Trevor Loring

Ancestors

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Biography

I was born in 1938 in Harrow, England, the son of Warren Loring Heisman, who later dropped the name Heisman after World War I because of the German sounding name. I was in London during the Blitz but moved at at early age to Slough, where I was educated. I joined the General Post Office as a Youth-in-Training until I was called up to serve in the armed forced. I spent two years in the Royal Signals, nine months in Catterick in Yorkshire and the rest in Germany. After demobilization I emigrated to New Zealand. After two years, there I journeyed up to Asia, where i eventually landed in Japan and met my wife. I married her in 1964 and we have just celebrated our Golden Wedding. Although in my 70s, I continue to work for an English-language newspaper as an editor and rewriter. I have two daughters, now both American citizens. It was my youngest daughter who interested me in finding out more about my paternal grandmother, Dorothy Virginia Brown. I have obtained my father's birth certificate in which it named his father as John William Heisman, the famed American football coach who gave his name to the Heisman Trophy. I have doubts whether Dorothy and Heisman actually married. She must have been about three months pregnant with my father when she left the U.S. in 1897. She gave birth to my father in Mistley, Essex, England on Sept. 13, 1897. She used various names in her travels.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Trevor Loring at registration

Information below is related to Dorothy Virginia Brown (1871-1952), my grandmother.

[Birth] Sept. 11, 1871, in Lodi, Wisconsin. (Wisconsin State Vital Records Office unable to locate birth certificate.)

[Marriage?] Mention of possible marriage between Dorothy and John William Heisman is in a book "When Oberlin was king of the gridiron: the Heisman years" (pages 145-146) by Nat Brandt.

[Passport Records] Date Name Notes April 5, 1897 Dorothy Fairfax Heisman (says she was born in Richmond, Va.) (issued in Minnesota)

Oct. 25, 1900 Mrs. Dorothy v. Heisman (says she was born in Lodi, Wisconsin; (issued in Hamburg, Germany) mentions birth of my father in Sept. 1897)

Nov. 11, 1902 Mrs. Dorothy v. Heisman (says husband died in Havana in 1898; (issued in Hamburg) signs name Dorothy von Heisman)

Nov. 17, 1904 Dorothy Virginia Fairfax Brown Heisman (signed Dorothy Heisman) (issued in Berlin)

Letter and card from Shanghai to my maternal grandmother dated Christmas 1935.

[Return to U.S.] Passenger aboard SS President Wilson from Hong Kong to San Francisco. She was named Dorothy B. Moll. He last husband was Ernst Moll.

[Death] Aug. 31, 1952 (Certificate of Death issued in the name of Dorothy Moll by State of California Department of Public Health). Father's name given as George Brown, mother as Elmira Lasser.