The Schmehl-Visser Family that became the Smale-Fisher Family
This was a family who came to the USA from all over Northern Europe; very early (before the American Revolution), in the Great Migration of the mid 1800's, and in the early 20th century for love.
The earliest were the English settlers, Mark, Buck, Chapman, Jordan and their earlier families. These people were not content to stay put and fanned out in the early 1800's into what was then the rugged frontier:Western New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri. In 1847, the whole itchy-footed Mark family, who had already left Pennsylvania, then Kentucky, now left Missouri and went by covered wagon over the Oregon Trail to Oregon. Meanwhile the equally itchy-footed Chapman family who had gone from New York, to Ohio, to Pennsylvania, to Indiana, and finally to Kansas where the parents stayed and a son went off to Washington Territory before 1880.
For this family, the Great Migration brought in settlers from the Netherlands and Germany to the midwest to farm and raise families. The Vissers from Friesland in the Netherlands became Fishers in Indiana. Also from Friesland were the Symensmas, the Ykemas, and the De Vries. The Schmehl's from Mecklenburg, Germany went to Minnesota. Son's from these families went on to Oregon and Washington.
The Schmehl son, Johahn, went with his job to the Vancouver, British Columbia area and there met Elizabeth Calvert, a nurse who had come to that area, by way of the Yukon Territory, from Quebec. Her ancestors had come from Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Jersey off the French coast. They married in 1913 and in 1917 they changed their name to Smale after moving to Seattle. Their son Norman Calvert Smale was born during 1915 in New Westminster, British Columbia and they returned to Washington shortly after that.
The Fisher son, Henry Pervine, who went to Oregon, met and married Electa Chapman, a daughter of the Chapman-Mark family and they had two daughters Esther Winifred and Fannie Jane.
Norman and (Ester) Winifred met in Portland, OR and married there in 1947. They raised five childred there: Bill, Elizabeth, Ruby, Paul, and Mark.
The rest, as they say, is "just" details, but all those details add up to a rich and varied American experience. If anyone has photos or addiitons, send them on to David Butler and we will see how to add them, Every little tidbit adds to the depth of the family.
These pages were put together by Susan Butler Czaja for Ruby Smale's family from research on Ancestry.com and other sources.