Robert Charles Anderson

Last updated November 22, 2019

Robert Charles Anderson (born 1944) is an American genealogist and director of the Great Migration Study Project. Anderson was educated as a biochemist and served in the United States Army in electronics intelligence. In 1972, he discovered his early New England ancestry and thereafter devoted his time and energies to genealogical research. He published his first genealogical article in 1976, and about the same time began to plan for what eventually became the Great Migration Study Project. In 1983, he received a master's degree in colonial American History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Genealogy is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members. The results are often displayed in charts or written as narratives. Although generally used interchangeably, the traditional definition of "genealogy" begins with a person who is usually deceased and traces his or her descendants forward in time, whereas, "family history" begins with a person who is usually living and traces his or her ancestors. Both the National Genealogical Society in the United States and the Society of Genealogists in the United Kingdom state that the word "genealogy" often refers to the scholarly discipline of researching lineages and connecting generations, whereas "family history" often refers to biographical studies of ones family, including family narratives and traditions.

The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution. As the oldest and most senior branch of the U.S. military in order of precedence, the modern U.S. Army has its roots in the Continental Army, which was formed to fight the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)—before the United States of America was established as a country. After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784 to replace the disbanded Continental Army. The United States Army considers itself descended from the Continental Army, and dates its institutional inception from the origin of that armed force in 1775.

New England is a region composed of six states in the northeastern United States: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England's largest city, as well as the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston is the largest metropolitan area, with nearly a third of New England's population; this area includes Worcester, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire, and Providence, Rhode Island.

Anderson was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists (ASG) in 1978 and has served as Secretary and President of that organization. He also published in the ASG magazine The Genealogist. He became a Contributing Editor of The American Genealogist in 1979, Associate Editor in 1985 and Co-editor in 1993. He has been an editorial consultant to The New England Historical and Genealogical Register since 1989.

The American Society of Genealogists is the scholarly honorary society of the genealogical field. Founded by John Insley Coddington, Arthur Adams, and Meredith B. Colket, Jr., in December 1940, its membership is limited to 50 living fellows. ASG publishes The Genealogist, a scholarly journal of genealogical research semi-annually since 1980.

The Genealogist is a bi-annual genealogical magazine founded in 1980 by the American Society of Genealogists (ASG) and by Dr. Neil D. Thompson, FASG. Articles are published in full detail, including references. The magazine allows shorter articles, but focuses on articles that are often too large or complex for other genealogical publishing forums. Each issue has a minimum of 128 pages.

The American Genealogist is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal which focuses on genealogy and family history. It was established by Donald Lines Jacobus in 1922 as the New Haven Genealogical Magazine. In July 1932 it was renamed The American Genealogist and New Haven Genealogical Magazine and the last part of the title was dropped in 1937, giving the journal its current title. All editors have been fellows of the American Society of Genealogists.

External links

Related Research Articles

Sir John Bernard Burke, was a British genealogist and Ulster King of Arms, who helped publish Burke's Peerage.

Philip Sherman (1611–1687) was a prominent leader and one of the founding settlers of Portsmouth in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Coming from Dedham, Essex in southeastern England, he and several of his siblings and cousins settled in New England. His first residence was in Roxbury in the Massachusetts Bay Colony where he lived for a few years, but he became interested in the teachings of the dissident ministers John Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson, and at the conclusion of the Antinomian Controversy he was disarmed and forced to leave the colony. He went with many followers of Hutchinson to establish the town of Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island, later called Rhode Island. He became the first secretary of the colony there, and served in many other roles in the town government. Sherman became a Quaker after settling in the Rhode Island colony, and died at an advanced age, leaving a large progeny.

William Arnold was one of the founding settlers of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and he and his sons were among the wealthiest people in the colony. He was raised and educated in England where he was the warden of St. Mary's, the parish church of Ilchester in southeastern Somerset. He emigrated to New England with family and associates in 1635. He initially settled in Hingham in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but he soon relocated to the new settlement of Providence Plantation with Roger Williams. He was one of the 13 original proprietors of Providence, appearing on the deed signed by Roger Williams in 1638, and was one of the 12 founding members of the first Baptist church to be established in America.

