#52Ancestors - Week 3 - Favorite Photo!

Well, so far so good. It's Week 3 and I'm still on track with the #52Ancestors Challenge! This week's prompt is "favorite photo." That's kind of a tough one, for me, because I have so many beloved photos! However, I've decided to narrow it down to two that always make me smile; and that, despite the fact that I don't have an actual personal memory of when they were taken, both photos hold a special and very endearing place in my heart. 

My Favorite Photos

Both of these photos were taken at the same location - at my grandmother's home in Louisburg, NC. It's my understanding that I lived there with my paternal grandmother, Anna Green, from sometime in my infancy, until I was a toddler - around two years old. If that's true, I'm guessing that perhaps the first photo, showing me with my brother, Arthur, may have been taken when my parents brought me to Louisburg, from Ohio; but, I really don't know. Arthur and I are on my grandmother's bed, where I always slept (with her) in later years, when I would spend part of my summers there. I remember that bed very well. (It was actually one of two in the room, because my Aunt Sue slept in there also, before she married and moved to New York.)

This is me (right) with my brother, Arthur, on our grandmother's bed in Louisburg. We were 17 months apart, and the best of friends. Sadly, Arthur died (of liver cancer) when he was 23 and I was 22. 

This second photo was also taken at the Louisburg house, but this time in the "front room," most certainly on one of our Sunday trips to Grandma's house, with all 6 of us (parents, 3 brothers, and me) packed into our blue and brown station wagon for what is now a 2 hour and 45 minute drive, but was most certainly closer to 4 hours in the 60s and 70s. I do have very vague memory of my maternal grandmother, Mary Thomas, traveling with us a time or two - and here I have photographic proof that it actually happened! Grandma Thomas lived just "across the water" from us, in Norfolk, and she eventually ended up moving in with us in the late 1970s.

My two grandmothers: On the left, my maternal grandmother, Mary Davis Thomas, who lived in Norfolk, VA (but was born in Warren County, NC). On the right, my paternal grandmother, Anna Beatrice Green Yarborough, who lived in Louisburg, Franklin County, NC. 

(Photo colorized on MyHeritage.com)

Family Time!

In an effort to get my family more involved in sharing our history, I've invited all of my kin to contribute, as they may desire, to the #52Ancestors posts. Many of my connected family lines don't know each other; and, I believe that this way of sharing our stories and photos could really benefit all of us. I do hope for more participation, but (for now) I am pleased  to introduce my second-cousin, Willa-Jo Greene, to my readers. Willa-Jo is the first relative to contribute to these posts, and I'm so excited and grateful! Willa-Jo is sharing this photo, taken in 2015 on the steps of her back deck, at the conclusion of her 50th birthday celebration. Willa-Jo describes this photo as follows: "This photo of my immediate family, 3 nieces, one nephew and three cousins was taken in September 2015 on the back steps of my house in Beltsville MD on the occasion of my 50th birthday."

In this photo:  Karen Greene Braithwaite, Diana T Bedden, Georgia M Braithwaite, Avanna D Davenport, Tiberius C Braithwaite, Natalia Sanders Parker, Willa-Jo M Greene, Ava D Greene, William Greene, Renate Yarborough Sanders, George R Greene, Jr.

I will add that the MRCA (most recent common ancestors) for all of us in the photo are our (William, Willa-Jo, Ava, George, Karen, and Renate) great-grandparents, John Wesley Green and Susan Georgiana Dunston. My daughter, Natalia, I descend from their daughter, Anna Beatrice Green; and, the rest of these siblings and first-cousins (and their children) descend from their son, William Lawrence Greene (who added an e to the end of his name). 

Thanks, Cousin Willa-Jo, for your contribution! Bravo!

(I have told my family members that they can still send photos after the post has been done, so more may be added after the original posting date.) 😊

Thanks for reading!

Renate

Permalink to this post: https://justthinking130.blogspot.com/2024/01/52ancestors-week-3-favorite-photo.html

52 Ancestors - Week 2 - Origins

 Last week (Week 2), I revised a post from 2011 for the theme "Origins." I realized, after that fact, that doing it the way I did would not result in that post showing up in order with my other responses to the 52 Ancestors prompts. Therefore, I'm inserting this post so that weeks will all be included and in order - and I'll know to do other reposts a different way!

