genealogy Archives - Page 5 of 6 - Ramblin' with Roger

March rambling: complicated meanings

Luna Lee on the gayageum

At Current Rates Of Use World Could Run Out Of Thoughts And Prayers By As Early As 2019

We Are all Nixonians Now

There Are No Good Guys With Guns

What To Do When Racists Try To Hijack Your Religion

‘National Geographic’ Reckons With Its Past: ‘For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist’

‘Stay Strong,’ And Other Useless Drivel We Tell The Grieving

The Encyclopedia of the Missing

When the only way to go free is to plead guilty

3 Far-Flung Cities Offer Clues to Unsnarling Manhattan’s Streets

OVERLOOKED: 15 obits of notable women

Alaska as a Red-to-Blue(ish) Model

‘The story of a weird world I was warned never to tell’

Union College says it found strand of George Washington’s hair

Stop Using the Label ‘Struggling Reader,’ Author Jacqueline Woodson Advises

Why Do We Need to Sleep?

The Unexpected Benefit of Train Travel

Rare Photo of Harriet Tubman Preserved

Digging into my family’s claims of Cherokee ancestry

in praise of soft targets

Stephen Hawking dies at 76 on Einstein’s birthday and Pi day; despite ALS, his mind roamed the cosmos

RIP, David Ogden Stiers

Dalai Lama, Chicago in May 2008:
“The universe is in a constant state of becoming—an ongoing miraculous creation. Every day we awaken to that miracle with gratitude, respect, and compassion for all who share the gift of being.”

Memories of ‘M*A*S*H’: Inside Stories of the Most Famous Episodes (and Castings)

The Loophole

Smartphones Are Getting Dumber…on Purpose

A Finnish comedian explains the complicated meanings of an English word

Legendary toy demonstrated to have squirrel-repelling properties

Faking It: The Obviously Dubbed Telephone Ring

Aldi’s supermarkets history

A PhD In Batman

A niece at Carnegie Hall

Now I Know: The Florida City Fueled by Soda and Baseball’s Unluckiest Fan and How Bazooka Joe Lost a Baseball Glove

Not me: Couple begins rekindling an eighth-grade romance

MUSIC

Camille Saint-Saens’s Septet for piano, trumpet, and strings, Opus 65!

Hamilton Polka

The Music of Paolo Tosti – Carla Fisk and Michael Clement

Will Jesus Wash The Bloodstains From Your Hands – Hazel Dickens

Everlasting Arms – Luke Winslow-King, Vasti Jackson, Dr. John, and Roots Gospel Voices of Mississippi

Norma Tanega (and Dusty Springfield)

There Is A Time – The Darlings (Andy Griffith Show)

Tush – Luna Lee on the gayageum

Cover of Take on Me (a-ha)

Sound of Silence – Todd Hoffman

Taxman – Joe Bonamassa, Live at The Cavern Club

Inside the Life of Brenda Lee, the Pop Heroine Next Door

Connective tissue on Groundhog Day

This is Smalbany, so SURELY they would have met each other by now.

On February 2, my friend Mark, who I’ve known since 1971, when I met him in at college, wrote: “I was at a concert recently and met a woman named Judy. She has friend-requested me [on Facebook], saying she knows Roger Green. I think you’ve mentioned her over the years.”

And evidently, I mentioned him to Judy, who I’ve only known since 1977, when I met her in that same college town. Judy’s also met other friends of mine, somehow, and realized they both knew me.

That evening, I went to First Friday at my church. The singer, Carla, who sang beautifully, BTW, has known a woman I’ve known through the library foundation for years. My activist friends Lynne and Dan were there, who I’ve known since the early 1980s. So was my activist friend Darby, who I’ve known since the late 1980s.

This is Smalbany, so SURELY they would have met each other by now. They knew other people in common besides me. But no, they had never crossed paths. So I introduced them.

And because it’s been on my mind a LOT lately, we discussed genealogy. Darby, Dan, and I all have misidentified ancestors in our family trees. As I’ve noted, mine involves my father’s biological father.

My second cousin Lisa called me that day. We’re working on a project that I’ll describe soon. She’s been doing genealogy of her family for years, and of course, there is some crossover.

To that end, she’s pretty much ordered me to do one of those DNA tests that Ancestry and others sell. Lisa had done hers and it pretty much disproved a family myth in her lines. But maybe some of the other lines in my past will tell a different story.

I related much of this to my wife just before we went to bed. She said, “You have an interesting life.” I guess I do.

Civil War & great (X2) grandfather James Archer

“74% of all free blacks of military age (18-45) fought for their country, and from all reported casualties, about one-third lost their lives.”

When my sister Leslie and I visited our hometown of Binghamton, NY in October 2017, we went up to Spring Forest Cemetery and visited the graves of my grandma Gertrude Williams, her siblings Edward Jr. and Adenia, and their mother, Lillian (nee Archer) Yates Holland, who had been widowed and remarried. It is very near where they all grew up.