The Puritan migration to New England was marked in its effects in the two decades from 1620 to 1640, after which it declined sharply for a time. The term Great Migration usually refers to the migration in this period of English Puritans to Massachusetts and the West Indies, especially Barbados. They came in family groups rather than as isolated individuals and were motivated chiefly by a quest for freedom to practice their Puritan religion.

The Boston Evening Transcript was a daily afternoon newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts, published from July 24, 1830, to April 30, 1941.

Donald Lines Jacobus, FASG (1887-1970) of New Haven, Connecticut, was widely regarded among genealogists as the dean of American genealogy.

Joseph Lemuel Chester (1821–1882) was a 19th century American genealogist, poet and editor. He is known for his genealogical research on many prominent American families.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is the oldest and largest genealogical society in the United States, founded in 1845.

The Arnold family is an American political and military family with ties to New England, Georgia and Ohio. The descendants of American Revolutionary War general Benedict Arnold in Great Britain, while not particularly politically active, also achieved notable success in the 19th century.

Robert Abell was born in about 1605 in Stapenhill, Derbyshire, England. He emigrated to New England in 1630 as part of the first wave of the Great Migration, and was among the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, settling first in Weymouth, and subsequently in Rehoboth, where he died on June 20, 1663.

William Addams Reitwiesner was an American genealogist who traced the ancestry of United States political figures, European royalty and celebrities.

John Coggeshall Jr. was a deputy governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The son of Rhode Island President John Coggeshall Sr., he was raised in the village of Castle Hedingham in northeastern Essex where his father was a merchant. Aged about eight, he sailed from England with his parents and surviving siblings, arriving in New England in 1632. He was first active in civil affairs in 1653 when he became treasurer of the island towns of Portsmouth and Newport. The following year brought the re-unification of the colony, with the island towns rejoining the government with Providence and Warwick, and he served as treasurer of the four towns for a year. His name appears on a list of Newport freemen in 1655, and for the following 35 years he served almost continuously in one or multiple roles including Assistant, General Treasurer, Deputy, General Recorder, and Major for the Island. He was one of ten Assistants named in the Royal Charter of 1663, which would become the basis for Rhode Island's government for nearly two centuries. In 1686 he became the Deputy Governor under Governor Walter Clarke, but his term lasted only a month when the English crown assigned Edmund Andros to be Governor of all the New England colonies under the Dominion of New England. Following the demise of this dominion and the arrest of Andros in 1689, Coggeshall was once again selected as Deputy Governor for the year ending in May 1690, serving under Governor Henry Bull. In April 1676, during King Philip's War, he was on a committee to procure boats for the colony's defense. Later that year, in August, he was a member of a court martial for the trial of several Indians.

Thomas Hazard was one of the nine founding settlers of Newport on Aquidneck Island in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He settled in Boston and Portsmouth before settling Newport, but later returned to Portsmouth. His descendants include Commodores Oliver Hazard Perry and Matthew C. Perry and three colonial Rhode Island deputy governors.

George Andrews Moriarty Jr. (1883–1968), called G. Andrews Moriarty in most of his published work, was an American genealogist from Newport, Rhode Island. He was born in Newport on February 14, 1883, the only son of George Andrews Moriarty and Mary Ann Sheffield. His ancestor, John Moriarty, emigrated from Ireland in 1777 and settled in Salem, Massachusetts. George attended St. George's School in Newport, and then did his undergraduate work at Harvard University where he earned an A.B. in 1905, cum laude. He then attended Christ Church College in Oxford, England where he specialized in historical studies, following which he returned to Harvard to earn an M.A. in 1907.

Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists (FASG) is an independent society of fellows reflecting the master class of genealogists within the United States of America. There are only fifty (50) lifetime FASG members within the American Society of Genealogists (ASG).

Eugene Cole "Gene" Zubrinsky is highly regarded among genealogists and family historians for his research and writing on colonial southern New England families. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists and lives in Ojai, California.

Douglas Charles Richardson is an American genealogist, historian, lecturer, and author based in Salt Lake City in Utah, the location of the Mormon Church's vast genealogical library, the International Genealogical Index. He is experienced in researching cases involving all periods of American research from colonial to the modern times. He also specializes in the genealogy of medieval English gentry families and English royalty.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.