There is a decent consensus that our Rowlison immigrant was Aaron Charles Rolison (there are multiple spellings) who was born in England in 1680 and got himself to Perth Amboy in Middlesex County New Jersey by 1715 when he deeded a piece of land in Perth Amboy to his oldest son Charles. There is at least one family tree on FamilyTreeMaker's site that matches our information rather well except listing Aaron Charles Roleson as being born in Denmark and immigrating about 1789.
Several researchers (or more likely, those who copied info from a researcher) claim to have identified Aaron Charles Rowlison and his parents based on an October 31, 1680 baptismal record at St. Ann Blackfrier's church in London where Anthony Rollinson and wife Ann had son Charles Rollinson baptized. The date matches and the names are pretty close as these things go so it is a plausible connection though on based on a single piece of data. Anthony and Ann have not earned a place in my file of our ancestors. Watch this space, or spend some time on it yourself. Contact me for a coarse course to follow.
In any event, a fellow likely our ancestor showed up in New Jersey and he was listed as the "doorkeeper at the New Jersey Legislature in Perth Amboy in 1725." Perth Amboy is just across the Arthur Kill Waterway and the state line from Staten Island and is considered part of Metropolitan New York.
I guess we could say with a straight face that James Rowlison's great, great grandfather was "in" the New Jersey Legislature. But let's not. Maybe he was "Chief of Security" or something. Maybe he really was "the" doorkeeper and not just "a" doorkeeper. But he appears to have been our Rowlison guy.
This chart list four sons of Aaron Charles Rowlison; our ancestor is John born in 1725. The note at the bottom comes from a family tree of someone researching the oldest son, Charles and contains a bit about his family.
John Rowlison moved to Woodbridge, NJ before his son Aaron and our branch of the family moved to the hills of Rockbridge County. We have some information about the families of William and Nathaniel. Years ago I corresponded with a couple of descendants of Nathaniel.
This Aaron Rowlison (1762-1837) is the senior Aaron, James D's grandfather. The note identifies brothers Aaron and his brother as being mentioned in the Official Register of Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War. They are listed consecutively as Aaron Rowlison and William Rowlinson. We have more information on William, his unit and commander and his pension application. I have not found similar documentation on Aaron.
Note that "other spouses" are listed for Aaron and Elizabeth. Each had families with the other spouses.
Aaron the younger (b. 1809) is our ancestor, father of James Demetris Rowlison. The sister Martha was the wife of John Milton Chivington who warrants a post of his own.
Elizabeth McKnight's father came from Ayrshire, Scotland, her mother appears to have been born in Ireland.
This next chart is the family of the younger Aaron and Martha Ann Kinnear. It appears that they had both moved from Virginia homes to Lancaster in Jefferson County, Indiana near the Ohio River where they were married in 1836.
I told the story in the Kinnear family post about their graves - Martha is not buried with Aaron but is probably in an unmarked grave elsewhere in College Hill Cemetery.
Our guy, James Demetris Rowlison was the oldest of nine born to Aaron and Martha Ann (Kinnear) Rowlison between 1839 and about 1855. There were two boys followed by seven girls including twins in about 1853 (a bit of evidence puts their birth in '52).
The young lady of particular interest is Victoria Calidonia, a story I was taken by many years ago. She warrants her own post, her own website, maybe.
This is our Rowlison family line, along with the Walton's, our primary lines associated with our reunion group. I've tracked many of the descendant families from these siblings of our direct ancestors and they are covered in my ancestry.com file. Interested family members are invited to contact me for "guest" access to my file, no cost to examine these cousins of varying distance.
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