genealogy Archives - Page 2 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

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.

Dad’s cousin Ruth

tracking Walkers

Here’s my dad’s cousin Ruth (R) with two of her children. My sister Leslie and I saw her in October 2022 at the church we all grew up in, Trinity AME Zion in Binghamton, NY. She pointed out a room that used to be a Sunday school classroom where my paternal grandmother Agatha Green used to teach Sunday school to me and a bunch of other kids. It is now a room of noted members of the Trinity family, and she asked us for large photos of our parents for the wall, which we still need to get for her.

The most recent time I saw her was in August 2024, in Horseheads, NY, at the Elmira Jazz Festival. She and her two daughters went to see my niece Leslie’s daughter Rebecca Jade in concert.

She told the story, which I had heard before, about how, after I was born, my father was at her house. He was furiously scribbling on a piece of paper, but she had no idea what the heck he was doing. He was trying to figure out my name, and he wanted to get it to spell out something with my initials and name. Hence, ROG = Roger Owen Green. So she witnessed my naming.

Walker clan

In July 2024, sister Leslie was in Binghamton for her high school reunion. She went to see Cousin Ruth. Ruth gave her a whole bunch of information about the genealogy of the Walker clan. Ruth’s father was Earl; Earl was my paternal grandmother’s brother, so Ruth was my father’s first cousin. She was over a dozen years younger than him, so she didn’t know all the early stories about my father, but she knew him like a big brother.

She has kept track of the Walker genealogy, knowing all of Earl and Agatha’s siblings’ birth/death dates and those of some of their descendants. This will be very useful once I get a chance to work on it. She is my oldest living relative, so I’ve known her even longer than I’ve known Leslie.

I want to thank Ruth for the opportunity to delve into my father’s history. Had he been alive, my father would have been 98 tomorrow. He died in 2000, yet he remains a mystery in various strange and subtle ways.

Green beer and other traditions

Long Black Veil

Even though I don’t drink green beer, or indeed ANY beer, I find it necessary to note St. Patrick’s Day. As I’ve mentioned, I’m at least a quarter Irish. As Ancestry refines its processes, I become MORE Irish, 28%, in fact, as opposed to 19% Nigerian.

This means, of course, that my mother’s father’s mother, Margaret Collins Williams (1865-1931), and her still unidentified parents, even if they were wholly Irish, are not my only ancestors from the Emerald Isle. I must have OTHER ancestors to find, including on my father’s side. Parent 1 is my mom, and Parent 2 is my dad.

The Census Bureau is always useful in noting holidays, and this one is no exception. “Originally a religious holiday to honor St. Patrick, who introduced Christianity to Ireland in the 5th century, St. Patrick’s Day has evolved into a celebration of all things Irish.”

Six years ago, I noted a group called The Burns Sisters out of Ithaca, NY. I was fascinated by them because their late father, John, was the mayor of Binghamton when I was growing up. He and his wife had twelve kids. Here are Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral and Prayer Of St. Francis.

Chieftains

I was very fond of the group The Chieftains. Kelly wrote about them a few times, including this farewell to Paddy Moloney. He links to other videos as well.

But I decided to get really lazy and found something called Best of The Chieftains 2017, which has a YouTube chain of several videos. It includes most of the tracks from a 1995 album called Long Black Veil, which I love, and several from Irish Heartbeat, an album with Van Morrison that someone used to play in my office back in the day. And there are a bunch of other songs. Did I mention that there were 250 videos?

Finally, I found this loud, raucous cut called Irish Blessing by a group called JOETOWN.

Professional Irishman

Malachy McCourt, “who fled a melancholic childhood in Ireland for America, where he applied his blarney and brogue to become something of a professional Irishman as a thespian, a barkeep and a best-selling memoirist, died… in Manhattan. He was 92…

“In 1952, when he was 20, the Brooklyn-born Mr. McCourt reunited with New York.

“He embarked from Ireland with a ticket paid for with $200 in savings sent by his older brother, Frank McCourt, who had emigrated earlier and was working as a public school English teacher.”

Lydster: the grown-up stuff

American Community Survey

My daughter is experiencing the grown-up stuff.

About a week after returning to college, she received in the mail at home what I assumed was a jury summons. After texting her for permission – something I needed to do with my now-adult progeny – I discovered I was correct.

I called the number on the form and spoke to the very understanding representative on the other end, explaining my daughter was currently in another state. “No problem.” They’ll contact her again in mid-May.

She was chagrined; she was looking forward to working that summer. (That $40 per day is not very robust.) Of course, she may not be called beyond one day. Incidentally, I haven’t been called for jury duty since 2014, when I wasn’t chosen.

Census

Then, in early October, she got a notification that she was supposed to contact the campus about a letter she got from the US Census. She wondered if it was legit. I asked her if it was about the American Community Survey, and it was.

The ACS “helps local officials, community leaders, and businesses understand the changes taking place in their communities. It is the premier source for detailed population and housing information about our nation.”

The ACS is the source of much of the more granular data the Census releases. Unless one is a Census nerd like I am, people don’t know about it because only a random sampling of people receives it each month.

The letter from the college was delivered to my daughter’s room, directing her to contact a person with Census. I verified that this person worked for the Bureau because that’s what fathers and librarians do.

Tidy

When we visited our daughter at college in October, her mother and I marveled at the great organization she had implemented in her tiny room. Everything is in its place. At home, her bedroom is… a work in progress.

On her wall at college is this banner. She painted the flags on the cloth, representing her DNA from Ireland, Nigeria, England, Cameroon, Scotland, Benin, et al. The blue flag I did not recognize is a banner for the Bantu people.