Saturday Night Genealogy Challenge - A Critical Life Decision

James Q Rairigh 1850 - 1911

The Saturday Night Challenge post along with links to all the participants can be found HERE and is as follows:

1)  Did you or your ancestor make a critical life decision that really changed their life in terms of place, work, family, relationships, etc.?

Certainly all of my ancestors made critical life decisions that really changed their lives.  Immigration from Europe to the New World was a major change as as subsequent generations moved a little farther west with each generation the major changes continued.  So I decided to choose to write about an ancestor whose choice was a little different than everyone else's.  For a little back ground my Rairigh line immigrated to the New World prior to 1748 when Nicklaus Rohrig bought some land in Montgomery County PA.  He migrated northwest from Germantown where he made stockings to Montgomery County.  His son John migrated south west to Indiana County PA.  John's son George migrated west to Armstrong County PA.   George's son Samuel migrated further west to Darke County Ohio and then on much farther west to Peabody Kansas.  George was the father of John Quinter Rairigh who was born in 1850 in Pennsylvania and moved with his father to Darke County Ohio and later to Kansas.  He was married while in Kansas to Louisa Dickey who was born back in Darke County but had migrated to Kansas with her family.  James Q and Louisa moved about an hour south to Rock Kansas and Louisa died in 1887. 

Louisa Dickey Rairigh 

1854 - 1887

Then for some reason - if I ever knew why I didn't document it and don't now remember - James Quinter Rairigh moved his four children to a farm in Miami County Indiana.  There he met a widow lady named Lydia Myers and they were married.  They had no children together.  Among the four children of James Q that he had with his first wife was a son named William Harve who was my mother's paternal grandfather.  

I find the fact that every one was moving west for generations and then all at once James Q moved east.  He did not go back to Darke County Ohio but instead chose to go to Miami County Indiana.   But if he had not chosen to go there then my mother's family would have continued in Kansas and with my father's family being in Indiana then they would not have met and I would not have been born.  Therefore I think it was critical that James Q made the choice he did to leave Kansas and move to Indiana.