Mac Giolla Ruaidh
Son of the red-haired lad. The name comes from County Fermanagh in Ulster.
This is our family line, eleven generations from the first McElroy known in America down to Mason's sons. It runs from Ulster through Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky and Missouri to the Kansas–Oklahoma line. Open any generation to see the records behind it and how sure we are.
Family tradition says James McElroy and his young wife sailed from County Down to Philadelphia about 1729, with McCune, McDowell and McKee neighbors. They were Presbyterian Scots-Irish. No record yet names the town they left.
James c.1705 – 1772; Sarah 1708 – after 1772
The oldest McElroy couple we have found. They are said to have stopped in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, then followed the Great Wagon Road south. James signed his will in Prince Edward County, Virginia, in 1770. It names his wife and his sons Archable, John, Hugh, Samuel and James.
Archibald c.1730 – 1780; married 7 Aug 1756, Prince Edward Co., Virginia
Archibald came south with the Scotch-Irish families of the Cub Creek and Buffalo settlements. He is on the 1748 Amelia County tax list and bought 516 acres at the head of Codeys Creek. He married Ann Aston with her father's consent and moved the family to North Carolina about 1765.
One tree says he died at the Battle of Kings Mountain on 7 October 1780. No service record has been found.
James c.1759 – 9 Feb 1848; Frances 1759 – 1858; married 16 Apr 1782, Greenville, SC
A Revolutionary War soldier, and the first of our line with his own record of service. In 1776 he fought the Cherokee under Capt. John Gowan at Seneca and Keowee, then guarded the frontier at Fort Gowan for about 15 months. He was drafted for the 1779 siege of Savannah. He drew a pension of $80 a year in Allen County, Kentucky, and raised at least twelve children there.
His nickname may really be Sankey, after the Buffalo Settlement's Presbyterian minister, Richard Sankey. His grandfather's will spells it “Stinkey”.
James 19 Mar 1799 – 19 Sep 1849; Alice 1800 – 1882; married 12 Aug 1820, Allen Co., KY
Alice was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The county history lists their children as Alfred, Rebecca, William J., Moses, Jane, Hartwell, Nancy and Mary. Their son William J. rose to lieutenant colonel in the Union army.
Moses 4 Jan 1820 – 1 Oct 1922; Caroline 1833 – 1893
Moses lived 102 years and 8 months and fathered sixteen children, fifteen of them with Caroline. Born in northern Kentucky, he moved to Missouri in 1854, married into the Ellis family of DeKalb County, and enlisted for the Union at Maysville in March 1862.
He served three years as a private in Co. H, 1st Missouri State Militia Cavalry, riding his own horse and driving the company teams. His papers describe him at 38 as 5 ft 10 in, dark-complexioned, with blue eyes and gray hair. He came to southeast Kansas in 1877 and died at the home of his son George in Edna, survived by his third wife. His obituary says he also served in the Mexican War, and the family remembers a brother, Thomas, killed there. No service record for that war has been found.
George 26 Sep 1869 – 11 Aug 1956; Rose 2 Aug 1868 – 7 Nov 1953; married 24 Dec 1890, Labette Co., Kansas
George was born in Andrew County, Missouri, and was seven when Moses came to southeast Kansas. He is seated beside his father in a family photograph from around 1920, and Moses died at George's home in Edna two years later. Rose was the eldest daughter of Arnold Hottinger, born in Zurich, and Kate Glover. The censuses find George and Rose in Howard Township and at Elm Grove, and both are buried at Elm Grove Cemetery, Edna.
Their children were Alta Mae, Alvin Rae, Ellis Frederick, Glover J. and Alma Glenice. Glover carries his grandmother Kate's maiden name.
Ellis 9 Dec 1897 – 26 Oct 1969; Lena 22 Jan 1903 – 13 Nov 1997; married 4 Nov 1926, Oswego, Kansas
Grandpa Archie's parents. Ellis was born at Edna and grew up in George and Rose's household. He and Lena were living in rural Craig County, Oklahoma, when Archie was born in 1935, and by 1950 they were at Hale, Colorado. Ellis died at Parsons in 1969. Lena lived to 94. Both are buried at Lake Creek Cemetery near Bartlett. Lena's parents were Arthur B. Trissell and Mary M. Metzen of Edna.
