genealogy Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Leslie went on the 2025 Dave Coz cruise

cousins

Leslie and Rebecca with the cruise director

My sister Leslie went on the 2025 Dave Coz cruise. Someone described it as a “24/7 daytime adventure from Amsterdam to Norway and finally Iceland. The sun never sets this time of year. Wow, what an excursion.”

The website says, “Our guests are fully immersed with the energy and sounds of an array of all-star talent, guided tours, relaxation, and fine dining. ‘Seeing the world together through music’; that’s what the Dave Koz and Friends at Sea cruise is all about!” The 2026 tour of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina is already sold out, and a waitlist exists.

Leslie has been on a few of these Koz tours, generally as the guest of Rebecca Jade, a ship performer and, not coincidentally, Leslie’s daughter. Based on her comments and those reposted by others, Leslie was particularly taken by Iceland.

In 2018, Leslie dueted with Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone. She’s participated in some music competitions onboard and has done well, which is not a surprise, as she’s been singing virtually all her life.

In anticipation of her birthday, I played a CD called Harbor City Heights Worship 2009 on which she appears. It’s not a fair representation of the range of her skills, and they misspell her first name as Lesley(!), but I can hear her vocals, usually in the harmonies. Anyway, I found it on YouTube.

I have other recordings of hers, mostly her solos during her church’s Advent/Christmas Eve services. Alas, I’ve never come across any Green Family Singers recordings.

Genealogy

In the past year, Leslie has spoken to two of our cousins, one each on our mother’s and father’s side, trying to fill the holes in the family tree. As I’ve noted, our lineage has peculiar mysteries, going back not that far.

Anyway, happy birthday, Leslie! If you ever retire, you must transcribe all that family data!

Less Irish

slightly more African

In various iterations I’ve gotten from ancestry.com I seemed to “become more Irish,” starting about 23% and getting up to about 28%. And then there was a big drop in the last interpretation. It’s not that I’m less Irish; I knew this this intellectually.

Region	August 2023	July 2024: more information	% Change
Ireland	28%	20%	– 8%

“Your DNA doesn’t change, but our knowledge does. Over time, the amount of data we have increases, and we improve the ways we can analyze it. When that leads to new discoveries, we update your results.”

Iin some ways it makes a whole lot more sense I couldn’t figure how it could be more than 25% Irish given the fact that my father’s side is virtually 0 percent. Virtually all the Irish is on my mother’s side.

I’m still looking for my mom’s father’s (Clarence Williams)’s mother’s (Margaret Collins) parents, who are almost certainly from Ireland. maybe this year, I’ll be able to crack that nut.

But I haven’t spent that much time looking at my mom’s mom’s (Gertrude Yates Williams) father’s (Edward Yates, b. 1851) mother (Anna Kiser), who may be Irish.

“Same data, more detail. This chart shows the percentages of each region you inherited from your parents. Added together, the percent from each parent for a region equals your percent for that region.”

Mixing it up

The thing about doing genealogy is that I, and likely others, often try to take the easiest path. There’s been a line of my mother’s mother’s mother’s people that I’ve known all my life because they were all lived in Binghamton and there was a family Bible that gave much of the story. Oher branches are much more mysterious, in large part because families have secrets.

Parent 1 is clearly my mother, parent 2, my father. Hmm, I’m more Germanic than I used to be.

Region	Parent 1	Parent 2	You
Total: 14	50%	50%	100%
Nigeria	7%	13%	20%
Ireland	20%	<1%	20%
Benin & Togo	5%	10%	15%
England & Northwestern Europe	8%	7%	15%
Mali	1%	4%	5%
Germanic Europe	3%	2%	5%
Senegal	0%	4%	4%
Ivory Coast & Ghana	1%	2%	3%
Nigerian Woodlands	2%	1%	3%
Cameroon	1%	2%	3%
Western Bantu Peoples	1%	2%	3%
Central West Africa	<1%	2%	2%
Indigenous Americas—North	1%	0%	1%
Norway	<1%	1%	1%

Genealogy: RootsTech 2025 is free online!