What we had never seen before, maybe a couple of dozen meters away, was a headstone for Lillian’s parents, James Archer (1834-1912) and his wife Harriet (1838-1928). It was NOT the separate headstones I’d seen at FindAGrave.com – – James’ is shown here from c 2009 – but something more ornamental.

In January 2017, during that cold snap, my second cousin Lisa, whose grandfather was Gertrude’s brother Ernie – though she never met him, as he died in 1954 – was doing some genealogical research.

She discovered James Archer in the 1890 civil war veterans’ census, showing that he volunteered and served from 29 December 1863 to the day he was mustered out on 29 August 1865.

“The 26th U.S. Colored Troops served under the Department of the South (Union Army) in South Carolina and was very active on Johns and James Island, Honey Hill, Beaufort, and a number of other locations.” On this page, you see a picture of the 1000-plus man strong 26th USCT on parade and their regimental banner.

Totally separately, my sister Marcia was going through some old, and unfortunately unmarked, photos that our mother had gotten from her mother. And one of them was this:

Is James Archer one of these men? We have no idea, but we’d like to think so. Cousin Anne, Lisa’s sister, notes: “One clue from the census is he had hazel eyes. Can you tell from the original photo the color of their eyes?” Which guy has the lightest eyes?

Lisa noted: “74% of all free blacks of military age (18-45) fought for their country, and from all reported casualties, about one-third lost their lives. I’m happy to say my great-great-grandfather was one of the survivors; he died in 1912, and I’m proud to be able to tell this piece of his story.”

One other detail worth noting: Lillian Yates Holland, James and Harriet’s daughter, wasn’t born until 1866. Had James died in battle, there would have been no Lillian, which meant she and Edward Yates Sr. wouldn’t have had Gertrude and Ernie, which would have meant no Trudy (my mom) and Fran (Lisa’s mom)…

Well, you get the picture.

Lillian Yates Holland

The problem is time. It’s always time.

Right after my mother’s death half a decade ago, I had this renewed interest in my family genealogy. For one thing, the family Bible had lots of information, some going back a century and a half. The matriarch of the clan was my maternal grandmother’s mother, Lillian Yates Holland.

This picture was reportedly taken when she was still Lillian Archer, and was sixteen, though she looks older to me.

She had five children, four of whom survived childhood: Gertrude, Edward, Ernest, and Adenia Yates. Gert, who married Clarence Williams, was my grandma and lived with Deana in the house I went to every day for lunch growing up. Ed lived up the hill from Gert and Deana. Ernie, the father of my mom’s four first cousins, died when I was an infant; apparently, I was afraid of him, because he reminded me of my pediatrician, Dr. Israel Rosefsky.

Lillian was married to Edward Yates, Sr., before he passed away circa 1910. She married again, to a man named Holland, who, according to various Census records, was from Texas. Or Mexico. There’s a lot of that contrary information in the minimal digging my sisters and I have done.

It’s clear that Lillian had a not-distant ancestor who was part Irish. Or English. I’ve not dug far enough back to ascertain this. I suppose I assume it was Irish because of the real-life story of a black man and Irish woman in the book The Sweeter The Juice.

Some people fret about what they would do when they retire. Surely one of my tasks would be to fill out the family tree more fully. It’s not that I don’t currently have the resources; I’ve had a membership with ancestry.com for at least a couple of years.

The problem is time. It’s always time.

The other thing my sisters and have vowed to do, sooner than later, is to get a headstone for Gert and Deana. Deana died in the mid-1960s, and Gert in 1983, but my parents, for whatever reason, never got a marker. They’re buried very near where Lillian was laid to rest, in Spring Forest Cemetery in Binghamton, NY, not two blocks from where Lillian, and Gert and her sibs, and my mother all grew up.

The royal connection

My wife and daughter, if you go back far enough, have common ancestors with the guys who are second and third in line to the British throne.

As I have alluded to before, my wife and my daughter are related to William and Harry and George, those UK royals.

It seems that:
Henry Spencer (b. 1353) married Isabel Lincoln (b. 1357)
They had at least two sons:
William Spencer (b. 1376) is a direct ancestor of Diana Spencer (b. July 1, 1961)
Thomas Spencer (b. 1378) is a direct ancestor of Susannah Spencer (b. 1680). Susannah married John Olin (b.1664) on October 4, 1708.

You may recall that John Olin, who was once a 14-year old cabin boy as an indentured servant, forced into service on the British ship Man-O-War, jumped off the boat heading for Boston harbor. He swam ashore, stealthily traveled inland for about a week, and ended up in the care of the Narragansett Indians for eight years. He became an indentured servant to a Samuel Gorton until 1700, when he became a free man.

John and Susannah had four known children, Joseph, John, Henry and Eleanor. Joseph was the ancestor, eight generations back, of my mother-in-law. Thus my wife and daughter, if you go back far enough, have common ancestors with the guys who are second, third, and fourth in line to the British throne.

This means, of course, that, as President of the Olin family reunion, New York/Pennsylvania branch, I ought to send the William and George (and Harry) an invitation to the annual event.