Who are you? Where did your parents come from? How many of your eight great-grandparents can you name? If you cannot answer that last question completely—and few of us can—it maybe time to start unfolding your past. You owe it to yourself and to your descendants. According to Alabama Family History and Genealogy News[2] you are descended from approximately “16,184 great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents” who are responsible for you being on this earth. Would it not be wonderful to know something about some of your great-grandparents?
First, start your genealogy project with the information you know about yourself and then research in the records going backwards, gathering information on your immediate family, mother, father, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Listen to and record via cassette, video, or in writing the oral history related to your family. If none of the immediate family is living, then talk with first and second cousins; this may yield untold surprises about the family. Family stories that you might not have heard may lie dormant in a cousin’s memory, just waiting for you to trigger it. Chapter two in this book will outline basic guidelines on collecting and recording the oral history for your family. These basic steps are repeated in most how-to books. They are listed here as a reminder.
Hint: Don’t start seeking connections to African ancestors before you are ready. Several generations are between you and your African ancestors and you will need to know who some of them were, plus you will need to make sure that you are researching the correct family line.
Informal Research
Once the oral history is gathered, the next step should be to look for family resources such as relatives, long-time family friends, family Bibles, and prayer books. Family letters, diaries, scrapbooks, and church memberships are all examples of excellent research sources. In the family Bible, for example, you might obtain births, deaths, and marriage notations from a family member who kept those records. From the family letters, diaries, and church membership you might uncover migration patterns and educational institutions that family members attended. Family photographs sometimes will carry the name of the photo studio or other identifying labels, in some cases the names of the individuals in a photograph or an address as to where the photograph was taken. Study each photograph from your family papers for the time period it was taken. This will help in dating it. For instance, the old family scrapbooks might contain newspaper clippings, funeral programs, postcards, and other mementos of the family’s life in the community.
Another wealth of information can be found in deeds, copies of wills, birth certificates, marriages records, school report cards, old driver’s licenses, membership cards of social and professional organizations, and insurance papers, just to name a few of the many papers that are created by a family in a lifetime. Winston Churchill, former prime minister of England is credited with saying, “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it!” I am not saying to go that far, but I would make sure that the family records being created today by you are placed in a safe environment for future use. You might consider donating your family papers or research to an archives, library, or museum for future protection and to guard against destruction.
Formal Research
Some professional genealogists will say that your next step should be to continue your research at the county courthouse; others might say use the library or archives. As archives and libraries have in the last decade begun to place their holdings on the Internet, it has become easier to view their documents, thereby saving time in locating the exact resource you will need to further your research. You can search the web site of most libraries and archives to see if they have the information you want. Keep in mind that you may not be able to view actual documents but instead will have access to finding-aids and guides to collections. You will need to visit the institutions in order to get copies of the documents—very few documents are online. With limited personnel, courthouses are not putting their resources online as readily as archives and libraries. In formal institutions you are looking for census records, vital records (births, deaths, divorces, marriages), land records, wills and estates records, and other unique records that will help you prove or disprove the family’s oral history.
An important technique that will carry you a long way with your research is keeping a research logbook. Write in it the name and location of every document that you examine. You will find this especially helpful as you get further into your research when you cannot remember if you looked at that census or will record two years ago. The logbook will help eliminate looking for and at the same documents over and over.
If you start your research in a library or archives, the first records I recommend that you examine should be the censuses. The federal census is taken every ten years and released to the public every seventy-two years. Alabama’s 1830 through 1930 federal censuses can be located in the state archives and many of the larger public libraries throughout the state. Alabama also took state censuses in 1850, 1855, and 1866. Census information on your family from 1940 to the present can be received from the census bureau at: U.S. Census Bureau, P. O. Box 1545, Jeffersonville, IN, 47131.
Ancestry.com, an online subscription service, has the census images and indexes online for 1790–1930. In Black Genesis, authors James Rose and Alice Eichholz describe the information that can be gleaned on African Americans from the federal censuses.[3] Internet source for additional information on the census are at 1930census.archives.gov, www.ngsgenealogy.org/Courses/Course.cfm?CID=3, and www.heritagequest.com/genealogy.
Special federal census schedules like the 1870–1880 mortality schedule, 1850–1880 agriculture schedule, 1850–1880 social statistics schedule, and the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules are available for Alabama.
Once an exhaustive search has been done in the census records on each descendent you turn up, you can then begin looking at vital records, probate records, church records, and land records, just to name a few of the many, many records to explore for your family’s background. Starting with the census records will often give clues that will lead to other records. If the census indicates that your ancestor owned land, for insance, then you know that other records to look for would be the deed book, homestead records, will records, estate files, etc.
Marcus Garvey said, “A People without knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots.” Sometimes we tend to forget our family members’ contributions to their communities, to our lives and to the nation. How many of your ancestors served in the military, or fought in one of the wars, helped with the civil rights movement, or taught school? Now ask yourself how many other people in your family know of this information? Can you come up with a number? If not, then your family history needs preserving!
There are tools to help you start your family history, but knowing the right tool to use requires some additional studying and reading. By using the right tools you can leave a family legacy for your family to carry on. The following resources can be helpful:
Resources
Blockson, Charles L., and Ron Fry. Black Genealogy. Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1991.
Ball, Edward. Slaves in the Family. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999.
Burroughs, Tony. African American Roots: A Beginner’s Guide to Tracing the African American Family Tree. Chicago: Fireside Publications, 2000.
Byers, Paula K. African-American Genealogical Sourcebook. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1995.
Clem, Dee. Tracing African-American Roots. Las Vegas: Gator Publishing, Inc, 1999.
Day, Johnnie M. A Quick Step in Genealogy Research: A Primer for Blacks and Other Minorities, and the Novice in this Area. Minneapolis: North Star Publishing Co., 1983.
Parmer, Dee Woodtor. A Place Called Down Home—An African American Guide to Genealogy and Historical Identity. New York: Random House, 1999.
Rose, James M. and Alice Eichholz. Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy. Second edition. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 2003.
Helpful Internet Sources
FamilySearch: www.familysearch.org. The 1880 census is available to the public free of charge.
Ancestry.com: www.ancestry.com. Have available digitalized views of census records and index for all states as well other state records. Also www.genealogy.com.
National Archives: www.nara.gov/genealogy.
[2] Alabama Family History and Genealogy News. 22.2.
[3] Rose, Dr. James and Dr. Alice Eichholz. Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy. pp. 21–25.