So, to read my Week 2 post, of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, please click here. If you're one of the 500+ people who've already read it, as of this posting, I appreciate you!

Thanks!

Renate

#52Ancestors: Week 1 - "Family Lore"

 2024! Happy New Year!

I have not been a good blogger, but I'm hoping to recommit to this platform by participating (once again) in Amy Johnson Crow's "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" blogging initiative! Thankfully, Amy gives participants grace - there is no pressure to post every single week. As a matter of fact, we are free to change it to 12 Ancestors in 12 Months - or whatever suits our lives and schedules. I love (and share) Amy's perspective that anything we do is more than we had before! 

The prompt for the first week is "Family Lore," also known as "oral history" or "oral tradition.
No matter what you call it, this is something that I don't have a lot of in my family - especially not in my immediate lines. What I've discovered, through the past 30 years of interviewing relatives, is that even where my family members did have stories, most of of them only contained that tiny "grain of truth" that we all know is usually there. My research has uncovered realities that don't match what has been passed down; and that hasn't made me very popular with some of my family members, most of whom were new to me - discovered as a result of my research and/or dna testing.

Here are just a few of the stories that have been fine-tuned by my work:

1. Oral history:  My second-great-grandmother, Anna Green, was at least 1/2 Native American. Her mother was "full-blooded Indian."

Truth: As uncovered by MtDNA testing done by a cousin who is a confirmed direct female descendant of Anna Green: The MtDNA is from Africa.

2. Oral History: There are three distinct, unrelated groups of black HILL families in Tyrrell County, NC. 

Truth: All of the black Hills in Tyrrell County, NC trace back to one couple, my third-great-grandparents, Charn/Charlton/Charnton/Charleston Hill and Grace/Gracy Bryant, free people of color, born in 1794 and 1800, respectively. The couple had at least 9 known children, from whom all of the resulting Hills in Tyrrell County descend.

3. Several of my GREEN ancestors moved to New York and were living/passing as white and all had white spouses. Another was said to have been doing the same in Florida.

Truth: Although these ancestors certainly looked white, most of the records I've found them in record them as black, mulatto, or Negro. Only one, my second-great-grand-uncle, William A. Green, had consistently ambiguous racial categories, and more often than not, was noted to be white. William was also the only one who actually married white.

               

              This is either Bettie or Ruby Green.

William Adam Green, who served 
in a black regiment during the
Spanish American War, but tried 
to obscure his race in New York.

By the way, the cousin in Florida married a black doctor, who worked in a black hospital, and they had a home in the historical black American Beach. 

4. Oral History: My mother's father abandoned their family before my mother turned four, and they never heard from him again.

Truth: Well, this one is kind of juicy, but I won't go into all the details on this post. My grandfather, Daniel W. Hill, did abandon my mom and their family before my mother turned four, but it turns out he rented a room in the boarding house next to theirs, at least for a while, because my mom's older brother recalled him sitting in an upstairs window "glaring" at them, all the time, and I have a 1937 document (SSA) giving that house as his address. However, he didn't stay there long. My mother lived her entire life believing that her father had just disappeared, never to be heard from, again. But the truth of the matter is that he got involved with another (also married) woman, impregnated her, and then died in June of 1940, one month before my mother's half-sister (who my mother never knew or knew about) was born. My mom was 6 years old at that time.

SS Application of my grandfather, Daniel Hill, showing him living next door to his family in 1937.

5. Oral history: This one is a little different, because the "family lore" actually evolves around the name my father's family has carried, since my great-grandfather, Calvin Yarborough, was emancipated in 1865. Whenever I questioned my late aunt, Susie Yarborough Hawkins, about our family history, she always told me that all she knew was that we "had some connection to the Neals" or that "we were supposed to be Neals." But that was all she would say. She couldn't explain the how or the why of it. 

