John Ring and the Sunken Ship

back to Family Stories, Fall 2021

by Kiley Ring

When I first started researching my dad’s paternal line, I hit a roadblock pretty early on. I couldn’t seem to find any records dating past my third great-grandfather, John Ring (1844 – 1875). I found that he was born in County Cork, Ireland, and he was the first Ring to come over to the United States. However, the story became far more interesting.

Naturally, my dad had been boasting to his family about how I was beginning this family story report, and my great uncle Jack Ring happened to reach out to me, saying he found some records that could possibly help me out. Fast forward a week and a half later, and Uncle Jack had mailed me a binder with some of the records he compiled.

Binder that I received from my great uncle Jack Ring (living) while I was beginning my research

Among these, he included a letter detailing John Ring’s journey to the United States. He got on a ship called the M/V Sardis, but unfortunately, on about 30 December 1868, this ship encountered a collision with another ship called the M/V Tardis. Luckily, John and all of the other passengers survived and were taken to Liverpool, where they were eventually discharged. It hit me – this was why there were no records connecting John Ring to any parents, or no evidence of a birth certificate! His records must have been lost on the ship when it went down. The only way I was able to find that he was born in County Cork was from a later Census record, which he must have self-reported.

My Uncle Jack attached a copy of the U.S. Certificate of Discharge that John received (Fig 2), and after this, he made it to Connecticut, where he wed and had his son, Patrick Ring (1874 – 1943). From this point on, census records indicate that the Ring family settled down in Connecticut for several generations, inhabiting Hartford until my grandfather Vincent Swords Ring (1938 – 2009) moved closer to the shore to own a boat, settling down in New Haven, Connecticut. Just 25 miles east of New Haven, my father was born in Clinton, Connecticut. He later moved to complete law school at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., before getting married and moving to Bethesda, Maryland, where I was born in 2002. 

U.S. Certificate of Discharge that my third great-grandfather John Ring (1844-1875) received in 1868

As you can see, for the most part my family stayed in Connecticut (Fig. 3), so I still have family up north today; however, John Ring’s journey to the United States is what makes this side of my family so interesting, and if it wasn’t for his luck in surviving the collision of that ship, none of this direct line would even exist!

Markers of John Ring’s original settling location, Hartford, Connecticut, followed by Vincent Ring’s place of birth (New Haven) and Kevin Ring’s place of birth (Clinton)

Learning that most of the records of Rings dating before John Ring are most likely at the bottom of the ocean is certainly a bit of a letdown, but I don’t plan on letting that stop me from doing further digging and seeing if somehow, somewhere, I can find out who came before my third-great grandfather, John Ring.