Munsell

Country of origin:  France, England, Ireland
Most recent immigrant:  the Aubry (Obry) family, 1840

My most recent Munsell ancestors to immigrate to the United States are the Aubry family, which Americanized to Obry later.  My grandfather's grandmother's family were all French immigrants.  As a matter of fact, even though his maternal grandmother Anna Obry (or Aubry) was born 15 years after these families arrived from France, she grew up knowing virtually no English.  Family surnames on my Munsell side include Aubry, Barber, Caverley, Gates, Grillot, Munsell, Obry, Phelps, Strong, and Woodward.

Another recent group to immigrate was the Grillots.  The Grillot family were weavers and stone masons in the Department of the Meuse in the region of Lorraine in northeast France.  They emigrated in the late 1830's.  The Aubry family tended small vineyards near a town in Lorraine very close to where the Grillots originated and emigrated in 1840.  Both families traveled by boat from Le Havre to New Orleans and then came up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati.  They settled among other French immigrant families in near what became known as Frenchtown in Darke County, Ohio and attended Sainte Famille (Holy Family) parish church in Frenchtown.

On his father’s side, my grandfather descends mostly from English families which arrived in the American colonies in the middle of the 17th century.  Also on Grandpa Munsell’s mother’s side is a small amount of Irish ancestry (Benson & Quinn families) in families which immigrated from Ireland to South Carolina in the middle of the 18th century.