#06 (Vol 2, No 3) - July 2021 - Rowland Genealogy

Hello Rowland Genealogists,

This issue of the newsletter covers the restructuring of the Rowland Genealogy website and provides updates on research activities including Rowland/Roland families in Berks County Pennsylvania, Hawkins County Tennessee, Rensselaer County New York, and Emanuel County Georgia. We’ll also take a quick look at Jeremiah Rowland of Arkansas and Diamond Dick Rowland of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Website Restructuring

Much of the website restructuring is now complete, although the new pages still require much more information. The most significant change is that each DNA group now has its own page, and each is accessible from the top-level menu entry of Xref Project. These new pages (and their links) are:

Rowland Xref Project Summary
DNA Group A — Shenandoah Virginia Area
DNA Group B — Early Chester Co, PA circa 1762
DNA Group C — Granville Co, NC/Simpson Co, KY
DNA Group D — Iowa/PA/NC
DNA Group E — CT-NY Line (Fairfield Co, CT)
DNA Group F — Early Botetourt Co, VA
DNA Group G — Connection Unknown
DNA Group H — Early Johnston/Wake Co, NC
DNA Group I — Early Locations in PA/OH (Germanic/Swiss)
DNA Group J — Colonial Surry Co, VA Area
DNA Group K — Saline County, Arkansas 1860s
DNA Group L — England William (1795- ) to Canada
DNA Group M — Essex, England
DNA Group Ungrouped — Unmatched Test Takers
DNA Group Untested — Defined Genealogical Families without Test Takers

Research Activities

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

Berks County, Pennsylvania: Earliest Known Ancestor David Roland (-1820) passed away in Berks County, Pennsylvania in 1820. His birthplace is unknown. Many subsequent generations lived and worked in the town of Reading and were employed as hatters (Reading, Pennsylvania is famous for its hats). There are 354 total descendants in WikiTree, including 80 Y-DNA carriers. Descendant locations include Pennsylvania (Berks), Illinois (Ogle, Whiteside), and Iowa (Greene, Polk, Poweshiek).

Hawkins County, Tennessee: Earliest Known Ancestor Nathan Glen Rowland (1813-1897) was born in Virginia and moved to Hawkins County, Tennessee. One of his sons is David M Rowland, the subject of one of our recent articles listed below. There are 102 total descendants in WikiTree, including 42 Y-DNA carriers. Descendant locations include Tennessee (Hawkins, Sullivan, Knox, Davidson), and Missouri (Platte).

Rensselaer County, New York: Earliest Known Ancestor Samuel Rowland (1722-1800) was born on Long Island of the New York Colony and died in 1800 at Pittstown, Rensselaer, New York. This research is in the early stages and only 25 descendants have been entered on WikiTree so far.

Emanuel County, Georgia: This research is in its very early stages and an Earliest Known Ancestor has not been identified, although the earliest records appear to be from Emanuel County. The area around early Emanuel County (formed 1812) underwent numerous changes and subdivisions and now includes much of Montgomery (1793), Laurens (1807), Emanuel (1812), Johnson (1858), and Wheeler (1912) counties of Georgia. We’ve already encountered multiple families with more than 14 children, so this promises to be a large collection.

Parents of Jeremiah Rowland

You may recall an earlier newsletter where I mentioned performing DNA research in an effort to identify the parents of Jeremiah Rowland. Jeremiah was born about 1833 in Alabama, moved to Saline County, Arkansas prior to 1856, and died in 1863 at Port Hudson, East Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the Civil War. He and his descendants are part of DNA Group I, but nothing was known about his ancestors. Using autosomal DNA, I was able to identify some cousins (descendants of Jeremiah’s siblings), and subsequently his parents. His parents are believed to be William Rowland (born about 1805 at South Carolina) and Susan Crenshaw. Although we have autosomal DNA support, we would like to get additional Y-DNA descendants of this line and sourced documentation for full confirmation.

Black Heritage Rowland Family: Diamond Dick Rowland

Dick “Diamond Dick” Rowland, a nineteen-year-old black young man was arrested on May 31, 1921, for assault the day after it was said he tripped into an elevator and grabbed the arm of a white, 17-year-old, elevator operator named Sarah Page to steady himself. A clerk on the first floor is the one who called the police and accused Rowland of assault. The charges were dropped in September 1921 based on information from Miss Page who told the police that Rowland had grabbed her arm, but nothing more and that she would not press charges. However, this incident led to what is now known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.

He was born Jimmie Jones in about 1902. He and his two sisters were adopted by Dami (Roland) Ford about 1909, and he eventually took on the name of Dick Rowland.

New Articles Posted

“Rowland DNA Group J Conflicts”, published July 31, 2021. DNA Group J (Surry) has conflicts with DNA Group A (Shenandoah), DNA Group F (Botetourt), and others. The family trees (at WikiTree) show relationships between all of these groups, while the DNA says they are not related. We believe the DNA. Therefore, the WikiTree requires revision. We need your help.

“The 84 Grandchildren of David M Rowland and Phoebe A Vaughn”, published July 8, 2021. Simply stating that David M Rowland (1838-1926) and Phoebe A Vaughn (1842-1918) produced a large number of descendants is a severe understatement – the couple parented 15 children and had 84 grandchildren. Further generations have not been fully enumerated, but the count should easily go into the hundreds. They were prolific producers of Rowland progeny in Hawkins County, Tennessee.

New Document in the Free Downloads

“A Moorhead/Morehead Genealogy: Some Descendants of John Moorhead, ca 1720-1785, Cumberland and Westmoreland Counties, Pennsylvania, Stark, Hancock, and Wood counties, Ohio, and Points West” by Rex K Moorhead, 1992, Sun City West, Arizona, 162 pages. The book covers eight Moorhead generations. Mary Moorhead married John Rowland (1791-1862) in Stark County, Ohio and they became one of the pioneer families of Henry County, Ohio, and part of Rowland DNA Group B.

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 making 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.

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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.