This is a quick one, but I just let out the loudest laugh and I want SOMEONE to know why!
I just returned to the recently publicized New York City Historical Vital Records Project, to look for the marriage record of one of my said-to-be-passing, relatives, Ruby Green. I knew that she'd married a man by the surname of SEABROOK, and that he was a doctor, but I hadn't known anything else about him or their marriage.
I easily retrieved the digital record by searching for it by the certificate number, which I already had from an index. I searched first for the marriage in Manhattan, but another couple came up. I changed the search to Kings County, which is Brooklyn, and there there were!
There were a few pieces of information provided on this document that were unknown to me. Some are "a-ha's" and others are just interesting. To maintain the quality of the document, I've cropped the first page (of four) to just show the relevant parts.
Ruby Green was one of the three people in my Green family who had moved to New York, and were said to be there "passing as white." (The three were Ruby, her sister, Bettie, and their uncle, William A. Green.) I'd been told by relatives who knew her that she was a seamstress on Broadway, who worked for all the "rich and famous movie stars." When I saw on this document that her occupation was "Dressmaking" and that she lived on Broadway, I felt that there may have likely been some truth in the oral history that had been shared with me. (However - and it's a long story - it's said that after William's wife found out that he was black, she outted them all and both Betsie (who was supposedly Doris Duke's hairdresser), and Ruby lost their jobs.
Helpful tidbits to update my tree and help in my research:
1. Ruby's husband's name was William Henry Seabrook. He was a doctor, but I don't think anyone realized he was a veterinarian. The additional information about him and his origins is great.
2. Ruby's middle name was Gordon (if this is real). I hadn't known her to have any middle name, and hadn't seen it on previous records. I thought maybe it was indicative of a previous marriage, but the document states that this is her first. I don't know of any family connection to the name Gordon. Perhaps it has something to do with her (white) father's family. I'll have to check into his family tree.
3. October 14, 1944 - Learning that Ruby didn't marry until 4 years after the death of her uncle, William Adam Green, was helpful to certain aspects of my research. Ruby was the informant on William's death certificate, and I'd wondered why her surname was still Green(e), at that time, because I'd thought by the age Ruby was at that time, she'd have already married. As it is, Ruby was 40 years old when she married William Seabrook.
4. Race - Both Ruby and her husband are noted with "C" for race, indicating that they were colored, or black. According to my now deceased relatives who knew the couple, Dr. Seabrook was dark - or at least brown skinned. He was unmistakably black. New York didn't have any anti-miscegenation laws in place, so if Ruby were passing as white, it wouldn't have been illegal for her to marry a black man; but, being that William Seabrook was from Brooklyn, and likely had family there and was also likely a member of the black elite in the community, it would have been more favorable for Ruby to embrace and enjoy the perks of her blackness in that situation. (It's also likely that the rumors weren't even true. Ruby looked white; she didn't have to try to pass. More likely, she had to work hard to convince people that she was black!)
So, you're probably thinking... "So what was it that had you laughing out loud?"
Well, it was this part of the application. 
This part of the document revealed to me that Ruby had, obviously, learned some of the tricky tricks of the passing trade from her Uncle William, before he died. William had a habit of making up names and places, always using a bit of the truth and mixing it with a little flavor to distract anyone from finding out who he really was. That's exactly what Ruby has done here.
Ruby names her father as "John Geene." (That should be Greene.) Well, first of all, the family name was spelled "GREEN," however, Ruby seems to have added the e to the end, as her very accomplished cousin, William Lawrence Greene, had done. That's fine and good. However, John Green, was my great-grandfather, Ruby's uncle - her mother's (and her Uncle William's) oldest sibling. He was not Ruby's father. She is just using his name. From what I've been told, all of Annie Green's (Ruby's mother) children were fathered by Samuel Cannady VANN, a wealthy mill owner, from Franklinton, Franklin County, North Carolina.
Next, Ruby takes the liberty of giving her mother, Annie, the surname HAWKINS. This was the last name of Annie's father, Nathaniel, however, he and Annie's mother, Anna, who were my second-great-grandparents, never married. They couldn't have, in North Carolina, even if they'd wanted to. Anna was a mulatto woman and Nathaniel was a white man, from a prominent family in the area. All six of the children they had together carried the surname, GREEN.
So, just to set the record straight for those who are reading this: Ruby's parents were Annie Green and (according to family lore) Samuel C. Vann.
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| Annie Green (far left) with family members. The two young ladies closest to her are her daughters. One is Ruby, but I don't know which one. Okay, that wasn't as quick as I thought it would be; but, thanks for reading and allowing me to share this lil chuckle with you. Renate Permalink to this post: https://justthinking130.blogspot.com/2022/04/lies-lies-lies.html |
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