ROGERS PERSPECTIVES / STATISTICS PENGUIN
FAMILY HISTORY
Background and Acknowledgements
I've been working on my family tree on and off since the late 1990s. Of the various hobbies that one considers as a kid--collecting stamps or baseball cards, digging up rocks, and classifying the neighborhood's bugs--family history is the thing that stuck.
My first attempt to understand my background came during the early to mid-1990s when I asked my grandfather about the family history. My grandfather was about 90 years of age, and we all knew the time was near. Trips to the Midwest include a "final visit" with grandpa (there were 2 or 3 "final visits" because, being a true Rogers, the guy wouldn't give up), and on one of those visits I mustered the courage to ask about history. I got a few vague stories, which added to a few other vague stories in circulation.
In the late 1990s, my father and I had a conversation on the matter, and I mentioned Grandpa's stories. Ancestry.com was now available on the Web--I had started digging and had found a reference to an "E. S. Rogers" in a data base on Civil War pensions. Dad said he did not know much, except that he had a Civil War medal. "Dad," I said, "they keep records about stuff like that." Not much later I entered the local Family History Center at the Mormon chapel in North Caldwell, New Jersey, told them what I knew, and in less than 15 minutes the volunteers had developed a family tree for the wife of Elijah Starr Ruggles, one Emeline Ruggles from Caledonia, Washington County, Missouri. I have worked on this project on and off since the, and this tree is the first product of my research.I am indebted to several individuals and groups for their contributions to this project, and I doubt I can thank them all. Conversations with my Dad were always useful, and I've also relied bits of information from other members of my extended family in person, through Facebook, and over the phone. Part of the sheaf of family records comes from Verneil (Rogers) Jackson.
My debt to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) is huge. The Local Family History Center in North Caldwell, North Jersey, uncovered the Rogers/Ruggles link, and before matters were easily accessed on the Internet, became a place where I spent many hours pouring over microfilms from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. While my debts are specific, all of us non-Mormons also have a huge debt generally to the Mormons for their willingness to share their massive collections with the rest of us. Tools like Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org come out of Utah, so it is likely that any non-Mormon working on genealogy in the U.S. today can escape the help of the Mormons.
Family lines available on this website: