Research at the National Archives&Beyond

If you only know the name of a grandparent, then how do you go back three or four generations to find their slave ancestors? Konnetta Alexander shares touching stories of finding her slave ancestors going back three and four generations.  With inspiration from journal entries of an Antebellum, slave account book written by slaveholder Daniel Graham, the lives of unrelated slaves provides documentation of slave life from which Konnetta uses as her guidebook to find and document slaves.  While making national presentations about the life of Matila Graham, house slave, Konnetta tells the story of every house slave!  Calling out the last names of her slave ancestors:  Clark, Miller, Moorman, Peay, Prince, Quinn and Ramsey. Join in as discoveries unfold in Finding Our Slaves. With 20+ years of genealogy digging, Konnetta has three projects: researching family, transcribing and making public excerpts of the slave journal, and performing interpretative presentations about the lives of Free Persons of Color and Slaves.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, is an annual participant of MAAGI (Mid-Western African American Genealogy Institute), and member of several historical societies.  The focus of Konnetta’s genealogy research is finding, documenting and personalizing slaves, whether family nor not.                     

  Michael N. Henderson, Author, Lecturer, Family History Researcher will explore the reasons why leaving a legacy of your genealogy research is important. Michael Nolden Henderson, Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy retired,  began his genealogy journey almost 30 years ago. Henderson is the author of Got Proof! My Genealogical Journey Through the Use of Documentation, his memoir detailing his discovery of an enslaved ancestor who gained her freedom in Spanish colonial Louisiana in 1779. In 2014, he was awarded finalist in the 50th Georgia Author of the Year Awards from the Georgia Writer’s Association. Henderson is the first and only African American member of the Georgia Society, Sons of the American Revolution. He is also a member of other lineage societies, including the General Society of the War of 1812.  He is a lecturer who speaks frequently to groups nationwide, and is the recipient of the 2013 James Dent Walker Award for Excellence in African American Genealogical Research. He is a native of New Orleans, and a graduate of Xavier University.  

Join genealogist, Sharon Batiste Gillins for a discussion of Record Group 105 of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. She will share her experiences in locating records in this rich genealogical resource available at the National Archives. The Freedmen's Bureau was established in the War Department by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865. The life of the Bureau was extended twice by acts of July 16, 1866 and July 6, 1868. The Bureau was responsible for the supervision and management of all matters relating to refugees and freedmen, and of lands abandoned or seized during the Civil War. Sharon Batiste Gillins is a native of Galveston, Texas with paternal ancestral roots in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana and maternal roots in Fort Bend County, Texas. A life-long interest in her family's history led to an active involvement in researching African American family history over the past 25 years. While researching her own family, she developed an in interest in unique and under-utilized record systems and record groups.  Some of her more recent work focuses on strategies researchers can use to analyze Louisiana’s Freedmen’s Bureau field office records for revealing, often personal information on freedmen ancestors. Ms. Gillins is a member of the Galveston Historical Society, National Genealogical Society, and Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society.  A retired Associate Professor at Riverside City College, she frequently calls upon her career background as a college educator to present workshops or deliver courses at regional and national conferences and genealogical institutes.   She is also a member of the adjunct faculty at Samford Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research in Birmingham.  

Join author, lecturer, television and radio host Antoinette Harrell for a discussion of her new book The Department of Justice - Slavery, Involuntary Servitude and Peonage. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery and certain forms of involuntary servitude. The Department of Justice files contain complaints made by persons (victims) who were being held against their will or forced to work off debts through threats and intimidation by employers or others. Most of the victims were negroes who were beaten to return to former employers to work off their debts. These files contain correspondences, memorandums, telegrams, newspapers clippings, transcripts or testimonies, FBI reports of investigation and indictments. Antoinette Harrell, a renowned genealogist whose genealogical research has been featured on Nightline News, People Magazine and many other national and international public media. Harrell is the host and producer of Nurturing Our Roots Television and Nurturing Our Roots Blog Talk Radio. She was appointed Honorary Attorney General in the State of Louisiana in 2003 for her studies in genealogy. She is also one of the recipients of the ASLAH Award for her outstanding services of as a humanitarian activist and film maker. She has also been featured in “Chronicle On Civil Rights” & Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles a National Movement.

