RUBY One-Name Study : studying the Ruby surname across the world

This post, provided by Project Leader Paul Howes, describes how serendipity plays a role in discovering new information and for the unfortunate Leonhard Ruby how his surname dictated where he was was sent as a prisoner of war. When we were integrating two files of Ruby families of Swiss descent, initially received from Joe Brillhart and Gerhard Fischer, we noticed that there were war deaths of German soldiers throughout Europe and even beyond.   As noted in an earlier blog post they stretched from England to Kazakhstan. I did a little figuring.   There are twelve German Ruby men who died between 1941 and 1945.   Three of them appear to have been old enough to have died from natural causes in their home towns, though interestingly perhaps, they all worked for the German railways.   Of the rest four died in Russia, two in Romania,one in Kazakhstan,one in England, and   one was not known, just “gefallen im Weltkrieg” (died in the world war). ...

William Ruby, the eldest son of John Ruby and Elizabeth Carpenter, was born in 1815 in Abbotskerswell, Devon, England. He married Ann Garrett and two sons were born in Devon, Samuel and George. [1]   With these very young children, they undertook the journey across the cold Atlantic to Newfoundland in 1843.   A third son, Silas Garrett, was born in St. John’s, NFL in 1850.   Genealogical research in Newfoundland is challenging in a different way from many other parts of Canada – this rocky island is far from its nearest provincial neighbour. Engaged in various colonial relations with Great Britain, it did not become a province of Canada until 1949.   Settlement was often in remote locations where church officials may only pass through once a year or less; records in the 1800s and even early 1900s can be very scarce and may only be available as a transcript with the original destroyed or illegible. Civil registration was late in implementation an...