My mother was Ella Lorene Sullivan Andris. Her father, Franklin Marion Sullivan, had Irish ancestry. Frank had a German mother, Carolina Buertel, who immigrated in 1846. The 1880 Washington Co., Ohio Census has Frank's grandfather and grandmother born in Ohio. That would mean that the Irish line immigrated before 1835.

My father was Fernand Andris. His parents, Arthur Louis Nicholas Andris and Victorine Dorval, immigrated to this country in 1910 from Binche, Belgium. However, when my brother, Tom, travelled in Belgium in 1978, he heard the family tale that the Andrisse family was originally from the Baden-Baden region and bore the name "Andrissen."

Mom's mother, Clara Ida Noe, was from pure German stock. Those ancestors immigrated from the Rhinland- Pfalz area of Germany during the 1840s and 1850s.