ROGERS/CRUMP FAMILY HISTORY

This material comes from the first draft of my efforts to document the ancestry of Vern Elijah Rogers and Celia Frances Crump. The long-term goal is to identify and document all known extended family members within two links of individuals directly in the line of descent. The current version includes 3,455 individuals, and the project is far from complete. There are two ways to look at the lines of descent:

Easy-to-read summaries are available as web pages and can be accessed through the links below. These summaries contain only a fraction of the people identified in the project, but these contain the lines of greatest interest and curiosity, either because of their proximity to living family members or the historical prominence of certain ancestors.
This entire extended family as I currently understand it to date is available to anyone through two downloadable GEDCOM files. These files are dated and will be updated periodically. However, these files are large and cumbersome, and you will have to learn how to use a genealogical software package to view them. I'd say download these files only if you are a serious history of genealogy ner like me.

The work is only the first draft. There are many more people to identify. Documentation of the full tree is not yet complete, and I have not been consist in handling some event types. I suspect that several typos and errors will surface in this draft. This will take years to complete, but at least there's a solid start.

ROGERS PEDIGREE

The Rogers pedigree as we currently understand it can be conceived as a tree with a forked trunk about halfway up and numerous branches. The direct ancestors of Vern Elijah Rogers (Gen. 1) can be found in the trunk, and the trunk of the family tree forks into the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish lines at Generation 26, Henry I of Huntingdon and his wife Ada de Warenne. The lines of descent in the medieval period include many members of families related to royalty, nobility, and landed gentry. Most of these individuals are ancestors of Thomas Dudley, who arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony from England in 1630.

The origins of our branch of the Rogers family is a mystery. My working theory is that the Rogers line is Scottish or Scot-Irish in descent. I discuss the evidence here.

PAGE LINKS

Links to the Rogers trunk and its forks:

Trunk: Vern Elijah Rogers (Gen. 1) to Henry I of Huntington (Gen. 26).
Anglo-Saxon Fork: Henry I of Huntington (Gen. 26) to Cerdic of Wessex (Gen. 49). This fork includes Alfred the Great of England and St. Margaret of Scotland.
Frankish Fork: Ada de Warenne (Gen. 26) to Clovis the Riparian of Cologne (Gen. 50). This fork includes Charles Martel and the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne.

Branches Allied to Rogers by Marriage

Crump: Celia Frances Crump (Gen. 1) to James Crump (Gen. 8)
House: Mary Ellen House (Gen. 2) to Matthias Hauss (Gen. 7)
Ruggles: Emeline Elizabeth Ruggles (Gen. 4) to Thomas Ruggles (Gen. 13)

Other Branches

Boltz/Pults: Armilda Pults (Gen. 3) to Johann Michael Boltz (Gen. 8)
Norman: Elizabeth de Berkeley (Gen. 18) to Ragnvald I the Wise Eysteinsson (Gen. 34). This line includes William the Conqueror and Eleanor d'Aquitaine.
Sutton-Dudley: Thomas Dudley (Gen. 11) to Harvey I de Sutton (Gen. 28).
Vere: Edith Saint Clair (Gen. 17) to Alphonso de Vere (Gen. 29). Magna Carta surety Robert de Vere is included in this line of descent.

COMMENTS ON PRINCIPAL SOURCES
The family tree covers what I could uncover about the Vern Elijah Rogers and Celia Frances Crump. Four groups of people are included: (1) direct ancestors, (2) individuals related to direct ancestors by blood or marriage, (3) individuals related to (2) by blood or marriage, and (4) protohistorical ancestors who in discussions about lines of descent from antiquities. Over 130 sources contribute to the first edition of the analysis, though just a small number of sources had substantial contributions to building large segments of the family tree.

1850 to the present
Information about the family since 1850 relies primarily on (1) Rogers family records, (2) the Crump family history, and (3) primary sources. What I refer to as Rogers family records include a family Bible and a sheaf of notes and correspondence given me by my father and Verneil (Rogers) Jackson. The family Bible is an incomplete but useful record of the Rogers and House families in Texas County, Missouri, and eastern Kansas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I worked from a photocopy and transcripts of the Bible sent to family members by my father many years ago after the Bible came into his possession, and now the Bible is in my possession. In addition, I have a set of notes and correspondence about the family passed to me by both my father and Verneil (Rogers) Jackson. This information seems to have been collected by Anna Marie (Austin) Rogers.

The equivalent information for the Crump family comes from the history prepared by Johnny Bill Hailey ([1993]).

