Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Close or distant relations

I find it interesting that a cousin of some level of remove, has written that my ancestors from Sevierville, TN came to the Americas on the Mayflower.

However, my grandfather, George Rogers, who was a direct descendent from these Rogers, typed by hand, in the 1950s, from the recorded entries in The Rogers Family Bible.

The first entry in the family Bible under the listing of births, deaths and marriages was:

Henry Rogers, c.1741-1794. In American Revolution; of Farquier County, VA, Chatham County, NC, and Sevier County, TN

There are details which came from other sources showing that our branch came from England into Jamestown, VA.  Nothing about Mayflower.

Of course there were lots of wives and their fathers and mothers, and so maybe someone else came from MA.

I do know that I'm a direct descendent of those Tennessee pioneers, wherever they might have originally hailed from.  I've found that the early records in Sevier County were lost in a court house fire, which makes this primary source of information more valuable.

To continue with the typed record from my grandfather, out of the Rogers Family Bible:
Rev. Elijah Rogers  b. May 1774 Farquier County, VA d. 5.11.1841; son of Henry Rogers and Elizabeth Lankford Rogers of New Jersey.  Rev. Rogers was a Baptist Lay Pastor, fought with Col. Dogherty in E. Tennessee Militia against Cherokees, and with Col Dogherty to Natchez to force surrender of New Orleans by Spanish in 1803;  farm located at mouth of Little Pigeon River and French Broad River


This marker was pictured on Ancestry.com


A historical note is that the Tennessee forces didn't get to the Natchez Trace until after the war was over and peace had brought a lot of new territory to the United States.

I confess it's much easier to enjoy looking at the names and dates (about all that remains of some of these lives) than to keep track of the names and birthdates of my own close relatives.  I have no idea of the dates of my cousin's children, nor their marriages, nor their children.  So there are a lot of folks I'm related to which I haven't kept track of.

That's my own fault of course.  I left Texas as an 8 year old, and was raised in St. Louis until I left my parent's home at age 21.  Then I married and went off to raise my own family and then was divorced.  I'm sorry that while I was a young single mother with a career (who also went back to college) that I missed out on keeping track of cousins in Texas and Wisconsin.

Sometimes I see other young people doing the same thing, focusing upon the survival and demands of their own family.  Now I've got the time and the interest, and I won't be welcome I fear, by any of these relatives.

So I share what is available either through my grandfather's interest in his ancestors, or from here on the net, and maybe from various old albums of photos.   Since my grandfather was orphaned very young, his interest probably was similar to mine, to fill in gaps with people who had gone before rather than those who were around while we were growing up.


This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday for this week, and again I have nothing that's a direct inspiration from the photo suggested.  But you know I'll be looking at what everyone else has come up with.






16 comments:

  1. You might be surprised by people's reaction. You don't know these folks because you were estranged by circumstances, not because of some family feud, or something along those lines. One can't fault you for dealing with Life's necessities first. Perhaps there is someone in that family sharing your interests.
    :)~
    HUGZ

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  2. I agree with Ticklebear. While I'm close to most of my cousins, I am always surprised and HAPPY to hear from very distant cousins who have found my blog. They always can add another piece of the puzzle.

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  3. I reconnected with a five or six cousins on-line and we've really enjoyed trading stories and pictures. It's been wonderful and I hope this happens to you too.

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  4. The Mayflower also figures into our family history. I wonder if it's really true. My sister has been trying to research this for the longest time. And still can't prove it.
    Nancy

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  5. Since I don't have kids to pass things on to, I haven't really taken an interest in genealogy. I am lucky that my sister found genealogies already put together by relatives of my parents. One was a cousin of my father that we had no idea even existed.

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  6. When I first started my blog, I was still looking for "answers" and tho I still have a raft of unanswered questions, I have changed. I write for me, things and people that interest me --- and the most surprising thing has occurred. I have more and more contacts from folks I dinna even know, or folks I dinna know were related, but each has a bit of a story or thought or memory to tell me. And that's the fun!

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  7. It is like Ticklebear and others said, you may be pleasantly surprised about the reaction of your relatives!
    Just try it!

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  8. The Internet and email makes it a litte easier to get back in touch maybe? You can control the level of contact that you want without it becoming overwhelming.

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  9. Thanks everyone. I guess I do carry around some guilt about not having close ties to my "family." This has become more evident to me now that I live in the mountains of NC. Everyone knows how they're related to each other!

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  10. In tracing my family's ancestors the thing that has surprised me is how many there were that I did not know about - cousins galore. Also it's so easy to lose track of the children of nephews and nieces.
    Interesting that you show a gravestone = for future generations this route will become less and less feasible as more people are cremated.

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  11. Let's hope they will read this and get in touch.

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  12. As has been said , you might well get a positive response.I recently was contacted by an unknown distant relative in South America via facebook.It's pleasant & undemanding .It's enough to to they are there & they know You know they are there.....

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  13. We always seem to be captivated by a name, almost as though genes are only passed on along with a family name. There is a little bit of me which is a Burnett, but there is a heck of a lot more that is a whole host of other people. there is probably a bit of Rogers in there.

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  14. Well, if you've ever paid any attention to the G-nome project (however it's spelled) they came up with the conclusion that if we went back 13 generations, (only!) there weren't enough people on earth to have as much diversity as they expected. So yep, we don't have to go back as far as Adam and his wives to have common ancestors, do we?

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  15. Family history rarely follows a logical or traditional path. That's what makes it such an interesting challenge. Like a Soduku puzzle. I have come across several family trees on ancestry.com that were just wrong, and it was not even my family. I think figuring out the tree itself is less important than learning about the dynamics of each family generation, like discovering that religious persecution pushed some distant relative into a small boat and an adventure in the New World.

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  16. I'm still waiting to be found by real relatives and really do hope someday that I might! I enjoyed this, and it is amazing when ever I discover some coming here on the Mayflower. Once on a trip on the east coast I bought an old book that listed passengers on the Mayflower, printed before google came to life!

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