Join Joseph McGill for a discussion on site in a slave cabin at the Hopsewee Plantation in Georgetown County, South Carolina. Since May 2010, Joseph McGill has spent a night in over 50 extant slave dwellings in the states of Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, all in an attempt to bring much needed attention to these often neglected structures.  Known as the Slave Dwelling Project, it has been successful in highlighting the stewards of properties that are doing all that is necessary to preserve, interpret, maintain and sustain these structures.  The project has also identified many structures that are in desperate need of restoration.  What started as a personal quest has now evolved into a not-for-profit organization.  The project’s popularity does not allow McGill to sleep in these places alone anymore.  On Thursday, May 29, 2014, McGill spent the night in a slave cabin at Hopsewee Plantation in Georgetown County, SC, and was joined by a high school group from Milwaukee, WI and their chaperons.  The Slave Dwelling Project's first Conference will be held in Savannah, GA, September 18 – 20, 2014. www.slavedwellingproject.org

Have you just received your results and have no idea how to analyze them? What do you know about Identical by Descent (IBD) and Identical by State( IBS)?  Have you lowered the threshold on your DNA matches and discovered that you match everyone?  Should you do this and is it a valid indicator for identifying matches?  Shannon Christmas will discuss how DNA analysis, when used in concert with traditional genealogical research methods, can help family historians overcome challenges unique to genealogy research.  He will also answer your burning questions concerning the various DNA test. Shannon Christmas is an experienced genealogist specializing in genetic, colonial American, and African-American genealogy in Virginia and the Carolinas. He serves as a 23andMe Ancestry Ambassador, administrator of The Captain Thomas Graves of Jamestown Autosomal DNA Project, co-administrator of The Hemings-Jefferson-Wayles-Eppes Autosomal DNA Project, and blogger of Through The Trees, “a didactic guide to new tools and technologies for genealogy” (http://throughthetreesblog.tumblr.com/). Shannon has a special interest in harnessing the power of autosomal DNA to verify and extend pedigrees, assess the veracity of oral history, and reconstruct ancestral genomes. A trained urban planning and real estate consultant, Shannon has a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Harvard University and a Masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Join Shannon Christmas and other experts at the 2014 International Genetic Conference - http://i4gg.org

The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation: Stories of My Family’s Journey to Freedom with John F. Baker Jr. Genealogy expert John F. Baker Jr. was born in 1962, in Springfield, Tennessee and has lived his entire life just a few miles from Wessyngton Plantation, in a town populated by hundreds of descendants of its slaves. His book, The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation: Stories of My Family’s Journey to Freedom, was published by Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster.  When Baker was in the seventh grade, he discovered the story of his ancestors when he saw a photograph of four former slaves in his social studies textbook.  Months later he learned that they were his grandmother’s paternal grandparents, Emanuel and Henny Washington, who were once enslaved on Wessyngton Plantation.  The plantation was founded in 1796 by Joseph Washington, a distant cousin of President Washington.  He has interviewed dozens of individuals ranging from 80 to 107 years old to collect their oral histories.  He studied more than 11,000 documents to trace the lives of his ancestors, the Washington family and more than 300 other African Americans enslaved on Wessyngton Plantation, the largest tobacco plantation in America. For more than thirty years through extensive historical research, Baker has created a groundbreaking work in African American history and American history.  

Do you have South Carolina roots?  Are you aware of the history of the large slave owning community of the Old Edgefield District?  What resources are available to assist you with your research? Join the co-authors of Our Ancestors,Ours Stories, Harris Bailey, Jr., Bernice Bennett, Ellen Butler, Ethel Dailey and Vincent Sheppard for a discussion about the resources they used to find information on their ancestors. You will find in Our Ancestors, Our Stories an historical overview of life and events in South Carolina, and particularly Edgefield, and a compilation of four unique stories depicting the discovery of the African American experience.  www.thememorykeepers.net  

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century Dorothy Roberts, an acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law, joined the University of Pennsylvania as its 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and the Law School where she also holds the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander chair. Her pathbreaking work in law and public policy focuses on urgent contemporary issues in health, social justice, and bioethics, especially as they impact the lives of women, children and African-Americans. Her major books include Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century (New Press, 2011); Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books, 2002), and Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Pantheon, 1997). She is the author of more than 80 scholarly articles and book chapters, as well as a co-editor of six books on such topics as constitutional law and women and the law.      