Census

The RootsTech 2025 schedule is live, and the three-day online schedule is free. Whether you have genealogical questions or are curious about lineage, you should check out the schedule of over 150 online sessions from Thursday to Saturday, March 6 to 8.

My interests are twofold. I’m trying to find the parents of my great-grandfather, Samuel Walker. I know he was born in Orange County, VA, in 1873 and died in Binghamton, NY, in 1963, but I’m stuck beyond that. I hope Renate Yarborough Sanders’s workshop Til Death or Distance Do We Part: Documenting Marriages of Enslaved and Emancipated Persons will help.

I’m also working on my wife’s family line in a project called the John Olin Origin Project. I’ve written about John Olin before. Assuming he came over on a British ship in the latter part of the 17th century, what was his origin? Was he English, French, Welsh, Irish, or something else? Some of his male descendants have done some DNA testing, but the question has not been answered sufficiently. Perhaps one of the more general sessions at RootsTech will help.

My wife is on the John>Joseph>Joseph>Reuben>John>Earl>Orva>George line. I will check out Tell Your Story Like a True Reporter by Rachel Trotter at Roots Tech because I find the topic fascinating. I wish to share my enthusiasm with others.

Worry

I’m concerned about the future of the Census and the critical data it collects for future genealogists. “Director Robert Santos, the renowned data expert who has led the Bureau for years, abruptly announced his resignation.” This paves the way for a partisan hack replacement.

“Next, the bureau’s website started going dark for periods of time. The New York Times reported that ‘more than 3,000 pages from the Census Bureau, the vast majority of which are articles filed under research and methodology, were affected. Other missing pages include data stewardship policies and documentation for several data sets and surveys.'” It’s another breach of competency to address.

Here’s a factoid: 1890 Census Substitutes: “In January of 1921, a fire broke out in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington D.C., where the 1890 U.S. Census records were being stored…”

Making the effort

“ministry of presence, support, and advocacy for the victims of society’s injustice and neglect”

Making the effort is its own reward, someone said.

It would have been very easy not to go to church the Sunday morning of February 2nd. Even with my greatest effort, clearing our sidewalk of snow and ice the day before was impossible as the temperature plummeted, even with rock salt. Most of my neighbors were likewise stymied.

Moreover, the service wasn’t at my church but at Emmanuel Baptist, one of the FOCUS churches. “For more than 50 years, FOCUS has created a community called to be a collective voice – and a helping hand – for those in need.”

Yeah, I COULD have blown it off, but I like supporting FOCUS. Moreover, singing together with people from other congregations is fun. So I took the 910 bus down to the state capitol and walked the two slippery, frigid (<0F, c. -20C) blocks to Emmanuel, where about 25 of us got to sing a couple of songs together.

Pastor Kathy gave a good sermon. She noted that Jesus took a public stand against a faith system that offered religious cover for political violence. My, did THAT resonate!

Covenant

We always recite the FOCUS covenant. It has changed a bit since the collective formed in the mid-1960s, but the spirit of service has not been altered;

We believe that we are called by God to discern amid the many shapes of need and pain around us, the design of Christ’s mandate for our shared ministry.
We covenant, therefore, with God and with one another:
to engage in a search for faithful and effective forms of ministry;
to provide a ministry of presence, support, and advocacy for the victims of society’s injustice and neglect;
to speak the truth in places of power on behalf of the powerless;
to equip ourselves for the service of Christ through joint educational and community-building ventures;
and to celebrate in worship the meaning of our shared mission.

We commit to these purposes our prayers, our time, our talent, and our material resources with the hope that our life and work together in this time and place will demonstrate the liberating and reconciling power of the gospel.

What now?

After the service, I talked to several people about how they were doing and what they were doing to keep themselves sane these days. One worked at the FOCUS food pantry, and another served meals at the FOCUS breakfast club. Serving others gave them hope.

