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Rowland Genealogy Newsletter Issue #07 (Vol 2, No 4) — December 2021

Hello Rowland Genealogists,

Any time a year comes to a close, it provides an opportunity to reflect on the accomplishments of the past year (2021). If you haven’t figured it out already, that is going to be a major topic of this issue.

Likewise, this issue of the newsletter will identify some of our goals and priorities going forward, as well as highlight a few current activities.

2021 Accomplishments

  • 2 new Rowland Y-DNA Groups at FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA):  Group M – Essex, England (going back 500+ years) and Group N – County Mayo, Ireland (with Rowland and Rowley spellings)
  • 2,474 profiles were added to the Rowland database. WikiTree now has more than 16,000 profiles of Rowland/Roland/Rowlands and other variants – see image above.
  • 6 articles published
  • 7 publications added to our free downloads (now totaling 24)
  • Awareness improved:  RowlandGenealogy.com is now ranked #1 for organic search on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and DogPile when searching for “rowland genealogy”
  • Increased the list of Rowland Cemeteries (now has 130), the list of families with a dozen or more children in Be Fruitful and Multiply, and added a Centenarians section
  • Restructured website with each DNA Group in the Xref Project now having its own page

2022 Goals

A year ago, I quantified a number of very aggressive goals.  Although progress has been made on all fronts, I’m not sure if any of the specific numerical targets were achieved.  However, this is no reason to be disappointed, because I learned long ago that if your goals are mediocre, then your results are likely to be in the same category.

With that in mind, the following discussion of goals and priorities for the upcoming year will avoid specific quantities.  The non-numerical targets will remain aggressive, with “as many as possible” being the new non-specific quantity:

  • Grow the Rowland name database on WikiTree (currently at about 16,000)
  • Increase the number of FTDNA Y-DNA test-takers (currently at 141)
  • Increase the number of participants in the Rowland Xref Project
  • Increase the genealogical tree connections within the DNA groups
  • Make progress on resolving the major Xref conflicts (mismatch between DNA and trees).  Some conflicts were outlined in Rowland DNA Group J Conflicts, while Gasper Roland fathering both DNA Group D and DNA Group I is a scientific impossibility – any and all help is welcome
  • Make past issues of the newsletter available online

Rowland DNA Groups

Which DNA Group are you in?  If you haven’t taken a Y-DNA test, then it’s only speculation.  Remember, autosomal DNA tests, like those offered by Ancestry and MyHeritage, only go back a few generations, and they are not specific to your male line.  Y-DNA tests reach back 1,000 years or more and are the only way to verify your male line.  Here is the list of Rowland Y-DNA groups and links to their pages:

Research Activities

The “DNA Group Untested” (last entry in the list above) consists of various Rowland genealogical family trees that have no known Y-DNA test takers.  We document all of our research of these groups on WikiTree, where everyone can see it and add to it.  A few we’ve been working on recently include:

Sleigh Rowland – Sheffield, England:  Sleigh is somewhat of a unique given name, although it lasted many generations in this family.  Sleigh Rowland (born 1772), was a noted cutler, and he is included in our list of Famous Rowlands.  A handful of Rowland genealogists are currently working this line in both directions (descendants and ancestors) and two countries (England and United States).  We believe there is one U.S. descendant in the Y-DNA database, but we can certainly use some more.  If you have any information (or Y-DNA) to contribute to this project, the time is ripe to make this an official new Rowland Y-DNA Group.

Cattaraugus County, New York:  Anderson Rowland was born about 1787 in Columbia or Chenango County New York.  About 1819 he moved and settled in Cattaraugus County, New York, which is in the far western part of the state along the Pennsylvania border.  About 100 of his descendants are now in the WikiTree database. We do not know of any descendants from this line that have taken a Y-DNA test.  Therefore, this line in the “DNA Group Untested” grouping.

New Articles Posted

Roland Family Hatters of Reading, Pennsylvania, published December 26, 2021.  The town of Reading, in Berks County, Pennsylvania is renowned for its hat-making businesses, and hatters from the Roland family were plentiful throughout in the 1800s.  We have identified more than 350 descendants of this line, but we are lacking a Y-DNA sample for this group.

Rowland Headstones – Donalds, South Carolina, published December 12, 2021. A short vacation to Abbeville County, South Carolina produced some photographs of Rowland headstones in the small town of Donalds. This particular Rowland line came from County Dublin, Ireland, and arrived in South Carolina via Knox County, Tennessee.

Publications Added to Website

“The Roland and Spicer Families of Maryland and Dorset, England” Second Edition, by Charles Thomas Roland, Sr., 64-page pdf, self-published 1987.  Covers the descendants and ancestors of Enoch Nicholas Roland (1828-1915).  Enoch was born in Prince George’s County, Maryland.  His father is unknown, and his surname of Roland came from his mother, Rebecca Roland (1800-1834), daughter of John Roland and Catharine Smallwood.

Free WikiTree Help

I am convinced that WikiTree’s vast richness of tools, its policy of a single profile per ancestor, and its pledge to remain free make it the best choice for documented tree building.  I’m also aware that WikiTree can be somewhat daunting to newcomers, especially those without prior experience with document markup language techniques. 

Therefore, I will help you get started by connecting you (or your recent Rowland/Roland ancestors) to the global tree.  Please note that I will not add living people to the tree.  That is something you will need to do so that you can control the privacy level.  If this is of interest to you, then please email rowlandgenealogy@gmail.com with your ancestral information. Note: if you already have a public tree documented on another site, then I can work with that.

Share and Share a Like

Improving the awareness of our existence is key to our goals for 2021.  You can help by forwarding this email newsletter to family and friends that may find it of interest.  If you received this newsletter from someone else, then you can sign up to get future issues directly at the Rowland Genealogy Newsletter sign up page.

Following us on Facebook may be the easiest way to keep abreast of new articles and activities between issues of the newsletter.  To do so, simply “like” the Rowland Genealogy Facebook page.

____________________________

Ron Rowland
Editor & Publisher

PS – I welcome your suggestions for improvements, features, topics, and website restructuring. Please let me know of any errors, inconsistencies, or additional Rowland/Roland lines.

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