was the grandfather of Margaret Ayres Fox (Grandad Fox’s mother). The account book makes good reading. The chief items sold were whiskey and axes. This was the period when there were no roads to the coastal markets. So if a man raised a crop of corn his simplest method of marketing it was to distill it into whiskey. I think the farmers, with their concealed stills, ran a running battle with the “revenooers”, who were trying to collect taxes on the liquor .

From Daniel’s son, Samuel (who was 3 mos. old when his father settled in eastern Pennsylvania) the movement was steadily westward. In this way our family’s progress mirrored that of the nation.