Archie 2 Jan 1935 – 31 Oct 2022; married 9 Feb 1956, Seward, Kansas
Grandpa and Grandma. Archie was born in rural Craig County, Oklahoma, just south of Chetopa. He finished Labette County Community High School in 1954 with a mechanics diploma and went to work in the oilfields at Great Bend, near the Strobel farm, where he met JoAnn. Back home he worked at the Bartlett Co-op from 1959 to 1973, then founded McElroy Sandblasting and Painting. He is buried at Lake Creek Cemetery.
Together they had nine children:
In 2022 Archie left sixteen grandchildren, eighteen great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.
Lonnie, eldest surviving son; Hong Sian from Surabaya, Indonesia
Dad goes by Lonnie. He volunteered for military service during the Vietnam War and was discharged because of his eyesight. Mom, Hong Sian, is from Surabaya in East Java. Her family's story is below.
Much of what is on this site came from Lonnie's memory: the Trissell, Metzen, Hoss and Hottinger names among it.
Mason's sons. Archie shares his name with his great-grandfather, Archie Sr. Jonah's middle name is Moses, like the ancestor who lived to 102.
Each wife brought her own family's history. These are the ones we know most about, from the newest back.
Grandma JoAnn's family, Seward, Stafford Co., Kansas
JoAnn grew up on the Strobel farm near Seward, in a German and Irish Catholic parish. Her parents, George Albert Strobel (1903–1965) and Sadie Ann Moore (1902–1983), are buried at St. Francis Xavier Cemetery in Seward. Dad remembers George's mother as Katherine Hoss, born in Germany in 1877. JoAnn's brothers and sisters were Ralph, Roland, Richard, Albert “Ray”, Pauline Schartz and Virginia Smith. Ralph served in the Air Force during Korea. Roland attended the Kansas School for the Blind and worked the farm until their mother died in 1983.
Lena's family, Edna, Labette Co., Kansas
Lena's parents were Arthur B. Trissell and Mary M. Metzen; her sister Barbara Marie was born at Edna in 1904. A W. B. Trissell sold nursery stock at Chetopa in 1876, and may be Arthur's father. The Metzens may be the German Catholic family from the Eifel who settled in Sedgwick County.
Rose Hottinger's family, from Zurich
Arnold Howard Hottinger was born in Zurich in 1841 and came to America in 1850 with his parents, Jacob and Rosena. He served as a private in Co. L, 10th Missouri Cavalry, for the Union. On 31 December 1865 at Medora, Missouri, he married Catherine Malinda “Kate” Glover (1846–1919), born in Osage County, Missouri. Their son William was born at Spavinaw in the Cherokee Nation in 1872, and by 1878 the family was at Edna. Their children were Rose Martha, Joseph, William, Tena, Felix, Fred and Alfred. Rose married George Washington McElroy in 1890.
Arnold and Kate divorced in 1904. He died in 1931 at Sawtelle, Los Angeles, and is buried in Los Angeles National Cemetery. Kate's father is linked as John William Glover Jr. of Virginia, who died in 1911 at Centralia, Oklahoma, and is buried at Edna.
Moses's wife Caroline's family, DeKalb Co., Missouri
Caroline's father, Daniel Zimmerman Ellis (1804–1864), was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, and married Mary “Polly” Senour in northern Kentucky in 1824. He settled Sherman Township in DeKalb County, taught at its first schoolhouse, and in 1860 gave an acre of his land for the Dayton Christian Church. Her brother Fountain rode circuit as a preacher, and her brother Marion served in Moses's company in the Civil War.
The colonial wives
Alice Hamm came from Spartanburg, South Carolina; Frances Langston from Granville County, North Carolina, where her family reaches back to colonial Virginia; and Ann Agnes Aston from Southside Virginia, where her father William's will left land to his grandson.
McElroys and their kin who answered a call to arms, oldest first.
Hong Sian comes from Surabaya, East Java. Her name reads as Chinese-Indonesian, Hokkien in style. Many Chinese-Indonesian families took Indonesian surnames after 1966, so her family may appear under two names.
Her parents' names are the next thing to ask. Their Chinese family name, any Indonesian surname, and the part of Surabaya they lived in would open up the records.
Take care of our name. It's the only one we have.
From McElroy Forever, the family's first website