How sad that Elizabeth Taylor died this morning in California at 79 after a long battle with ill health and a long and vivid life.
Those of us around for the opening years of the AIDS pandemic remember her grace, beauty and courage as a combatant --- one of the first --- for acknowledgement of the disease and the drive to find a cure.
The American Foundation for Aids Research, amFAR, which she helped to found, posted this tribute narrated, I believe, by Dame Maggie Smith, this morning.
But many of us might think of her in terms of this song and through the words of another great lady of the silver screen from a slightly different era:
Eternal rest grant them both, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen.
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I was curious when I read that Elizabeth Taylor was born in England but both of her parents were born in the United States so I Googled the actresses' name. When I then read that her paternal grandmother was Elizabeth Mary Rosemond, my interest was piqued. My Great-Grandmother's maiden name was Rosemond. (Many, but not all of the family changed the spelling to Roseman after they came to America from Ireland. Hereafter I will use the spelling Roseman for James and his family.)
It didn't take long, using my genealogy, Ancestry.com and other sources to discover that my Great-Great-Grandfather James Roseman (1800-1887) who lies buried in the Bethel Cemetery in Cedar Township, was an older brother of Elizabeth Taylor's Great-Great-Grandfather Philip Rosemond (1804-1850). Elizabeth Taylor was my 4th cousin!
James Roseman, his wife Anne and two young daughters left County Leitrim, Ireland in 1831 and sailed to America following others of the Rosemond clan who had earlier been "warned out" because of their Huguenot ancestry. They first settled among Rosemond kin in Guernsey County, Ohio where my Great-Grandmother Mary Ann Roseman Wright was born in 1832. The family moved to Iowa in 1850 and appear in the 1856 Iowa census of Muscatine County. James purchased land in Cedar Township, Lucas County in March, 1857 and settled his family near daughter Mary Ann Roseman Wright whose husband David S. Wright had come to the county and purchased 80 acres of land n Cedar and Pleasant Townships in 1856. Anne, the wife of James Roseman, died in 1859 and was among the earliest burials in the Bethel Cemetery. The couple had nine children; eight girls and but one son -- Martin -- who served with Lucas County boys in Company C of the 13th Iowa Infantry and died in service in 1862. When James Roseman died in 1887, there was nobody by the name of Roseman left in the county.
You can see photos of James Roseman, his son Martin Roseman, daughter Mary Ann Roseman Wright, and son-in-law Stephen Julian among the memorials posted in the Bethel Cemetery on Findagrave.com.
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