Life has, once again, taken me off-line and out of touch with my wonderful hobby. I do, however, peel a few minutes away every now and then. In one of those precious moments, I came across a great potential resource for researchers of African American ancestry that I’d like to share.
Tom MacEntee over at GeneaBloggers runs quite a few inspirational theme ideas for other family history bloggers. One of his recent ones is called, “Friend of Friends Friday”. The premise is this:
“if you have encountered records of enslaved ancestors, whether they are your own ancestors or not, make it a point to transcribe those records and get them posted on the Internet via your blog.”
WHAT A GREAT IDEA! There is simply no repository of this kind of information and no replacement of it as a resource to peek behind the shroud of slavery before 1870. Of course its not indexed, comprehensive or, in some cases, written to be very useful for researchers. But it is a start. I’ve attached the Google reader RSS URL here. Enjoy and check out some of the other great ideas Tom and his friends have come up with over time. There’s also a special section on African American blogs as well.
I’ve been researching my family history for quite some time (mostly online which I plan to change in the near future) and one of the most frustrating moments for me is when I come across a GREAT database or index for Oregon…..or Delaware…..or some other state/locality that I’m certain my ancestors never saw. It was one of those moments recently that gave me this idea.
The vast majority of my research is centered around two states; Florida and Tennessee. I’ve collected hundreds of pieces of information when I’ve come across one of these online gems that happens to cover my family’s slice of the world. Going forward, every time I find one, I’m going to post the link here so that others might stumble across this information about our place in the world. You’ll find these collections on the tab above or by clicking here.
For me, truthfully, documentaries about African American genealogy begin and end with African American Lives 1 & 2. I didn’t really get into NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are” during its first run. This year, one of the show’s (which premieres February 4th at 8pm/7 C) first celebs is Vanessa Williams. As it turns out Ms. Williams family history yields some genealogical gems worthy of prime time television:
I’ve been actively researching my family’s history now since 1999. In the early days, every day yielded a new path, new treasure or new finding that got me up out of my seat. In the years since that time, “brick walls” spring up routinely and breakthroughs become fewer and farther between. That’s why when something new comes along, the happy dance is twice as sweet. A few posts ago, I referenced the familyhistory.org site and the databases therein. Well, this morning it delivered again. Although I signed up for a site membership a while ago, I usually search without logging in. HUGE mistake! I logged in this morning and to my surprise, not only was the tennessee, Death Records, 1914-1955 indexed, but copies of the actual death certificates were scanned and available for download! I was able to find an actual document for dozens of my ancestors in Rutherford County
including Hillary Brown. Loads of information are contained on these pages! As for brick wall #4525…. Hillary’s certificate CONFIRMED his parents as William & Fannie Brown. What’s the big deal you might ask?!? Well, my first real record of Hillary and Bettie is the 1870 census record. Because they were born as slaves, they weren’t named in any government record prior to that. Family lore always suggested that Hillary was raised by his older brother Booker (well documented on this site). Maybe; but the death certificate listing of his parents tells me that Hillary and his family knew exactly who their ancestors were, even 60+ years later.
I recently received a copy of the photo composite for the 1940 graduating class of Holloway High in Murfreesboro, Tennessee (Thanks cousin!). Why is this set of photographs important to me? Well my grandparents were members of this class and I’ve just added two new late teen aged snapshots of them to my collection! For those that have followed this site for a while, you’ll note the handsome young man in the lower right hand corner is Wash William Brown, my grandfather. My grandmother, whom I’ve written about before on this site, has her identity protected here because she is still happily with us in mind, body and spirit!
Holloway High was founded in 1928 and was the only black high school in Murfreesboro, TN at the time. Many members of my maternal line walked the halls at Holloway High and still attend the annual ‘Red and Black’ affair in Murfreesboro.
One of the moments in my research that elicited pride (there have been many) was the time that I “found” my 2nd Great Grand uncle, Booker Sampson Brown, and his connection to the Civil War. I was recently re-watching the African American Lives 2 series and watched a similar discovery for Don Cheadle and his family. You can see it for yourself here. Here’s Chris Rock having the same joy:
I think a lot of the pride comes from knowing that your ancestors weren’t just victims…. weren’t just dragged along by this holocaust, but actually had the opportunity to put on a uniform, bare arms and fight for the freedom recently granted through war. It’s not nearly enough to erase the scars, but it gives me something to talk to my kids about when the questions inevitably come. Something personal. something beyond Roots, Dr. King and the differences between now and then.
When I visited the African American Civil War Memorial for the first time a few years ago, it struck me that this was a story not often told. No one ever told me until I went to find it myself. Over the holidays, I was able to visit again, this time with my Grandmother in tow. She is Booker’s Great-Grand niece. She’d never heard the story I’ve been able to piece together either (beyond hearing her Grandfather Hillary speak fondly of his older brother). Amazing how this stuff teaches the young and the old.
After climbing back in the saddle over the weekend, I began to explore some of my old website haunts to see what I’d missed in my absence. A fellow family site (who has sadly pulled her site down in recent days; hope to see it come back, but I get how life might get in the way) posted a link that helped me source more than a dozen death and burial dates and locations on Sunday morning. The Familysearch.org beta site has really moved forward in the last few months. Several of their libraries including, Tennessee Death Records, 1874 – 1955 have proven invaluable.
If you haven’t been there in some time, pay them a visit. They provided several wonderful hours of discovery for me.
The last 6 months have been quite a journey. New city; relocation. New and bigger job. Lost close family member (and great friend). I cautiously say we are getting back to the “new normal”. I’m attempting to get back into my research and this outlet; as time and energy permit. In a funny way, all of this, the good and the bad, have led me to believe my efforts are more important than ever.
I was sharing some of my research, related to members of my family with military service experience, with my son (under 6) the other day. It was great to have this resource to show him what came before and why its important. He was actually pretty fascinated with the pictures and some of the stories. This is definitely,….defintely worth it!
I’m going to start a new feature here at Timeless Reunion called Tools I Use. I’ll state upfront that I receive NO compensation nor am I endorsing any product….but these are research tools that I wouldn’t do without.
I am a Legacy Family Tree user. I think its a great program and it helped me start this hobby with minimal investment by offering a free standard version. Legacy has a lively, often rambunctious, User Group (LUG). A few months ago, one of the users began sharing a series of small programs that really added tremendous value to the research process. One of those tools was Census Finder.
As most of the genealogy databases do, Legacy allows you to connect an event to an individual when you are researching their life milestones. For example, my grandfather can be found in the 1910, 1920 and 1930 census records. In Legacy, this creates three separate “event” records (now there’s a whole ongoing debate at LUG having to do with lumpers and splitters and I’m not going into that here). I use Census Finder to read the Legacy database and provide a report showing, at a glance, whether an individual in your databases is missing a census record. This is extremely helpful when I’m in the mood to fill in the blanks in my research and will be a terrific tool when the 1940 US census becomes available to distinguish which ancestors you’ve found in your research. Great tool!
After climbing back in the saddle over the weekend, I began to explore some of my old website haunts to see what I’d missed in my absence. A fellow family site (who has sadly pulled her site down in recent days; hope to see it come back, but I get how life might get in the way) posted a link that helped me source more than a dozen death and burial dates and locations on Sunday morning. The 
My family's journey through time... A work in progress. 