https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5861558
Above is a link for a poignant interview from NPR's Story Corps with Makeda Peterson, whose father started not only the Juneteenth celebration in Kansas City, but also started the Black Archives of Mid-America with objects and documents that he started collecting as a young man. Horace Peterson tragically died in a drowning accident while saving his son from drowning, but his legacy lives on, since his widow, Barbara, and daughter Makeda, have really built up the Kansas City area's Juneteenth celebration.
And an interesting note about the whole point of Juneteenth - the Emancipation Proclamation was issued 1 Jan 1863, so why were people in the Galveston TX area still enslaved in June 1865, over two years later? The Proclamation only applied to areas controlled by the Confederate army, but of course, those areas were almost by definition places where the forces in power wanted to maintain slavery - so the Emancipation Proclamation was kind of a ruse... just another example of why it's important to look in detail, that things are more complicated than a soundbite, and that we should all try to understand history in order to understand how we got to where we are today. OK - off my soapbox now! Happy Juneteenth and Father's Day!
Well, it's Pride Month in the US (in lots of other countries, it's in August). The National Genealogical Society has a great blog post about resources for researching our ancestors who did not conform to gender or sexual orientation norms, and therefore were often under-represented or hidden in records. Here is their post, with a great list of resources to get started or to deepen research. Even just familiarizing ourselves with these can raise awareness of when we might be coming across someone in a family tree whom we would today consider LGBTQI. Watch out in records, obituaries, etc for coded language about non-hetero relationships, and for alternate names that someone might have used to camouflage or protect themselves from community or family ostracism.
Here is an article recently published about a woman who discovered a family secret that went back 3 generations about "passing" - spurred by her reading of the new Pope Leo about a year ago, and comments about his genealogy including that his black/ Creole ancestors in New Orleans left by train and settled in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. This struck a chord with her and she realized that was what had happened to her long-lost great-uncle Edward DeGrange, explaining why she didn't know about him/ why he was never discussed by her family in New Orleans.
So many families have secrets like this - sometimes across a "color line," and sometimes the dividing element is religion or language, a hidden sexual / gender orientation or birth outside of marriage... this is not to sensationalize but to normalize that we all have unknown stories in our families... I have found some in my own family. Recovering and trying to reconstruct what happened is a way to honor the struggles and sorrows that our ancestors endured, and to reflect on how we can change the way we react to unexpected family events or developments. Happy reading!
This post will be short, because I am really busy! Busy with lots of clients who are looking to have a genealogist find the proof and present it in a report that will (hopefully - no guarantee) pass muster with the Canadian citizenship officials to claim being Canadian even many generations back. Hear this radio piece about it here and feel free to ask me questions!
La Francophonie - French culture !
Well, March went by fast, and I meant to post something about "La Francophonie" - which just means, for monolingual English speakers, the French-speaking world. March was the month of La Francophonie, and I've been thinking specifically about the French-Canadian version, since so much of my genealogy research, for my own family and for clients, is based in French-speaking Canada, mainly what is now the province of Quebec, although not only Quebec. Globally there are 321 million speakers of French, and they are on every continent. 26 different countries have French as an official language.
In Canada, as of the most recent Census, in 2021, those whose first language is French comprise 22% of the population, over 8 million people. (Canada's population is almost 37 million.)
Almost 10.7 million Canadians can converse in French.
Nearly 1.7 million young Canadians are studying French as a second language.
6.6 million Canadians (18% of the population) are bilingual (English and French).
The rate of bilingualism is highest in Quebec (46.4%) and then New Brunswick (34%).
New Brunswick is the only Canadian province which is officially bilingual.
Canada is officially bilingual, but each province also has its own language policy.
47.6% of Francophones are bilingual.
9% of Anglophones are bilingual.
11.5% of Allophones (those whose first language is neither French or English) are bilingual in English and French.
This information came from Wikipedia, Canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/settle-canada/francophone-communities/history.html, and from StatsCan.
For women's history month...
