I want some coffee!

... there's the maternal side of my family. My mother was Scotch/Irish. The whole of the men were hard rock miners or had jobs which supported the mining community in and around Angels Camp, California. Well... the whole lot other than those that were ranchers like my great-great grandfather George Alexander Ross.  The Rosses, Walshes, Osborns and Daveys (plus some additional surnames which I fail to recall) started collecting in Angels Camp, California in the mid-1800's. Angels Camp is said to be the heart of the Mother Lode of the California Gold Rush at least geographically if not financially. "They were part of the California Gold Rush? They must have all been rich, right?!"  Not a chance! The lot of them were hard rock miners or equipment operators or they worked in some support role like selling supplies or driving trucks. In fact, Angels Camp was originally Angel's Camp, named after Louis Angel who set up a 'camp' (it was a tent) to sell food, equip...

Well, that's what it was called before Wikipedia allowed someone to re-write the whole story. Currently that reference tells the tale of cattle rustlers in Johnson County. Earlier the story was about the contentious relationship between cattle and sheep ranches. I cling to that earlier version since it relates to my family story. My paternal grandfather had an interesting life- at age 16 he kidnapped his brother and sister and took them to Buffalo, Wyoming to fulfill a deathbed promise to his father; while a young man living in Buffalo he met Margaret Lothian and asked her to marry him, but she said no and married the guy who owned a ranch; he herded sheep in the midst of Wyoming cattle country, then... moved to California and enrolled in a business school. After graduating he... moved to Arizona where he worked at or ran various trading posts and general stores in the mining areas while Arizona was still a territory. While in Arizona he met and married Ida Francis Penn; Ida was a ...

When I was a a kid I idolized my paternal grandfather, John Oscar. When I came to know him, he lived on a small farm with my paternal grandmother Ida Frances in Stockton, California. He could do no wrong. But that was a little bit of fantasy that hid rather a lot of difficult behavior- he could be a pain in the butt when he put his mind to it. I called him Pa (god knows how I decided on that name! He was emphatic that he not to be called Grandpa- ' pick a name just not Grandpa! '). On reflection, he was a strident 'my way or the highway' guy who had managed trading posts and general stores in the mining areas of territorial Arizona, moved to California where he owned his own grocery, worked for Piggly Wiggly markets, and managed a few different Safeway stores. He retired from Safeway when his job went away during the depression, then supervised a US Army warehouse at Sharpe's Depot in Stockton during WW-II. From what I've been able to learn about him doing gene...