Back to my Roots

For so many African-American’s the idea that you could trace your family history back akin to semi-fictional tale of Roots. But with the aide of modern technology it’s a reality that I am currently experiencing. My “journey” to find out who I am or where I come from started off rather innocuously with home décor. I know home décor, but I was looking for items that both fit into my pauvre chic but still spoke to me as an African-American.

Of course I was looking for paintings, drawings, and other artwork but I wanted something different. Something that was a real conversation starter, then it hit me. FREEDOM PAPERS, I wanted a copy of papers that set free, manumit, a persons and/or their progeny from slavery. But of course being the me that I am, I thought “wouldn’t it be great to be able to get a copy that had a surname that was I had in my pedigree, and possibly could be related to me. With the quick type of Google, I found it. I was literally stunned, I kept saying to myself, “No, no, no, it can’t be THIS easy”, but there it was, the surname of my mother’s maiden name starring back at me, with a list of fourteen slaves that were to be manumit from bondage at various ages. The records happened to be a school with Quaker ties. Before I realized it, I was on the phone with the person who was in charge of records.

What shocked him, was that no less than five minutes previously he was talking to the a colleague of his about those very records. In his mind he thought I must have talked to his colleague, and was stunned when he realized that no, I was complete stranger. Fate is funny I guess. In an hour, in my inbox, there were the pdf versions of the manumitted slaves names of fourteen persons: Robert, Eleanor, Mary, Lucy, Henry, William, John, Mark, Agnes, Polly, Joan, Richard, and Betsey. Of course after I got this and told my Mom. Understandably she was excited and happy charged with the idea that somehow maybe just maybe one of these persons was an ancestor of ours.

From there she told me a story that I remembered hearing that one of her ancestors on her father’s side as far back as we know was never a slave. The story went that he was on a ship bound to be a slave, but the captain of the ship could not pull into dock because slavery had been illegal, so instead of risking his life, the Captain burned the ship, and those on board, had to swim ashore, once reaching the shore. My ancestor got help from Quakers. I had heard this story before but I never really took it to heart, maybe it was the fact that I wanted to know if we were still related to one or more of the fourteen.

The Labor Day weekend that so many of the kids were out in Atlanta celebrating pride, I celebrated a different type of pride. After I told my new found interest of genealogy she turned over this pile of paper that she had been keeping just for this day. Information on various deceased relatives, contact information for those who she had been in contact with, and as much family research she did without having to pay (where do you think I got the pauvre chic genes from). That same day, after driving four ours to my hometown to spend that time with my mom, no more than an hour home, we decided on a spur of the moment trip to Accomac County, VA, to look for a town that had her ancestor’s surname.

Arriving in Accomac you could feel the history, the highway nothing more than a long seemingly forever stretch of asphalt, acres and acres of crops, a stillness in the acre, and often you could see abandoned farm buildings some larger than others where the vines had taken over. It was a Saturday and the whole county was still and quiet, eerily so. We finally arrive to the town that had our name, and only thing there was a street. A long street that was probably the only remnant of the place my great-grandfather grew up. While driving around we saw Black people, but we didn’t speak, my mother and I aren’t the type of people to just go up and talk to anyone.

But what that trip did was really spur me onto finding out as much information as possible about my family, the only way I knew how, by using the internet. Specifically ancestry.com. At first I was hesitant, I had used online communities, and subscriptions before, and all they ended up being was a hassle when you wanted to cancel. But I figured what the hell its 30 dollars a month and if I didn’t find anything then I would have just cancel. I started with knowing about only being able to go back three generations, after just a month I have been able to track my family back to 1835, and one person back to a specific owner, and plantation. It will only be a matter of time at least with that person that I can then trace who his mother and maybe father was due to the fact that most likely his parents were on the same plantation.

The only two issues that I have had so far is finding evidence to corroborate the story about the slave would be, and finding the last names of some of the ladies before they were married. Some of this information others in my family have, and they are just so damn trifling that I don’t know if they will ever give me the information that I need. But thanks to Ancestry.com I will be able to find it out eventually.

Since this has occurred knowing where my people came from Virginia and South Carolina, and learning more and more about them, has made me feel as if the United States is really mine. In fact, once I get my money right, I plan to buy an acre of land near or at the place in Virginia where my ancestor swam ashore.

Second Thoughts

So I had this big surprise for my Mom for her birthday. In order to understand the scope of it, let me give you some background information. When my Mom went to marry my father and live in Cote D’Ivoire, she packed her clothes, and she back two or three trunks. In those trunks she packed away family photos, heirlooms, clippings, home movies, diplomas, and general items that one has that reminds them of their life. Things you would want to pass onto your children, and save for posterity. So she goes over to Cote D’Ivoire and after getting settled she lets my soon to be father know that she needs to go pick up her trunks. From my understanding she asks several times before he finally tells her flat out no, that he’s not going to get them or taking her to go get them regardless that she has the money to get them out of storage. Why, because she’s starting a new life with him anyway, what does she want with those old things. So all of things she packed are gone, destroyed, sold, or just thrown away.

Can you imagine everything you ever saved, photos that you had growing, momentos that your mother, who is now deceased, everything from your past pretty much gone. Yea my father is real bastard but that’s not the focus of this posting. So when I have been working on is trying to do a this is your life retrospective. Focusing on the life from my Mom’s high school to 1981, before she met my father, right now I’m making impressive headway. I have found a copy of her 1966 high school year book the year before she graduated. I have copies of all four years of her college yearbook, and the school even helped me get newspaper clippings from her college years that mentioned her. I also have copy of the article that discusses her college chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha’s 50 year celebration, and get this, even has a photo of my mom and her line sisters the day after they crossed, and yes they do look tired. I even found a 1979 letter to the editor that my Mom wrote that was published in the New York Times. Right now I’m working with Columbia where she got her Master’s in Social Work, and NYU where she got her MBA, and was named woman of the year. Unfortunately with large schools look that, the alumni office are only but so helpful. I called up Columbia’s records office, and they told me in order to get any information I had to get a power of attorney’s letter. But I called up her school’s alumni affairs office and they helped. I have to follow up with the same with NYUs’ Stern as well.

Besides the school portion I am trying to get a hold of the Harlem Interfaith Council I know she worked there, but for how long I am not too sure. I cannot find a working number for them, I was hoping that they would have some photos, news clippings or a press release dating back from that era that may have my mom’s mentioned.

Now I am reconsidering the idea, why, because my mom is depressed and just overall sad about a lot of things. I’m thinking showing her photos, and memories of yesterday will only make her even more depressed. Maybe I should just get her some Carols Daughter and just keep it moving, I don’t know….