The TRUTH, in this case, is that we were supposed to be (and are genetically) Neals.  My great-grandfather, Calvin, chose the surname of his last owner; but the rest of his family, from whom he'd been separated, took the name NEAL, which was the name of the family Calvin was born enslaved to. 

                    

If you have a Legacy Family Tree Webinars subscription, you can learn more about this here. 

Well, those are just a few examples of "family lore" that has been been shared with me and debunked, since I started doing this work. Remember that these stories will usually have some bit of truth in them, somewhere, but it's up to us - the researchers - to uncover the truth of each matter, as best we can, using all of the tools we have at our disposal to dig into the past. :)

Thanks for reading!

Renate

Permalink to this post: https://justthinking130.blogspot.com/2024/01/happy-new-year-i-have-not-been-good.html

New York City Historical Vital Records ONLINE! I'm so excited!

Yep, you read that right! The New York City Department of Records and Information Services has finally done the right thing! Not only have they digitized their birth, marriage, and death records from all five boroughs, but they have put them online with FREE access to all! Woo-hoo!

Although I'm not a big-time NYC researcher, I do have reason to be very excited about this, as I had several ancestral relatives from my GREEN line, who left North Carolina to live in New York - and, while they were there, they were (at least part of the time) passing as WHITE. Though I've had some limited information about them, being able to see these vital records in their entirety will fill in some blanks for me and help to move my research on this particular family line forward. 

With that goal in mind, I dug right in and, voila! - I've already struck little nuggets of gold.

One of the most mysterious characters in my NYC-passing Green line is William Adam Green, son of my 2x-great-grandparents, Nathaniel Hawkins and Anna Green and younger brother of my great-grandfather, John Wesley Green - all of Louisburg, NC. I've written a bit about William, here. Though his mother, Anna, is the real mystery person, it's largely been the inconsistencies in the records I've found about William that have impeded my progress in successfully uncovering more details about the life of his mother - my direct ancestor. (You can read a bit about Anna in this 2009 post. Just keep in mind it was written 13 years ago!)

Though I'll need more time to work with this morning's loot, I'll share just a couple of the documents I've already encountered, and tell a little about why they are so helpful to my research.

1904 Marriage Record of William Adam Green and Sally Lou Johnson

First of all, though I've had this this marriage recorded on my tree, for a long time, no one in my family - even relatives who actually knew William Green - knew anything about it. And, although these relatives all lived in the tiny town of Louisburg, none of them had ever heard of a "Sally Lou Johnson" or her family. This documents reveals the names of Sally Lou's parents - Harry Johnson and Judy Eton (Eaton). I have already found Sally's (whose name is actually Sarah) immediate family, and will be able to find out more about her, them, and what happened to this first marriage (stated on document) of my ancestor, William Green. 

This 1904 document also shows that William gave his race as Black, and that he was marrying a black woman, who was from his hometown of Louisburg. That's important because I've hypothesized that he didn't purposefully go to New York to pass as white, but that it's something that happened as his time there went on. (More on that, later.) Additionally, I've always wondered if any children were produced by this first marriage. Perhaps having the additional information about Sally's name and family will lead me to a definitive answer about that.

                 

The biggest deal on this document is the very clearly written name William gave for his mother - Anna PERKINS. It's only been through William's records that I've ever seen this last name for my very elusive second-great-grandmother, who used the surname GREEN, but was rumored to have originally been a Perkins. There are other iterations of P-names on the other documents, but I trust this one more because I know this information would have been given by William, himself. However, I can't/won't allow myself to take it as definitive proof of her original surname because of the fact that, on this very same document, William gives the wrong surname for his father. On the document, the name is written as Nathaniel Green, but his father's name was Nathaniel HAWKINS. Is it possible that William didn't know that; or did the clerk make this error by either making an assumption or at the direction of William? I'll likely never know that answer to that. I am glad, though, that William knew who his father was, enough to get his first name correct. Since Nathaniel died when William was between 4 and 6 years old, it's not likely that he had many (if any) personal memories of him.

The last two "big deal" items from this document are that I can add this address, 48 6th Avenue, to William's timeline and, finally, that I'm able to see William's actual, very confidently written signature, for the very first time. (Of course, I'll be looking into the witnesses and the "Elder" Wm M. Johnston, too.)