This information was expanded through the use of primary materials easily available to the public online, e.g., Ancestry.com, Familysearch.com, and HeritageQuest.com. The 1850 date is specific because the 1850 U.S. census was the first decenniel census in which all members of a family were listed by name. The latest census released to the public is the 1940 census, and the only year missing in the set is 1890.

The investigation into family history has been useful, not just for our own knowledge of our immediate extended family but for allied families. It appears that the convergence of the Rogers, House, and Pults families in Texas County, Missouri, was accompaned by a breakdown of relations with most family members outside Texas County. I have found in the course of my research and conversation with members of allied family that these families know very little about what happened to many of their relatives who moved to Texas County.

Early American Colonists to 1850
Family and local histories were instrumental in identifying family lines running from gateway ancestors who settled during the colonial era until 1850. In addtion to the aforementioned Crump history, the Pults and Ruggles families also have books outlining their lineages (Boltz, Boltz, Gerard, & Gerard, 1997; Ruggles, 1893). The published history of the Bellevue Valley in Missouri provided the link between the Ruggles history and the Rogers records--the history includes a listing of the descendants of Joseph and Emeline Rogers and was clearly contributed by someone with a knowledge of the family, specifically the family of Elijah's sister Jane (Bellevue Valley Historical Society, 1983).

The House family was handled differently. Here I relied on the family tree developed in FamilySearch.org, which includes documentation of family members where it is known.

Medieval Period and Late Antiquities
The backbone of the medieval research is Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists who Came to America before 1700 (8th ed.), compiled by originally by Frederick Lewis Weis and later reviewed and modified by Walter Lee Sheppard, Jr., William R. Beall, and Kaleen E. Beall. The book serves as the standard reference text for tracing links from medieval royalty to a select group of American colonists that includes Thomas Dudley, who is a Rogers ancestor. Its recent revisions are not limited to the work of the compilers and includes, most importantly, some revisions proposed by Douglas C. Richardson, one of the foremost genealogists of our era. This material was supplemented by two additional sources:

(1) I doublechecked dates and family ties using the work of Charles Cawley and the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy (Cawley, 2006-2017). Cawley is an excellent source because of detailed citations to primary source material.

(2) For nobility in the United Kingdom, Weis et al. (2004) was supplemented by Cockayne's (1892-1898) Complete Peerage.

At this point in time I do not rely much on the scholarship of Christian Settipani. The principle reason is that Settipani writes in French, so it would take me a long time to work through his material. Settipani's work is regarded as noteworthy for its documentation and the significance of his thesis that the leadership of medieval Europe drew on the ranks of wealthy families surviving the Fall of Rome. The Syagrii and Ferreoli families include in this family tree are isolated examples of this continuity across civilizations. While Settipani's work is regarded as accomplished and his thesis compelling, debates can emerge around his treatment of specific individuals (Kelley, 2005; Taylor, 2001), and some of his controversial conclusions affect this family tree. As a result, I took a cautious approach, and while I have yet to regard Settipani's findings as conclusive, I use Genealogical Notes to draw attention to disputes and their ramifications when they appear in the tree.

The historicity of individuals in some of the oldest parts of the family tree are up for debate, especially the House of Wessex in England and the Gallo-Roman line leading to St. Arnulf of Metz. I have decided to label these aspects of the family tree as protohistorical, i.e., they are historical characteristics whose relationships and actions have been mythologized to suit a variety of political and religious purposes. How I came to this conclusions is handled through Research Notes.

References
Bellevue Valley Historical Society. (1983). Bellevue--Beautiful View: The History of the Bellevue Valley, and Surrounding Area. Self-published.

Boltz, P. Boltz, B., Gerard, B., & Gerard, C. (1997). Boltz/Puls/Pulse/Pults/Pultz Family of America (2nd ed.). Self-published.

Cockayne, G. E. C. (1892-1898). Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom Extant, Extinct, or Dormant (8 vol.). London: William Pollard & Co.

Hailey, J. B. [1993]. William Henry Crump Family, Garland County Arkansas: Arkansas Hills to the Texas Plain Family Migration and History. Abilene, TX: Self published.

Kelley, D. H. (2005). "The Nebelungs." Foundations, 1(6), 425-440.

Ruggles, H. S. (1893). The Ruggles Family in England and America. Privately printed.

Taylor, N. L. (2001). "Roman genealogical continuity and the `descents-from-Antiquity' question." The American Genealogist, 76, 129-136.

Weis, F. L., Sheppard, W. L., Jr., Beall, W. R., & Beall, K. E. (2004). Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists who Came to America before 1700 (8th ed.). Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company.