Few families can trace their origins 200 years, fewer still 400 years, and only a very few, 550 years.  The Rosevear family, from Cornwall, England, can now enjoy this fascinating story due to the work of one man, Bob Roseveare. 

Bob Roseveare’s career is a remarkable tale.  During World War II, Britain was suffering devastating losses from submarine warfare to a technologically advanced and much better prepared Germany. English intelligence learned that the German message codes were produced by a machine, called the Enigma machine, and British cryptographers at Bletchley Park sought to decode the changing codes produced by Enigma. 

The British code breaking effort recruited the best and brightest mathematicians.  One such mathematician, Bob Roseveare, was 18 years old and had just graduated from what we call high school.  Bob made major contributions to the ultimately successful codebreaking effort and its role in Germany’s defeat.

After the war Bob attended Cambridge University on scholarship but was unable to secure satisfactory employment in England. In 1949 he left for South Africa and found a position teaching mathematics.  In 1965, he returned to England and taught mathematics at several intellectually demanding public schools (equivalent to our private high schools) until his retirement in 1983. 

Sometime in the late 1970s, Bob began to develop a special mission—to discover his Rosevear family roots and then, more importantly, to bring the Rosevear(e) family together for the first time.  With a determination and energy possessed by few people, he contacted people who shared his name and asked about their roots.  He began to spend hours and eventually thousands of hours researching his family in parish records, census data, probate data, and marriage records. 

Through his research, a complete picture of the Rosevear family began to come together.  But Bob knew that the data were only part of his mission.  His true calling was to bring the family together.  Hesitantly at first, and then with more confidence, Bob wrote to hundreds of Rosevear(e)s proposing the first family reunion.  To the delight of Bob and many of his “cousins,” almost 400 Rosevear(e) descendants, half from overseas, traveled to Cornwall in 1985 to meet for the first time.

The gathering set this book in motion.  With more momentum and many more contacts, a second reunion was planned and successfully carried out in 1990.  For that effort, Bob published five booklets describing his work to bring the family together and the huge tree that he produced with the participation of hundreds of cousins. 

Bruce Greenberg and Linda Rosevear Greenberg attended both of Bob Roseveare’s reunions.  For them, learning that they were part of this far-flung family and meeting their many cousins was a special experience.  They wanted to continue Bob’s work, and their experience owning a small publishing company—devoted to American toy trains—proved fortuitous.  In 2002, with Bob Roseveare’s blessings and encouragement, they began the work that created this volume. 

Bruce and Linda laboriously entered Bob’s handwritten 176-page family tree containing 10,000 names into their computers and wrote to the 400 Rosevear families on Bob’s mailing list.  Responses were initially quite slow, but as the process continued, more family members responded and updated births, marriages, and deaths.  Each time a family member sent information, Bruce and Linda would enter the information in the family tree and send back a proof.  Frequently, the family member would make additional changes or additions, and sometimes this round robin went four rounds! 

At the same time, several other family members were studying their own branches of the family using increasingly available genealogical resources.  These family scholars graciously shared their information with Bruce and Linda. The result of this enormous collaboration—involving several hundred family members that began in the early 1980s with Bob Roseveare—is the 542 page book that was published on July 20, 2005.  The book is available for $50 plus shipping from Brinkmann Publishing Company, 5233 Bessley Place, Alexandria, VA 22304.  For more details write brucegreenberg@comcast.net