He can trace his genealogy back to the Revolutionary War era and focus on the more recent history of his immigrant great-grandparents who came from Ireland and Alsace to settle in Illinois.

The family name on his mother’s side was Spaulding.

The British and early American history is contained in an edition of “The Spaulding Memorial” and includes accounts of service in the Revolutionary War when, the family name having been changed to Spalding, many “marched to Cambridge” or “marched for the relief of Boston in the Lexington alarm” of 1775.

Edward Spalding, whose death is recorded on June 17, 1775, was “last seen in the trenches of Bunker Hill.” Another was “shot from his horse.” Still another, Joseph, who died in 1820, was “among the brave asserters and defenders of the liberties of his country at Bunker Hill, where he opened the battle by firing upon the enemy before orders were given”— possibly the first shot fired at that famous site.

Still another relative provided quarters for General Lafayette on his farm in Plainfield, Conn., and another gave his house over for use as “a retreat for sick and wounded soldiers.”

The Spalding colonists had names long since gone out of fashion - Simeon, Zebulon, Mercy, Phineas, Moses, and Abigail. There was a Priscilla, a Mehitable, and many women named Thankful. There were large families, with often as many as 10 children. They died of smallpox and yellow fever. Some died at the hands of Indians.

The Spaldings worked at various trades. One, Francis, born in 1824, had a string of occupations: he measured cloth in a dry goods store, wielded a pen in the counting room of a first-class city journal, peddled milk, chopped wood, caught shad in the Merrimac, taught school on the Illinois prairie, studied and practiced medicine, crossed the plains as a surveyor in 1850, prospected for gold, kept a drug store and hotel, ran a ranch, was a government contractor, U.S. marshal, and a county judge. He also earned many graduate degrees.

Blacksmith, General...
The Spaldings espoused various religions - some were Unitarians, Presbyterians, members of the Society of Friends; some were Methodists, “preachers of the Gospel” and one, Asa, was an ordained evangelist with the Baptist denomination.

More recently the family history has focused on his great-grandparents in Illinois, and specifically on the southern edge of Adams Township, Lasalle County, where John Meyer (later spelled Meyers and still later changed to Myers) brought his family from Alsace in 1891.

Here his son Emil, born in Alsace and then 11 years old, grew up and helped in the family blacksmith and woodworking shop, and a general store later converted into an ice cream parlor.

At the age of 30, Emil married Laura May Spray of Earlville, the only child of George and Ellen Corcoran Spray. George Spray was a son of John Spray, born in Derbyshire, England, and Emily Jane Sumpter, reputedly a descendant of General Sumpter of Revolutionary War fame.

Emil and Laura, grandparents of Archbishop-designate Myers, had seven children, among them Melvin Wayne (Jack), the father of the archbishop-designate.

The Spaulding side of the Myers family came to the United States from England in 1614 and settled in Pittsfield, Mass. George Henry Spaulding, an ancestor of Archbishop-designate Myers, was a ninth generation Spaulding. He made his home in Waltham, married in 1850, and became father of 10 children; the oldest, Anna, became the great-grandmother of the archbishop-designate.

Archbishop's "roots"
Patrick Donahue, the archbishop-designate’s great-grandfather, was born in County Clare, Ireland, and came to America at the age of 16. He married Anna Findora Spaulding in 1868.

The family includes another Irish ancestor, Michael Moriarty Sr., who came from Ireland during the potato famine in 1846 and settled in Springfield, Mass. He worked in the cranberry fields, then moved near Boston, then to the midwest where he worked on the Illinois-Michigan canal.

With his family, including his wife Johanna McDonald, and son Michael Jr., who had been born near Boston in 1855, Michael Moriarty relocated once again, this time to Illinois.

Young Michael Moriarty married Elizabeth Brady, who was to become the archbishop-designate’s maternal great-grandmother, in 1882. She was the daughter of James Brady and Catherine Rehil, who had come to Ottawa, Ill., from Fermanaugh County, Ireland.

The Moriartys became parents of five children, among them Catherine, who married Henry Donahue and became mother of Margaret Louise, who became the wife of Jack Myers and mother of the new archbishop-designate.

Archbishop-designate Myers is the oldest of seven children. His brothers are Lawrence of Earlville, William of Ottawa and Don of Bloomington, and three sisters, Mary Margaret Didier of Sugar Grove, Elizabeth Myers of East Peoria and Loretta Malley of Plano, and ten nieces and nephews.