Stan Merriman/Green Family Histories

We won't have access to his brown accordion files. Everyone is estranged since someone's swatting with @heferyzan (Ryan Tomcik) of Mandiant had fatalities.  So, here is an e-mail I received 12-10-2008

I would add there were some war medals on Green side (Grandma Greens Father I believe) which were sent to Kaitlyn I believe (hopefully).  

 

family histories.doc MERRIMAN/GREEN FAMILY HISTORIES

This is intended as a snapshot of your family history if anyone is interested.

Merriman (changed from Merryman by stan’s great grandfather)

Stan’s parents- Taylor Merriman and Margaret Worthen Merriman

Taylor  born in Mill Valley California.  He had one sister, Aunt Jane (Jocelyn’s mother).  He died in the mid-seventies. He died of leukemia.  He was an officer in the US Army Transportation Corp., going in early WWII; re-activated for the Korean war.  He graduated from a business college in San Francisco, was a jazz trumpet player and worked with his father in their coffee brewing machine business, then the service, then back to the coffee company, then reupped in the reserves in the Korean conflict (to mainly get away from the coffee business), moving us from Mill Valley to Glen Burnie, Md. and Ft. Meade.  When I was at Santa Clara, he was deactivated from the army and moved to San Rafael to become a transportation director for a big fruit/vegetable packer. He retired from them and finished his army reserves duty as a Lt. Col.  

 His father was Frederic Merriman, born in Moline, Ill. and lived mostly in Mill Valley, Calif. With a brief stint in Westwood, LA, Calif. He was a graduate of Northwestern University in Chicago in Pharmacy.  He served in WW I as a pilot and trainer of pilots in Florida. He was an entrepreneur who invented a coffee brewing system for restaurants and that maintained their livelihood for many years.  He had one sister, Dorothy Kell, who lost her husband early in life and maintained a lesbian relationship with Jan Barrett winding up in Santa Rosa, Calif. For many years.  She was a furniture store owner and Jan a decorator.  He had a brother, Tommy Merryman (he liked the old name) was a theatrical person, dancer and openly gay.  His father was Perry Merryman, who lived in Moline Ill., receiving a land grant to settle there.  Their lineage seems to be totally English.  I believe the Merriman house in Corpus was owned by a distant relative, from Illinois, who was a lawyer in Texas and then returned to Illinois.

His mother was Bernice Taylor Merriman.  She was a college graduate and member of the Daughters of the American Republic and an early civil rights advocate and feminist.  The Taylors roots were in new England, with may Christian Science church members in the family.  Her ancestors came over on the Mayflower, Pereguin White.  Looks like solid English on this side too.

Margaret Worthen, “Maggie”,  my mother, was born in Salt Lake City, with one sister, Jean. Their parents, Muriel Rozsa (Hungarian and English), whose parents immigrated from Hungary to Utah. Their town is called Arad City, now in Romania (border changed).  This side of the family claimed Hungarian gypsy roots and some history of Arad City bears this out with pretty big Roma population. 

Her dad was 
Stan Worthen, also born in Utah, as were his parents.  There seems to be Cherokee blood on this side with grandpa Worthen’s mothers side, my great grandmother said to be a full blooded Cherokee “sqaw” who migrated up from Oklahoma on the trail of tears. 
Stan had high cheek bones, little body hair and a dark complexion.  Otherwise, all English ancestors who somehow got to Utah.  None claimed to be Mormons on both sides.  
Stan was a labor organizer for the film projectionist union and took me to his movie house all the time, where he worked in the hot projection booth in his underwear.

 Mom had maybe one semester of college before leaving to marry Dad who met her in Salt Lake on a business trip. She was always a homemaker.   Besides the Hungarian blood, the Rozsa’s married English immigrants.  Mom and I got within 40 miles of Arad during our trip to eastern Europe.

Green

Mom was born in Baltimore and raised in Woodlawn; her brother was Buzzy.  She graduated from Mt. St. Agnes College, the first college grad in her family; Buzzy graduated from University of Baltimore.
Mom’s Dad, Lawrence W. Green, was born in Maryland, of rural (near Baltimore) Baltimore County stock.  I think he had one brother.  Larry owned a commercial laundry and small apartments.  His parents were Maryland born, whose parents immigrated from Germany through the Port of Baltimore.  The farmed and worked labor jobs to support their family. 

Grandmother and Grandfather Green would have big Sunday dinners we would go to when we lived in the area; German food and crabs; happy, warm and loving people they both lived well into their eighties and nineties.

Sylvia Lang Green and her sister, who died young of complications from epilepsy, were born to parents, the Langheinrich’s, who immigrated from Czechoslovakia. Their changed their name to Lang.  Her Dad worked for McCormick spices for many years and retired from that Baltimore company.  They lived in Arundel County to the south of Baltimore.  Sylvia also had a brother, Frank, who served in WWII and had a very successful cleaning chemical manufacturing business, had two daughters and a son and lived most of his life in Frederic Maryland.  We had many happy family events with that side of the family.  The Lang grandparents would have us over a lot for dinners, cooking Czech food.  

Sylvia worked for a vending company and because of her working outside the home, was a bit of a rebel and feminist. When Larry died (of lung cancer), in latter years, when we moved to Texas, she sold the family house in Woodlawn and moved to Houston to be near you and us; got along better with us than Buzzy and Nancy.  Moo and I saw the house when we visited Mom’s grave site and it looked identical to how it looked when we were dating.

Sylvia was a wonderful cook and had sloppy joes every Saturday nite which I’d drive up for when you mom and I were dating and engaged; she insisted that we have a solemn Catholic engagement ceremony in the neighborhood Church; not wanting to cross my beloved Sylvia, I happily complied. If I was crazy in love with your Mom for 46 years, which I was indeed, I adored Sylvia and will never forget, as she was passing, her whispering in my year, “I love you”.  I got one helluva package when I married your Mom. 

There is a big file in my stack files in a brown accordion folder with all kinds of mostly Merriman/Worthen stuff.  Well worth spending some time with including some really valuable documents that are about 100 years old and very old pictures of me, my Mom and Dad and other family members. Enjoy.