I find that often, clients want to research their patronymic line - the line of ancestors going back with a surname/ last name - in my case it would be the Green line. This can be very rewarding, to go back and see all the previous generations of your last name, but don't forget about your female ancestors! I have found some of the most interesting and unexpected things while tracing female lines in my family tree. There is so much to discover about your ancestry, not limited to those ancestors who carry your, or your family's last name. Don't forget the women!
This book, by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, is a great resource for how to research the women in your family tree, and ways to get around the fact that women's identities were, and are, often hidden - because of taking a husband's last name (and even his first name - i.e. Mrs. James Hamilton gives you hardly any idea of who this woman is). Another reason why women's identities in records was hidden was because they were deemed not important. Often before the twentieth century, obituaries were only for men. There were other ways in which women were hidden from records as well, and DeBartolo Carmack outlines ways to get around those, how to ask yourself different questions, how to chip away at that lack of records and dig deeper. If you are having trouble finding records about your female ancestors, this is definitely worth taking a look!
The Color of Family: History, Race, and the Politics of Ancestry
by Michael O'Malley
is about how people end up on one side of the "color line" in the US, a line that was policed for centuries, but especially after the Civil War was over - think the "paper bag test" and the "one drop rule"... Michael O'Malley, the author who identifies as a Philadelphia Irish American, found that he had "colored" ancestors in Virginia, because of the way the color line was policed, and particularly profiling a "zealous eugenicist"Walter Plecker, who ran Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics in the first half of the 1900s. O'Malley explores his own racial assumptions but also how, with the coming of the modern age, the documents used to establish identity were freighted with the racial agenda of these bureaucrats and also the private business agenda of the companies that now control these documents - ancestry.com to be precise. There is much food for thought here, in a book both personal and historical. It goes to the heart of the American experiment, especially its racial dimensions.
I tried to include a photo of the book cover... had technical difficulty. Apologies!
Also, I have just become aware of a new database of genealogical information about people who were enslaved in western Missouri (Jackson County especially), leading up to the Civil War. This database is an amazing resource for those who believe they may have ancestors who were enslaved here in the Kansas City area. It is free to use; a great addition to resources in tracing black genealogy in the Midwest.
Why do people have these family stories? For one thing, geographic proximity to a tribal homeland usually tracks, or in the case of the Cherokee, it could be post-removal / post-Trail of Tears when the Cherokee were removed from Georgia/ North Carolina to what is now northeast Oklahoma. What usually ends up happening is that the ancestors lived close by some tribal folk, but were clearly white settlers, not indigenous people. I think there are factors such as stories changing over time, from "we lived next to some ____ (fill in the blank, tribal group)" to ancestors seeking credentials as "native" to a place, and throw in a little romantic imagination, and it becomes this kind of story.
Also, sometimes in the past, people of Black ancestry claimed Native ancestry, as a way of being a more "acceptable" minority and a way to explain darker skin/hair etc. But of course the Cherokee and the other 4 associated tribes from the Southeast actually owned Black slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries, so there were Black "freedmen" (and women) from those tribes, the Cherokee, Creek, Chicasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole. These people are/ can be recognized as tribal members and if you are Black and have a family story of being from one of these tribes, it may actually be true!
When clients ask me to find out if they have a certain tribal identity, sometimes they want to file a claim for tribal citizenship for the benefits associated with that. However, tribal citizenship requirements, while varying from one group to another, usually demand a direct line and only two generations distant, and there has to be paper proof, so someone on a tribal roll, or on the Indian Census rolls that the federal US government took over the years of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, and then proving a direct descendence from that person listed on a roll. Also, there is an idea in mainstream American society that tribal members get cash payments, but this is almost never true. (Again it varies by tribe.) I usually ask the client if they are involved with the tribe in any way - even attending powwows or other events open to the public. And to be ethical, I would encourage the client to think of how they would contribute to their tribal community if they were to achieve citizenship. Benefits such as healthcare and education for Native Americans of federally recognized tribes are not all they might be imagined - the Indian Health Service's clinics are woefully underfunded by the US federal government, and same for educational facilities.
