Mary Koler

Ancestors

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Biography

Mary Koler participated in the 2024 England Project Royal Society of Musicians Challenge.

Mary Koler has completed the England Project's Post 1700 Orphan Trail I.

Mary Koler has completed the England Project's Pre-1700 Orphan Trail II.

Mary Koler participated with the Splendid Spruces Team adding 4,209 profiles during the 2024 Connect-a-Thon.

I first became interested in genealogy when my biology teacher in high school assigned us the task of generating a family tree. It was a fun project although it was scary to contact relatives whom I barely knew. I still have the tree although the paper is pretty tattered.

I retired during the pandemic and decided to start looking into the family tree again. My uncle, Richard Rogers, had investigated the Rogers branch in Yorkshire and determined that our family had descended from the famed St. John Rogers the Martyr although I'm not convinced of that yet. But I did find the book that a relative published based on the work that they did together. ^[1] I don't know if this is a valid document or not so would be interested to hear thoughts on it.

But what really brought me back to genealogy was curiosity about my father's Czech side. I know very little about it and no matter which genealogy site that I go to I can't find much. I even went to the lengths of getting my brother, Tom, and one of our cousins to do the Y chromosome test on Family Tree. But that didn't get us any further because not enough men have participated.

So, I have returned to my mother's side of the family, which has been more productive. I was totally surprised to find her side is pretty much entirely from the British Isles and even more surprising was how early most of the family came to the US. I joined the English project and have just completed the Orphan Trail 1, which has dramatically improved my skills in doing the profiles. I'm hoping to complete Orphan Trail 2 so that I can do the research in the 1500-1700's period and eventually would like to do Orphan Trail 3. Hopefully, with this background I can expand my mother's side of the family. One of the fun parts of doing the Orphan Trail was that I was related directly to many of the orphans so I was able to work on my family tree even though they were very distantly related to me.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Mary Koler at registration.

1. ↑ Weavers of a Legacy RootsWeb