This report is the latest update to a labor of love that began for me in the early 1980's. All I knew then was the names and a few dates my great-grandfather Charles Earl Roswell's immediate family in Michigan, and stories that my dad told me about Charles Earl having three brothers, one of whom was named Otto or Oscar, who settled in Oregon or Washington. My uncle Gil and my dad told me the names of a couple of their father's cousins, one of whom lived in San Francisco.
With those clues I began searching the National Archives and the Latter Day Saints Genealogy libraries, tracking down Census records and death certificates, and always asking my dad and uncle for more clues. They remembered more things as I uncovered clues, so I can't emphasize enough how important it is to talk to your older relatives while they are still living!
There are still many challenges out there. A few of the big ones are:
1) Trying to find information about the Roswell line in Canada in the 1850's, before they came to the United States. I've made a number of attempts, without success. Lots of clues, however....
2) Locating current relatives of the Oscar or Jefferson Roswell line, to see if they have family history information. I have made one attempt to date, with the line of Goldie Roswell, with limited success.
3) Locating the family history that Goldie Sarah Roswell had commissioned in the 1930s. My Holy Grail! You can read about this in my notes on Goldie.
There is a separate photo gallery at the end of this report, for those of you who are receiving hardcopies. For the next update, I would like to get family shots of all of our generation. We can also preserve and share some of the great old photos each of us has by scanning them in. I am willing to do this for everyone, and return the originals to you.
Please refer to the Index of Individuals in the back of the report to find the pages a particular person is listed on.
This report, as well as all my information, is kept in Family Tree Maker, Version 5.0, a wonderful tool that runs on a Windows PC.
Enjoy!
Charles F. Roswell
email: Roswells97@aol.com
Reston, Virginia
December, 1998