But learning about the culture (in a variety of ways including reading books - so many!), even possibly trying to learn some of the language, and engaging in public events put on by a tribe such as powwows would be a great place to start if you are thinking about the possibility of Native American ancestry in your family line. I've written other posts on Native American topics - feel free to peruse back through my posts to find others. I think I am safely putting to rest the family lore in my maternal side that we had a Mohawk ancestor ... I certainly did not inherit the lack of vertigo, for sure!
I didn't mention DNA evidence of Native American ancestry, mainly because so few tribal people do the DNA tests (they know who they are!) that there isn't enough of a data basis in most DNA testing sites. Of course this is a gross generalization; it's much more complicated, but suffice it to say that DNA isn't usually a helpful venue for looking for Native American ancestry. Happy November!
Every part of the globe has great resources for studying genealogy, so no matter where in the world you are from, there are ways to shake your family tree! This publication (above), Herencia, the quarterly journal of the Hispanic Genealogical Research Center of New Mexico, is just one resource available in English to help people research their roots in Spanish-speaking areas, this one notably focused on New Mexico. Did you know that NM is one of the oldest settled regions of the US? Ever since the 1610s, there have been Spanish-speaking folks there, co-existing with the Pueblo Native people, neighbors along the rivers of New Mexico. I've been looking into this area myself, researching a friend's family roots there. It will be fun to see how many centuries her family goes back.
The National Genealogical Society has posted this great list of resources on its website:
OK folks - a longer post than most! 😊
I've been very busy with client projects, a number of repeat customers who just can't get enough of shaking their family tree... projects based in the American Midwest - Kansas, Missouri and further east such as Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, the typical routes of migration (in reverse). I had a fun project that traced a family from Scotland to Philadelphia, southwestern Ontario and adjacent Michigan where the border was just a short hop across the St. Clair river, and then down to Virginia. This family moved a lot!
I've had a number of Native American projects, tracing family history in tribal rolls, etc. And now some that involve Mexico and El Salvador - glad my Spanish comes in handy. But I've also had a lot of projects tracing Canadian ancestry, specifically French Canadian in Quebec and Acadia (roughly what is now the Maritime provinces of Canada), putting my French to good use. So many migrated for work in the second half of the 1800s from French-speaking Canada to New England and New York. I've been doing a lot of projects focused on that specific kind of migration, so tracing back across the border into Canada on behalf of clients.
This has reminded me that I need to get back to my own family research - I have deep roots in French-speaking Canada, and only recently became aware that that includes some Acadian ancestors - for those who don't know, the Acadians - French-speaking settlers of what is now Maritime Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, a bit of Newfoundland) and also far eastern Quebec and also northern Maine see map above! - were expelled (a word that doesn't really do justice to what happened) by the British in the 1740s, 1750s, and 1760s, and even later some were kicked out again. This expulsion resulted in a diaspora of a unique cultural group and also populated much of rural Louisiana (the Cajuns are really Acadians - an English elision of the name)... some people know about this, some don't. The Acadians were sent to New England, other ports along the eastern seaboard/ American colonies, places in the Caribbean, and Louisiana as well as England and France, and even the Falkland Islands in the southern hemisphere. CRAZY. This happened some 270-ish years ago, but some people are just now realizing that they have Acadian roots (me included!). Many Acadians tried to return to their homeland; some did, but often Anglicized their names and spoke English instead of French to try to fit in with the Anglo dominant community in eastern Canada. It was really an attempt at genocide, at least cultural if not actual. I don't use that term lightly but read up and you will see what I mean. John Mack Faragher's A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from their American Homeland is a good place to start, or even quicker - just listen to the beautiful song by The Band "Acadian Driftwood" which encapsulates the heartbreaking story so well. I have LOVED that song for decades!
