RESTORED TO LIFE

About the Book

Our grandmother, Ethel Rouanzoin Domecq died at age 38 after giving birth to ten children, one of whom was my mother. Having always felt a void in my life since I never knew my maternal grandmother, I embarked upon a journey of discovery in order to try to recreate her life. To do that, I researched four parallel family lines which gradually converged, then joined, with the marriage of my/our grandparents in 1903 in Walla Walla, Washington. As a result of extensive research and reading, I learned that our English ancestors were among the first Puritan colonists in Massachusetts in 1634. I learned that descendants of our English ancestors joined some of our Scottish ancestors in Iowa over 200 years later where they decided to push further west again, this time together, across the Oregon Trail. They finally settled in northeastern Oregon in 1862. I learned that our German ancestors fled a religious war and came to America before the American Revolution. Only one of our German ancestors however, our great grandfather Adam J. Rouanzoin, ended up in the Northwest where he met and married our great grandmother. Last, but certainly not least, I came to realize that what I had always thought of as my French grandfather was not really French, but Béarnais. Louis Domecq and his mother and two sisters followed his father to California from Bordeaux in 1888. The tale of these, our grandmother's and her husband's, families is also the story of the United States of America, which they helped create by their presence, perseverance, hard work and energy. By telling their stories, I hope to have restored them all to life and to have made my grandmother known to generations of our family to come.

About the Author

Patricia Moore is a second generation Californian, born in the San Francisco Bay Area. A graduate of UC Berkeley with a BA in French, she received her MA in French from Middlebury College in Vermont. Patricia has lived in Europe for three years, twice in France and once in Belgium where she was a Fulbright Exchange teacher and learned to drink beer. Patricia loves to read, travel, root for the S.F. Giants, watch movies, listen to classical music, sing and go to the opera. This book about her family's roots is her first and last.