Priming the Genealogical Well
Pour a bucket of water in before pumping

An old well in New Amsterdam

I remember my grand parents Philip and Marguerite Lennon's humble home on Lincoln Lane in East Hanover, Morris County, New Jersey, about 1950. Lincoln Lane was a dirt road, two parallel ruts made, over time, by the passage of automobiles. About a mile east from the pavement at River Road, in a clearing in the pine barren, surrounded by blackberry and raspberry bushes, stood the small white house, a short walk from the Passaic River. My family lived there while preparing for the move "out West" to California.

Out behind the house, on the path to the print shop, was the well. A bucket full of water was kept there at all times, because the hand pump would not work unless water was first poured in to prime the well.

Genealogical research is much the same process. In order to get information out, some information must first be poured into the search. The better the information that is poured in, the better the results may be.

My genealogical path began with a four page letter to my father David Hedges Roll, Sr., from Roll family genealogist Richard John Franz III, which I found when going through part of the estate in 1997. That letter whetted my appetite. This little genealogy was the priming that allowed me to begin pumping the well. The information has proved to be very accurate, and the results amazing. Other genealogists have made significant contributions over the years.

The water well analogy led me to name this site the Roll Family Windmill, because the Dutch windmill was also a water pumper, uncovering rich fields for cultivation.

The crowned rulers of nations

The well path has lead to the cabins of seafarers, tents of wandering tribes and armies of conquest, humble homes of farmers and tradesmen, dungeons, dwellings of pirate kings, and elaborate palaces of crowned rulers of nations, empires, and churches on five of the seven continents.