The Adams, Baroni, Engel, and Rocheleau Family History Site

Last revised on
Sunday, February 19, 2006.
See the history log for changes.

Main surnames in this family file are:

Adams - From Scotland to Victoria County Ontario to Huron County in Michigan and then Detroit with ties back to Germany. The Adams line begins with James Adams immigrating with his wife and family to Victoria County, Ontario, Canada from Scotland in 1856. He becomes a farmer in Somerville. His son Alexander becomes a dispatcher at the Woodville, Ontario rail station (GTW Midland Division), marries and raises a family. Alexander's son Daniel Webster immigrates to Huron County, Michigan.

Engel - From Kitchner/Waterloo, Ontario to Detroit.

Baroni - From Tenno, Austria to the coal mining region of western Pennsylvania to Detroit. Two separate Baroni families meet in Tenno, Trentino, Austria in the late 1800s and immigrate to the US. First as coal miners and later the families spread throughout the country. Seven generations are described in the reports below.

Rocheleau - From Sandwich, Ontario to Detroit with other members coming from Saginaw, Michigan. The Rocheleau family traces its' ancestry back to France in the mid-1600s and to the Detroit/Windsor river region from 1701. This family is well documented in Rev. Fr. Christian Denissen's Genealogy of the French Families of the Detroit River Region. We have tried to pick up where Denissen leaves off -- with the descendant families of Joseph Rochereau dit Lesparance and especially his son Abraham who was born in Sandwich Ontario in 1817.

Other important surnames include:
Brunatti from Tenno, Austria and PA; Casey and O'Brien from Saginaw MI; Schmyser from Sarnia Ontario and Huron County MI; Morin from Essex/Amhurstburg Ontario; Zuendel from Nagold, Wuerttemberg, Germany and Huron County MI

Primary Families

These descendant pages in the right hand column represent the major lines in our family.

A word of warning. All the information on this site is a compilation of many researchers efforts. Not all the data is documented or referenced so it would benefit your research to verify this data before accepting its authenticity.

All of these descendant pages and the other 750+ pages on this site including the surname web cards and historical notes pages have been indexed and can be searched by name, location, date,etc.

Surname web cards last updated 3/19/2001.

A WORD ABOUT PRIVACY: Those who may still be living are designated on these reports as "private". Please read my privacy statement and contact us for further information.

Privacy: Sharing genealogical information about ancestors can be quite fulfilling. However, many today are becoming exceedingly more cautious about putting any information about living individuals into the internet domain -- especially concerning children. Major concerns relate to identity theft and compromising personal privacy.

These are concerns of others beyond the genealogical community. Using any good www search engine on these topics will generate thousands of hits -- many are website articles and information posted by governments, by news organizations, by police and security agencies.

Once "out there", such data moves permanently into the public domain -- "once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it can't be put back in". This applies to personal information once published or otherwise let loose into the public arena. Many parents today even avoid birth announcements in newspapers. These are slowly being posted on-line and while they might seem to be innocuous today, they can lead to troubles in the future.... not for everyone, to be sure.... but for some, for certain.

So I implore you all.... become familiar with personal privacy issues and concerns with this new technology.... and do NOT POST information about LIVING individuals into these public forums without their knowledge and consent.... and especially NOT FOR CHILDREN EVER. Their rights to their own privacy as adults should not be compromised by their parents or any other relatives.

I post information on my web site ONLY if they meet two criteria:

1. The material is public knowledge, the research is my own, or I have permission from the one who did the research, and

2. The individual is not living and was born before 1920 (I think that's the same date the U.S. government uses).

I have posted NO information on this site for any living individual or even those individuals for which I am unsure.