Thank you in advance for your help and interest! I never knew my maternal grandfather, Samuel Ingersoll, son of Harriet and Herbert of New York. Samuel and my maternal grandmother, Marie Louise Carton, were married in Asbury Park, New Jersey in 1922 when they were about 18 years old. Apparently they had met at Asbury High School--I think that his family summered at the Jersey Shore where Marie lived. Their daughter, my mother, Jeanne-Marie, was born on February 13, 1923 in NJ.

When my mother was still an infant, Samuel and Marie Ingersoll separated and later divorced. When my mother was 4 or 5, she was adopted by her maternal grandparents, James D. and Mary M. Carton.

When my mother was 15, in 1938, Samuel Ingersoll came to see Marie and Jeanne, and he and her mother talked about reconciliation. My mother, now 77, remembers a first cousin, her contemporary, named Cyril Carr, whom she met briefly when her father came to visit that time. These little fragments of data correlate with the Ingersoll Family Genealogy page, the New York data.

I am very interested in any information that anyone might be able to provide about my "lost grandfather," Samuel Ingersoll, born in 1905 and deceased, I see now, in December 1983 (just 3 months after my own father died).

My grandmother (Marie) always told me that my mother, my late brother Robert and I had brown eyes because of "Sam Ingersoll." Everyone else on both sides of my family has either blue or green eyes! Also, my late brother Robert was apparently "the image" of Sam Ingersoll.

My grandmother, Marie, died in 1992; and my mother does not know much at all about her birth father. Our family is Catholic and wondered about the split between her parents...was it because of a difference in faith? Their youth and the seemingly "hasty arrival" of my mother, the times and such? We don't know. Was it family pressures on one or both sides? Their own personalities? Maybe you have heard some tales...I now see from your research that Samuel's own parents both died when my mother was still a little girl.

Did Samuel Ingersoll ever remarry, have more children? Was he alone in the world? I have heard hints about a "drinking problem," but he was still a very young man--my late brother Robert was an alcoholic.

Also, does anyone know about Sam's mother, Harriet N. Day?

I would be grateful for any information anyone could share with me, and I'd be happy to add anything else my mother might recall--although it is very little indeed. My mother has only recently expressed any interest at all in researching her father. Apparently she led a very lovely childhood with her grandparents and mother's family, and never felt the need to question--she also admits that she was probably "brainwashed" by her Mother.

My whole life, it was "all about" my mother's maternal family, the Cartons, a prominent Monmouth County NJ family of attorneys. I really suspect that my mother's maternal grandparents legally adopted her when she was small because they worried about her mother, Marie, a rather free spirit!!

I think that I am so interested now in learning whatever bits of information I can about my unknown grandfather since so many of my own immediate family have died, and I guess that it always comes down to a way of learning more about oneself, one's roots and one's place in the scheme of things...

Thank you so very much.

Nancy Jeanne Predham