Rowland On The Road 2024

Rowland Genealogy will be “closed” from June 18 to July 4, 2024, as Ron Rowland goes on the road. I will fly to Owensboro, Kentucky in a couple of days for the kickoff ceremonies and start of the 2024 Great Race. The nine days of intense competition will take me through many states and counties that our Rowland ancestors called home. Unfortunately, I will be “on the clock” for most of this journey and cannot engage in fresh genealogical research. However, if you can make it to one of the listed lunch or overnight stops, I’m sure I will have enough time to say hello and chat for a while.

The Great Race is open only to vintage vehicles manufactured in 1974 or earlier. It is not a top-speed race, instead, it is an endurance time, speed, distance (TSD) rally where the winner is the team with the closest to perfect time over the nine days and nearly 2,300 miles. Each team consists of a driver, a navigator, and a vintage vehicle. This year, four cars manufactured before 1920 will be competing, including a 1912 Haynes.

Team SuperNova in the Chesterfield, Michigan Spring Rally

I will be navigating car #143, a 1962 Chevy Nova II, driven by Erin Liberty. We call ourselves Team SuperNova and have high aspirations for this event. Our sponsor and car owner is Stahls Automotive, which makes us part of Team Stahls and one of its four entries. A record number of 160 teams have entered this year, competing for more than $160,000 in prize money. The winning team will be taking home $50,000.

The only navigational tools allowed are a speedometer (without an odometer), an analog time-of-day clock, a stopwatch, and the day’s route instructions. All phones, calculators, GPS devices, and maps are strictly prohibited.

Schedule and Route

The following image shows the dates, lunch stops, and overnight stops for this year’s Great Race. All competing vehicles will be on display for about two hours at each overnight stop.

Rowland Genealogy On The Route

Numerous Rowland families and genealogical lines were early settlers of the Ohio Valley, Northern Maryland, Eastern Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and more places along this year’s route. Here are just a few of the Rowland-populated counties along the way:

Rowland DNA Group I (mostly spelled Roland) and Rowland DNA Group B are heavily represented throughout the Kentucky/Indiana, Kentucky/Ohio, and Ohio/West Virginia portions of the Ohio Valley. When the Great Race arrives in Marietta, Ohio, it will be deep in Rowland DNA Group B country.
Moving through the northern portion of West Virginia will take us into another bastion of DNA Group I residency in Washington County, Maryland, and the surrounding area. As we head north into Pennsylvania, we will once again be in the thick of DNA Group I and DNA Group B, especially in and around Lancaster County.
As we cross into New York, the first Rowland group we will come in contact with are descendants from the untested Rowland line of New London County, Connecticut. We will of course encounter more of them once we cross into Connecticut, along with a huge contingent of Fairfield County Rowlands, also known as Rowland DNA Group E.

I’m sure I left off countless examples, and this gives me an idea. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a map showing which Rowland lines are in each county of every state? Any volunteers?

Follow Rowland on the Road

You can follow the progress of the Great Race on either its website or Facebook page.

The Great Race Blog will post an article on each day’s coverage that typically includes more than two dozen high-resolution photographs.
The Great Race Scores page has 11 tabs: one for the pre-race Trophy Run; one for each of the nine competitive stages; and the Cumulative Championship Results.
I will not have the time to update my personal blog at ronrowland.com during the event, although I will be writing an after-the-race article and have posted a few articles relevant to this year’s race, including:
- Chesterfield 2024 Great Race Spring Rally, which describes last month’s “get ready” event where Team SuperNova finished in 19th place.
- Rally Clock for the Great Race. I’ve started a small business designing, manufacturing, and selling clocks and stopwatches specifically for the Great Race and other vintage car rallies. This article explains how to use the key features of the clock.
- Stopwatch with Countdown Bezel. This is the same type of article focused on the stopwatches.
- Recap of the 2023 Great Race, where Team WindUpKey finished in 35th place.

More About The Great Race

To learn more about the Great Race and what it is like to compete, check out:

The FAQ contains the answers to many of your basic questions.
Great Race 101, are you ready to take a deep dive? This 46-page class will teach you what you need to know if you want to compete, or it may just scare you away completely.