To June from Mario,
More!
A possible visual if you choose to include the above is a 16th century bible
now in the possession of a small college in upstate NY. According to a long
standing and traceable family tradition, this book was brought over to the New
World by James Rogers. What is so interesting about it, is that this bible was
once the personal property of John Rogers, the first to suffer martyrdom under
England's Bloody Mary. (Another apology I suppose I owe you for my own Roman
Catholic heritage.) John the Martyr was the great, great grandfather of James
and, indeed, pretty much all the other Rogers in New England at that particular
time in history.
Although not by blood, but under the rubric of extended family, there is
through the Rogers, a connection which can be made to none other than
W. E. B. Du Bois. Along with Adam's mother, another African in the Rogers'
household was a woman by the name of Hagar. As a show of gratitude for his
loyalty to them, it is recorded that the family threw a feast to celebrate her
wedding to Thomas Wright, a Christianized Indian who had requested her hand in
marriage. How many and who the Wright children took as spouses has not been
fully recorded except for their daughter Mary. She married Robert Jacklyn, a
rather well to do free person of colour who lived in the area and who, like
herself was also of Native American extraction. A paternal aunt of Dubois
would, a couple of generations later, marry into this family.
