Ross Jennings

The Serig Family in Wheeling, WV Ross Jennings

The book follows the descendants of two brothers who came to Wheeling, West Virginia from Germany in the 1830s. Over successive generations, many of those descendants either moved away from the Wheeling area or did not have children, but a few remained in the Wheeling area to raise their families, and some of their descendants remain in the Wheeling area to this day. However, the descendants of each brother who are still in the Wheeling area have no idea that they are related to the descendants of the other brother who are still in the Wheeling area. This is true even for those few who share the original last name of Serig. This book is an attempt to understand how this could happen, how the descendants of two brothers, living in the same small town and with the same unusual last name, could become so disconnected that they no longer realize they are related. As I follow the Serig family, they experienced the same life events that other families of the era experienced: marriage and divorce, the early death of children, out-of-wedlock children, military service, strong religious affiliations, and the scattering of successive generations around the country.