R/RFHA Newletter December 1999

The Rawlin(g)s Rollin(g)s Family History Association

Volume 12, #4 December 1999

Well, we're coming to the end of the century - and of a thousand years of strife and glory, of decline and progress. And it was a little less than a thousand years ago when in 1066 twenty-six warriors of William the Conqueror named RAUL landed on England's shores. These were the forebears of the RAWLIN(G)S and ROLLIN(G)S who are now spanning the earth. With that thought in mind your Editor is going to take the liberty of repeating a paragraph or two from her first editorial letter in March of 1989.

We are all familiar with the various spellings of this surname...from RAWLINGS to ,RAOLINGS, and every combination of letters in between. But no matter how one spells it, the name is a proud one to bear, noted in world history back to the 11th Century, a name which played a part in governments, explorations, industry and the arts, active in peace and war. There were Baptists and Quakers, Episcopalians and Roman Catholics, Methodists and Presbyterians, Mormons and Unitarians. There were slaves and slave-holders with this surname, small farmers and huge plantation owners, city merchants and plant workers, frontiersman and gunfighters, scientists, actors and writers. There were privates and generals, men cashiered out of the army for desertion or malingering, and those who were decorated for heroic acts during wartime, all bearing this name. Cousins fought cousins in the War Between the States with this name, and there were both Loyalists to the Crown and Rebels in the Revolutionary War with this name. And you'll find it in the rosters of World Wars One and Two, the Korean action, and Vietnam, perhaps even in the Gulf War.

We haven't checked but at the time of the writing of the first editorial letter there were 1800 heads-of-families in the US bearing this surname. In the Norman Library in Salt Lake City there are over 50 lines registered. I am sure with the burst of "root-digging" this country and others are experiencing at this time those figures will increase. We can only hope that our efforts with this newsletter and those of you who contribute to the data we offer that many other "R"s can solve their genealogical mysteries in the coming years.