The Slaves Have Names: Ancestors of my Home tells the stories of the people who were enslaved on the plantation where Cumbo-Floyd was raised in Central Virginia.  It’s the story of her journey to get to know these extraordinary people and to understand her debt to them as well as our nation’s continued struggles around race and the legacy of slavery. Andi Cumbo-Floyd is a writer, historian, and genealogist who focuses on the history and legacy of slavery in the United States.  She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she and her husband run a small farm with goats, chickens, and big, fluffy dogs.     

Join participants of the professiolnal genealogy class of the Midwest African American Institute for  an engaging and informative discussion on " Why Genealogy" with Matilda and her children. "The Genealogy as a Profession class at MAAGI 2014 created WHY GENEALOGY? centered around a slave named Matilda asking her descendants why they were or were not trying to find their family. Sarah Cato is the producer and host. Cast members: Konnetta Alexander is the slave named Matilda from the Graham Slave Records. Myra DeShields-Moulton tells about her research findings and the family books she’s written. Camile Camille Genealogy Sista Johnson representing the X-generation’s interest or lack of interest. Flavia Frierson asks why should she research that old stuff. Roland Miller shares the migration path of ex-slaves. Audrie McRay tells why she researches her family and makes family scrapbooks.

Are you planning a family reunion and have no idea where to start?  Are you integrating family history and genealogy in your family reunion activities? Callian Jenkins is a Senior Technical Project Manager at ICF International. In 2011, she planned and managed a large family reunion in Silver Spring, MD. Currently, with her family, she's in the process of writing a Family Reunion Planning Guide to help her other family members plan family reunions

Join author, Daniel J. Sharfstein for a discussion of his book and research - The Invisible Line - Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White. Defining their identities first as people of color and later as whites, these families provide a lens for understanding how people thought about and experienced race and how these ideas and experiences evolved—how the very meaning of black and white changed—over time. Cutting through centuries of myth, amnesia, and poisonous racial politics, The Invisible Line will change the way we talk about race, racism, and civil rights. Daniel J. Sharfstein is a professor of law at Vanderbilt University.  A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, he has been awarded fellowships for his research on the legal history of race in the United States from Harvard, New York University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  His book is available in paperback as The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America, and it has won three prizes:  the J. Anthony Lukas Prize for narrative non-fiction, the Cromwell Book Prize from the American Society for Legal History, and the Hurst Prize from the Law and Society Association.  Daniel has also spent the past year as a Guggenheim Fellow, working on a new book. Defining their identities first as people of color and later as whites, these families provide a lens for understanding how people thought about and experienced race and how these ideas and experiences evolved—how the very meaning of black and white changed—over time. Cutting through centuries of myth, amnesia, and poisonous racial politics, The Invisible Line will change the way we talk about race, racism, and civil rights.

Join author Craig Steven Wilder for a discussion of his recent book - Ebony&Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's University. Craig Steven Wilder is a professor of American history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at Wiliams College and Dartmouth College. Many of America's revered colleges and universities - from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to Rutgers, Williams College, and UNC - were soaked in the sweat and the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. The earliest academies proclaimed their mission to Christianize the savages of North America, and played a key role in white conquest. Later, the slave economy and higher education grew up together, each nurturing the other. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Enslaved Americans waited on faculty and students; academic leaders aggressively courted the support of slave owners and slave traders. Significantly, as Wilder shows, our leading universities, dependent on human bondage, became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained them. Ebony and Ivy is a powerful and propulsive study and the first of its kind, revealing a history of oppression behind the institutions usually considered the cradle of liberal politics.  

Have you searched for records and finally found that special person you have been looking for?  So what?  What does the record tell you?  Is this all that you need? Join Dr. Shelley Murphy, aka "familytreegirl" for a discussion on the "SO WHAT" concept?  "So What" is a concept used in the Midwestern African American Genealogy Institute to help analyze genealogical records and resources. The goal is to question the value of the evidence and plan the path to new leads and discoveries.  Shelley Murphy, aka "familytreegirl" is a native of Michigan. Shelley has been an avid genealogist for over 25 years researching the Davis, Marsh, Goens/Goins/Goings, Roper, Boyer, Worden, Cureton, & Murphy, etc. family lines. She attends and presents at local and national conferences and currently works for a nonprofit and serves as adjunct faculty at Averett University. In addition, Shelley is a founding member and current President of the Afro-American Historical Genealogical Society Chapter of Central Virginia.