Another person I’ve known for a long time talked about volunteering at RISSE, whose mission is “to support refugees and immigrants to build new lives and thrive in the Capital Region… through language classes, immigration and employment assistance, youth programming, and case management. The service is not very far from my house. (Related: from WRGB-TV, Channel 6 -Local schools prepare for immigration policy changes.)

Yet another person suggested checking out a website called Indivisible. When I got home, I went to the website, but I was wary. The most geographically specific site was labeled: All in for Harris/Walz Action Team Capital Region NY.

Nevertheless, I wrote in an email titled, “What actions are you doing re: DOGE?” along with this Democracy Now video. Beth from Bethlehem Indivisible replied, “Lots of phone calls to electeds, and after last night’s Indivisible Mass Call, we are planning office visits to Schumer and Gillibrand, which is the most important thing right now.”

So, I’m “in the loop” on what I hope is a fruitful experience. (Oh, Kelly is writing to his Member of Congress.) I’m tired of being tired, frustrated, and angry without direction. Is this THE answer? Dunno. But I need to do SOMETHING that seems to be a response to political violence.

Genealogy blocked

Hey, I wrote to my state legislators about a potential change in NYS law that would hurt genealogical research.

“As part of New York State’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal, Part U of the Health and Mental Hygiene Legislation would:

😡 Extend embargo periods to 125 years for birth records, 100 years for marriages, and 75 years for deaths — making New York one of the most restrictive states for vital records access in the entire country!
😡 Hike fees by more than 400%, raising the cost of a single genealogical record request to $95!
🤬 Eliminate even the basic vital records indexes, making it nearly impossible to simply confirm if a record exists in the first place!”

Read here and especially here, and if you’re in New York State, contact your state legislators before 5 pm on Tuesday, February 11.

Not editing a book

time is not fungible

I’m not editing a book.

A few months ago, a friend asked me if I would edit a book written by the adult child of a famous deceased person. The parent is a name that at least some of you would instantly recognize.

I said yes. This was probably a mistake because I had not read the book before I agreed to edit it. The writer was also peculiar in that they were very concerned about the possibility that I or somebody else might exploit them based on their parent’s name. It was a weird interaction.

As I started editing the book, I had far less time to work on it than I anticipated. In the summer of 2023, my wife worked almost the entire summer; I think she took off perhaps a week or so. My daughter also worked several hours a week at a clothing store.

Different this time

In the summer of ’24, my wife took off for eight weeks, which was good and proper. But we had lots of projects to do in the house that needed to happen because of some insurance issue that is more in the weeds than I need to get into here. My daughter was working fewer hours than she hoped at the new store she was working at. Moreover, we went on vacation, a week at Chautauqua and a week in DC.

So, the time I thought I had available to work on this project did not exist. Still, it became very difficult for me because I was fussy enough to want to fulfill the obligations.

After talking to a couple of people, I contacted the person who asked me to edit the book, and they said OK, we don’t want you to go crazy. Then I had to talk to the author. I sent them an e-mail, which they obviously didn’t see. So I texted – one does not just call – and they wrote back: “Book seems like a curse. No one finished it. Crazy.” Did I mention I was not the first to take on the book? The notes from a previous editor were still in my version.

Reboot

But this episode got me thinking about the other things I’m doing in my life, the things that are working for me, what I really want to do, and what I don’t.

I want to work on genealogy, which I have not spent enough time on. My sister Leslie had talked to both our third cousin on our mother’s side and my father’s first cousin and did a lot of work when she was in Binghamton in July, filling in some holes in our genealogy. The problem is that I haven’t even had time to enter some of the records that I have or the 1000 cues that ancestry.com has provided me.

I want to sing in the church choir. Our choir will sing the Bach Magnificat on Friday, December 6th, at 6:00 PM at First Presbyterian Church in Albany. You should come.

My wife and I are going to see plays and movies.

So, other things have to go off the table. I’ll just have to, in the words of Nancy Reagan, just say no. It won’t be easy at times, but my sanity requires it.