Foreword

Our fam­ily his­to­ries are pre­sented here, which are inte­grated into the even­tual sto­ries of our chil­dren to whom we hap­pily present this. It records the trav­els of the Mer­les from the Province of Aisne, France, where they had per­pet­u­ated their name by found­ing and nam­ing the vil­lage of Merle before the year of 1600 A.D. In Eng­land they became Mer­rells, then Mer­rill. Many were com­mer­cial peo­ple, espe­cially gro­cers. Today their descen­dants are scat­tered over the United States and south­ern Canada.

The Beld­ing side of this story started in a small vil­lage, Tot­ten­ham, Eng­land and a like vil­lage of Wim­both­sam, Eng­land, when Robert Arthur Beld­ing was born in the for­mer in 1832 and Mary Alice Richer was born in the lat­ter in 1837. Both places are now part of Greater Lon­don, Eng­land. The two emi­grated to the New World, sep­a­rately, but met later to marry and become the imme­di­ate ances­tors of you children.

Years ago Schweitzers lived in Ger­many, some of whom emi­grated to Penn­syl­va­nia, U.S.A., where they became Switzers. About 1780 some moved to Virginia’s Shenan­doah Val­ley, near Mt. Solon and Mt. Sid­ney, north of Staunton, Augusta County. Abra­ham III and Matilda Bryan Switzer led a wagon train west in 1854. They were your pater­nal great-grandparents.

The Eastin story began about 1785 with Peter Todd and wife migrat­ing from North Car­olina to what is now the Blue­grass Ord­nance Depot of the U.S. Army, near Lex­ing­ton, KY. One grand­daugh­ter, Sarah Todd, later mar­ried Nicholas Eastin of Lex­ing­ton and migrated with him to Indi­ana and Illi­nois. They were your pater­nal, mater­nal great-grandparents.

We, Moms and Dad, are pleased to present this his­tory to you and hope it will be cher­ished. To read­ers who are not Cana­dian, this coun­try is cel­e­brat­ing its hun­dredth birth­day in 1967. May we sug­gest this is our Cen­ten­nial project?

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