Know where you came from.
Not just a tree of names and dates—a durable record of the people, places, stories and evidence that shaped this family, built to be understood by generations still to come.
- People preserved
- 40
- Generations from the researcher
- 8
- Earliest recorded year
- 1742
- Origin stories
- 6
Family history should feel human.
Open a life, then ask how you are related. Kinship is calculated from the parent–child graph so a descendant a century from now still gets an honest answer.
Manetta A. Moomey Smith
Manetta A. Moomey is your great-great-grandmother on the Derry side, wife of William Henry Smith and mother of Hattie Estelle Smith. The Moomey surname is one of the hidden German gems in your family tree. The name is likely a variant of the German "Mumma" or Swiss Mennonite origins, possibly from Alsace-Lorraine (Huguenot). The earliest confirmed American ancestor is Jacob Moomey (1699–1779), who settled in Pennsylvania. His descendants spread through Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and Iowa — a migration pattern remarkably parallel to the Albaugh family on your mother's side! Both families arrived in America in the same 1699–1734 wave of German/Swiss Mennonite immigration. A 680-page published genealogy titled "The Descendants of Jacob and Mary Moomey of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and Iowa" documents 7 generations of the family. The Ohio branch — where Manetta lived — is heavily documented. Leonard Mumma arrived in America in 1732, just two years before Zachariah Ahlbach (1734) — suggesting these German families came over in the same great wave.
Thomas Derry Jr.
Thomas Derry Jr. is your 4× great-grandfather and the confirmed English origin of the Derry surname in your family. He was born in 1832 in Fen Drayton, Cambridgeshire, England — a small fenland village on the River Ouse, about 8 miles northwest of Cambridge. He was a farmer. At some point he emigrated from England to America, with his son Albert being born in New York — the classic landing point for English emigrants crossing the Atlantic. The family then continued west to Michigan, where Thomas died in 1901. His presence in Michigan in 1901 means he lived to see his grandson Ernest (b. 1886) as a teenager. The Derry surname in this Cambridgeshire context almost certainly connects to the Norman-French "daree" (penny weight) recorded in Northamptonshire in 1200 AD — both counties are in the East Midlands/East England belt where the name was historically concentrated. The "Jr." designation confirms his father was also named Thomas Derry, pushing the line back one more generation in England.
Daniel Derry
Daniel Derry is your oldest known Derry ancestor — your 5× great-grandfather. He was born around 1782 and lived in Gresley Row, Lichfield, Staffordshire, England. Lichfield is a historic cathedral city in the West Midlands, famous as the birthplace of Samuel Johnson and home to the stunning three-spired Lichfield Cathedral. "Gresley Row" was a street or area within Lichfield. Daniel was a farmer — as were his son Thomas Sr. and grandson Thomas Jr., continuing a farming tradition across three generations before the family eventually emigrated to America. His son Thomas Derry Sr. was born in 1808, also in Lichfield, confirming the family was established there across multiple generations. Daniel represents the English roots of the Derry name — almost certainly connected to the Norman-French "daree" (penny weight) recorded in Northamptonshire in 1200 AD, with the name spreading through the English Midlands over the centuries.
Jack C. Derry
Jack C. Derry was born May 4, 1926, in St. Louis, Gratiot County, Michigan — the son of Ernest A. Derry and Hattie Estelle (Smith) Derry. He served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, then earned a degree from Central Michigan University. On June 17, 1951, he married Beverly J. Hartle in Saginaw — bringing together the Derry and MacKinnon/Hartle family lines. He built a 32-year career with the Michigan State Treasury Department, retiring in 1988, and was later inducted into the Gratiot County Baseball Hall of Fame. He and Beverly lived in Shepherd, Isabella County, where he died on June 16, 2011, at age 85. Family tradition holds Irish roots on the Derry side — likely Ulster/County Derry, Ireland, fitting the massive 1880s emigration wave from that port to the Great Lakes states. Through his mother Hattie's Moomey line he also carries German ancestry — a remarkable echo of the Albaugh line on your mother's side.
The data is the heirloom.
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