Anyway, I recently watched an amazing video of a meeting of Acadian genealogists and historians, and learned about the work they are doing. I also realized how I need to work on my own genealogy and start writing about my own family history and my discovery of a hidden history. I recently discovered that my great-grandparents had a child who died just a month old of pneumonia, in the winter of 1905 in Boston. No one alive in my family knew that. I found his birth and death certificates, and his name was Basil. His father, my great-grandfather, was Harry Clifford Fowler, who was born and raised in a small town in Kings County, New Brunswick Canada, but had moved to Boston and married a woman he met there in 1904, my great-grandmother, Marie Louise Pillard. Marie Louise was from Troy NY, but her family actually came from Varennes, Quebec in the mid-1800s.
Harry was an Anglophone (English-speaking) Baptist young man, and Marie Louise was a Francophone (French-speaking) Catholic - her first language was French, despite being born in Hudson NY and growing up mainly in Troy NY. The Catholic parish her family attended was predominantly French-Canadian, and masses were held in French. Her parents wrote down the births of their children in their family Bible en Français. I didn't even know that this great-grandmother, who died about 4 years before I was born, spoke French and was Catholic until I was an adult. (Of course as an adult she spoke mainly English.) But more recently, while researching her family line - Pillards and Poiriers in Quebec - I found an ancestor named Jean-Basile Mignault (most often called Basile Mignault). He was Acadian! Born in what is now Nova Scotia, and moved as a young child to St. Denis on the Richelieu River south of Montreal in Quebec (part of the Acadian expulsion), and he fought in the Revolutionary War on the American side, I presume because of his antipathy toward the British who had exiled his family from their homeland.
When I first saw that my great-grandparents had a baby named Basil, I thought of it as an English name - that Harry had suggested the name - he came from UEL stock - meaning (for those who don't know Canadian history) United Empire Loyalists - meaning those in the American colonies who had remained loyal to the British during the American Revolutionary War, and many of whom were given land grants in Canada after the war to populate Canada with English-speaking monarchist loyalists... so Harry's ancestors would have been on the opposite side from his wife's ancestor Basil in that war. But also, now knowing about her Acadian ancestor, Basil, I believe the baby who, sadly, only lived a month at the dawn of the twentieth century in Boston, was likely named after an Acadian hero. I would love to know whether that is true, and also if it was, what was the conversation that took place between Harry and Marie Louise?
Acadian flag
Yesterday I attended a great workshop given by Sunny Jane Morton at the Midwest Genealogy Center on writing our ancestors' stories. I am now determined to not just flesh out more details of this branch of my family tree, but to write about it so that my family can discover this as well. I hope more family members will be inspired to take an interest in our genealogy, our family history that has many twists and turns... stay tuned!
I recently read the book Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas. It's a great fun, funny read, heartwarming and poignant, and the genealogist in me was struck by something she wrote in the chapter entitled "It's all relatives" - cute pun. She says that there are 4 different words for uncle in Farsi (aka Persian), the predominant language of Iran. And there are 8 different words for cousin in Farsi, depending on the exact relationship of each cousin (whether related on mom or dad's side, and more specifically than that). In English, we have a bare-bones vocabulary for family relationships by comparison... sometimes when I am explaining family relationships to my family members, I find myself having to go beyond "he's your second cousin once removed" to saying more specifically "he is your grandmother Sarah's first cousin's son" or something like that. This got me wondering how these family relationships are handled in other languages (ALERT: convergence of my geeking out - languages and genealogy!!!) and I resolve to look into this, although the languages I have studied formally (French, German, Spanish) I'm pretty sure don't have a level of specificity much beyond gender distinctions for cousins (which we don't have in English). I am knee deep in genealogy projects right now, but stay tuned in case I ever get back to this and share an updated post. LOL!!! Keep it cute, cousins!
I have had a number of inquiries lately about researching people's ancestry or family history to see if they have a Canadian ancestor in order to apply for Canadian citizenship. This can be done; I've been doing more of these lately. You need to have a grandparent whose ancestry can be linked (proven) to you, and the question of when they arrived in the US and when / if they applied for US naturalization, when they actually naturalized (the process can take 5-10 years) are ones that a Canadian immigration attorney can consult on, once the genealogy/ ancestry link to you is proven. I can research and write those reports for an immigration attorney. Just email me at gretchencdn@gmail.com to get started!
