Anglin Ancestors leave their Tracks

See the Tree for the Anglin family line posted on the Anglin page; and ck the side bar for the new listing for Websites for reputable research backed up by paper.   View the documents.  Great proofs for Adrian Anglin.
Also, Isaac Anglin fights at Valley Forge with George Washington.  See the document that shows which unit he was released from.

Of Names and History Anglins and Rolands

My brother Blaine and I have been discussing the Anlin family lately and the complications of determining if we are of French ancestry or of Irish Ancestry. It appears to be relative to the exact generation of Anglins to which you speak. The migration of families and the history of the name confuses the facts sometimes, but the paper trail ususally sorts it out. IF you can find it. So in my notes I include the speculations and history, which are a guide to my research. Then I include the things I rule out and the things I confirm. I may even include my speculations just so I can remember them later when I am in full blown reasearch mode.

When sorting out, my Roland family line, I had eliminated enough counties that I didn't find our ancestor Charles Henry Roland, until I only had two counties left, in which I couldn't find him. I was looking for him in his late teens to the years as a young married man.He was in transition as a Revolutionary Soldier, and had not yet settled on his land from grants, which would be given him for service as a Soldier. Add to that, the fact that counties and states were dividing and subdividing, changing boundaries faster than you can keep up with, and I had to know exactly what the map looked like during the specific years when I was looking for Charles. To complicate matters, I had been looking under the spelling Roland, and discovered that there were at least 3 other spellings I had to seriously look under. I finally found his militrary record and realized, if I was looking for him during the Revolutionary war years, or just prior to that, I had to use the military spelling. So now I narrowed it down to 2 counties, and one name. I found an index record that showed someone with what seemed to be him in a certain book. So I recorded the name of the book. And tried to keep it front and center in my search list. I went on line and spent hours looking through the records for one of the two counties - Anson. A particuar Roland who was not our family had pages and pages to sort through, but I finally determined that our Charles was not there. So it left one county to research, and it fit with where he should have been. Rowan. I went to Raleigh but with the wrong spelling, so found nothing in the library. I searched online and couldn't find it. But one day we were in Georgia at a small genealogy library in Cumming. There on the first line of shelves, top shelf, first row, was the little book on my search list. I couldn't believe it! Rowan county records for the very years I needed. So I actually looked first for the spelling, Rolen, like the military records, and there he was. Not just once, but 3 times, on the tax lists for that county. Why was it spelled that way? Cause that is how his military records were listed, and he was still in the military. Found him!

How do I know it was him and not some one else named Rolen? The military record is for his land in what became Yancey Co, NC. The very same land we find our ancestor Charles living on and in possession of, for most of his life. It was History that got me thinking, or I never would have found him. What's more, his military record is for Henry Rolen. I said his name was Charles Roland, didn't I? Ok. How do I know it wasn't a brother? Well the land only went to Henry upon Charles death.. But Charles Roland had a son named Henry Roland, sometimes refered to as Henry, Jr. who had a son whom they also called Henry Jr. Now Henry the son of Charles once had a daugher who married, and in the announcement in the paper, he said his name was Charles Henry Roland. Named after his father, you see. The soldier, whose son was Charles Henry was also Charles Henry, but his military records were not for Charles as he was known in Yancey Co. but for Henry.

My sons have the same delima because they don't go by their first names. So official records often don't list them by the names we call them. My husband is Jimmy, but he recieves mail all the time that assumes his legal name is James, but it isn't. Early on in school, Jimmy was called by his middle name of Robert. If I were looking for him in his youth, I would need to look for a Robert. It was literally a teacher who determined she had too many Jimmy's, so she set up his school records as Robert. Not his choice or his parents', nor would he go by that in life. But for records, I need to know him as Robert. I cannot discount the unexplained name change when doing research. I don't know why Charles Henry Roland was a Rolen in the military, or why he went by his middle name. Maybe it was for military purposes to protect him or his family if captured. Nor do I know why he was known as Charles for the rest of his life, but he chose to use the name Henry to call his son by. Which explains why the grandson eventually became known as Henry JR, not the 3rd. Simple when you know the whole story.  Most researchers only know of Charles Roland, his son Henry Roland, and his son Henry Roland Jr.  I have never found a single entry which has noted that the elder Roland was Charles Henry, whose son was Charles Henry, whose Son was James Henry Roland Jr.

I accept those idiosyncrasies easily now, and explain them later. And I get a whole lot further in my research.

Here are my notes on the Anglin family discussion: From my Family Tree notes page -

"Researchers all over, whose oldest known ancestor is "Adrion Anglen", disagree on who his father actually is. Most agree that at least some legitamate documents name a William as his father. There was, in the immediate area near where Adrian lived, a William who is believed to be from France who, as headwright, was given land in 1705 in VA, and who traveled through England to America, where he lived in the area of his land grant the rest of his life. Some believe this is Adrian's father. There is however another line of Anglens, living in the same area whose presence and naming patterns confuse things a bit. They also have a William whose birthday and wife's name are almost the same as our Adrian's son William. This William settled in Caswell County, NC, and long was thought by researchers to be the ancestor of Anglins in Yancey County and in Forsyth Co. Ga. as well. But the connections were made only with difficulty. It is entirely possible that the headright William might have been HIS grandfather,(Caswell Co., NC's William,) not ours. *Or possibly he was the grandfather to both. It is said that the documents for this county were burned during the Civil War and it is nearly impossible to make all the connections finite.

One alternate way to make this definition is through DNA research, which for the Anglin family is gaining more tested results every month. A clearer picture is forming through the actual bloodlines than through records in this case. Although I read in some researchers notes that the aforementioned William who is not our Grandfather, is also not related to us; that assumption is not exactly correct. The markers that distinguish our line from his are different, but most of the markers that make us both Anglins are the same. This is a fact that indicated to me that somewhere back there, we had the same ancestors.*

One thing is certain. The name which is said to have been on the ship manifest for the elder William Anglin was Guillaume Englen. That is French. Adrion is French (pronounced Ah DREE ON). The origin of the name reguardless of where Adrian's father came from is French. After researching the Anglin name in other areas of the world, I found the families always originated in France. Even the ones whose name goes back for hundreds of years in Ireland, came from France. All the Englens" I could find in America that still spell the name that way, came from the Scandinavian countries, but their ancestors came from France. All the Anglens, Anglins, and Englens and Angels that came from England originated in France. Many Anglins settled in Canada and their ancestors are from France. So whether we can trace the exact names or not, the name itself came from France and it means "Angel". The direct translation for Englen (pronounced ON GLON) is Angel. A further testament to that is found within our family itself. There are branches within our own line who spell their name Angel, indicating someone back there knew what it meant. There are neighbors in Yancey county who descend from those who spelled it Angel.

There are at least two records I saw transcribed that I couldn't copy, where Adrion's name was spelled Englen. Even in these notes I have used Adrion's original spelling which is French because in the earliest records that is how he is found - Adrion Englen.

There is one line of researchers who mistakenly started with the Anglicised form of the name - Anglen, and went backwards doing research in France seeking ancestors with names like Angloin, Aglon, etc. Their mistake is that they did not correctly translate the language from Old English back to french. Because in Old English, it does not begin with an A. (See the book for a page with the online dictionary definition.)"