Today is the commemoration of the day in 1865 when people who had been in slavery in Galveston TX heard that slavery had actually finally ended. To put this in perspective, President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 ONLY APPLIED TO ENSLAVED PEOPLE IN CONFEDERATE-CONTROLLED AREAS. So basically, it did not apply to people in any area that the Union (United States - Lincoln) controlled. Let's take a moment to reflect on the twisted nature of this political convolution... wherever the US flag flew, people were still enslaved. This applied to border states like Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, etc. And then it took two and a half years after that before slavery actually ended everywhere - basically not until the Civil War ended.
In addition, no reparations were forthcoming, despite the promised "40 acres and a mule" that the Union Army was "advertising" to attract support from black folks to enlist and serve in the war effort against the Confederacy. Then afterwards, with the reaction of massive white southern resistance to the Reconstruction measures after the war (1865 until 1876-77), and the overturning of Reconstruction, that meant that the half-measures to give formerly enslaved people a fighting chance in life - things like the Freedmen's Bureau and the FB Bank, the schools they started - were either shut down or were massively undermined by the rise of Jim Crow segregation which terrorized black folks who tried to start businesses, educate their community, and vote. (Think Tulsa race massacre of 1921 as but one example of the reign of terror against successful black businesses and communities.)
This Jim Crow era which started in the 1870s didn't really end until the mid-20th century civil rights measures. The civil rights movement of course started during Jim Crow - think Ida B. Wells, WEB DuBois, Booker T Washington, A. Phillip Randolph among others - it didn't start with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr or Rosa Parks. They carried forward a movement that really started even in the 1850s and 1860s with Frederick Douglass and on through the Jim Crow era with the many freedom fighters who gave their life's work and sometimes their lives for the struggle. Meanwhile, white settlers were given free land with the Homestead Act of 1862. No free land was being given to black people who had tilled it and given their blood, sweat and tears to build wealth for others involuntarily. I try to keep this in perspective as I find relatives of my own who benefited from the Homestead Act, in the course of my genealogy research. Doing genealogy with ancestors who were enslaved has its challenges, since no enslaved people were NAMED in US Census records before 1870. But starting in 1870, much can be learned, and for pre-1865 research, the papers and records of plantations, as well as newspapers and other sources, can be rich sources for finding information on one's relatives.
Some of these records have been digitized and are open-access to anyone. There are many free resources online to get started, not only at FamilySearch but also the Library of Congress and websites like Reclaiming Kin. As far as organizations that support genealogists in gaining skills, the Midwest African American Genealogy Institute is a great organization, a leader in the field. If you have African American/ black roots in the US, do not be daunted by the "peculiar institution" - dive into genealogy research of your ancestors, and be prepared for some amazing discoveries! Think Finding Your Roots!
Some recent survey results from clients after their projects were completed:
This is the second project we’ve done with Gretchen, which is the best indication of our satisfaction. I love how excited she gets to uncover not just the facts, but also fun facts she finds along the way. Working with her is a very pleasant and illuminating experience.
Another: The task given was not an easy one -- documentation is hard to find from that time period. I appreciate your efforts tremendously.
And a third: : I do appreciate that you discovered this [a lead about an ancestor] and theorized about it — the work of an excellent researcher! Thank you so much.
The National Genealogical Society has a great list of resources for discovering or rediscovering the heritage of people of Asian and Pacific origin and Asian-Americans, their experience in the US:
Even if you have no heritage in this part of the world, there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained by reading /using these sources. Happy reading!
I always send a feedback survey after sending the report/ results of my research to a client, and received back this review:
I loved being able to talk to you via Zoom before you started the project. You were very clear about timelines and cost. I really appreciate everything you did and update you gave us partway through your work. - B. Roberts
Family history infographic, version 1: I gave Chat GPT a three-page family history in the form of a timeline (with a family portrait) and...