                                     

Well, that was a bit longer than I'd planned this post to be. I need to get back to the research and to the things I was supposed to have been doing before this bright, shiny...errr-uh, I mean this wonderful resource was shared this morning. Therefore, I will just share one of the other documents I downloaded from the search site - William Green's death certificate. 

As you can see, William's niece, Ruby Green(e), served as informant for his death certificate. She was also living in New York and passing as white, according to what my older cousins have told me. She gives "Pecker" as the maiden name of William's mother and, curiously enough, she also gives Nathaniel's surname as Green. Since she would have never known Nathaniel, who died in 1879, I wonder even more now if that really is what William thought his father's surname was - and if he'd passed that on to his niece. Significantly, William's race is given on his death certificate as "White" providing supporting evidence that he was living as such at the time of his death. He'd had a second wife, an Irish immigrant, who'd lived with William at the same address shown on his death certificate; but she died in 1929. My thinking is that, perhaps because of that relationship, he had (or chose) to live out his later years on the other side of the color line.

Of course, there is more valuable information on this document, but I'd already had most of it, including William's home address, which I visited (from the outside) several years ago on one of my trips to visit my daughter in New York. Somewhere, I have pictures, but I don't know where they are, so here's a peek at the home from Google Maps. 

There's so much more to come...

Thanks for reading!

Renate

PS... Wanna explore the records at the New York Historical Vital Records Project for yourself? Just click this link and have yourself some fun!

PSS... If you'd like to learn more about the launch of the New York City Historical Vital Records Project, please visit this excellent blog post by "The Legal Genealogist," Judy Russell, by clicking here. 

Permalink to this post: https://justthinking130.blogspot.com/2022/03/new-york-city-historical-vital-records.html

MY Black History #2 - My Daddy, Arthur P. Yarborough

The majority of this post is going to be an update to a previous post, which was written on October 4, 2016, which was 19 years to the day that I'd lost my father. Please click on the links to read more about my dad, from previous posts I've written. Thanks!

Arthur P. Yarborough
June 21, 1924 - October 4, 1997

Introducing... Arthur P.

My father, Arthur Person Yarborough, was born June 24, 1924 to parents Anna Beatrice Green and Calvin Yarborough, Jr., in Louisburg, North Carolina. He was the couple's third (and last) child, together, and was named for his father's employer, Arthur Person. Arthur lost his father at the age of 4, to tuberculosis. He spent his early years in the Franklin County School System, but was sent to live with his uncle, during his teen years, and graduated from the Nash County Training School, in 1942.

Nash County Training School, Class of 1942
That's my dad at the top with the open-mouthed smile. :)

"Arthur P.," as he was usually referred to, married a hometown girl, Novella Alston, in 1947. They married in Florence, SC, which I believe must have been where my father was stationed at the time. Most of the details of this marriage are unknown to me, but I'm told that Novella deserted the marriage sometime after my dad adopted my brother, Henry, when they were in Okinawa, Japan. (Or, maybe it was right after they got back to the States.) They were formally divorced in 1958. Sometime in the mid-50's, when my father was in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, he met a beautiful young divorcee and single mother at the Officers' Club at Fort Story. They quickly fell in love and were soon married, after which Arthur's new bride left her teaching job and home in Virginia to join him in Bremerhaven, Germany. That young lady was my mother, Mary Anne Yarborough, who you can read about, here. Their (eventually tumultuous) marriage lasted 20 years and produced two children, to make a total of four little Yarboroughs. 

My dad with his two boys, Edgar and Henry, shortly after marrying my mom.

And then there were six...

23 Years Without My Dad
My father has been gone since October 4, 1997 - exactly 23 years, 4 months, and 6 days. I love and miss him, immensely. Before his death in 1997, I’d dibbled and dabbled a bit in genealogy, however, it was when faced with the task of writing my dad’s obituary that I realized how little I knew about him and his life “pre-Renate”, and I certainly didn’t know anything of his family history. And, so it was with his death, and the need to write his obituary, that I consider my real beginning as a genealogy researcher. I started my quest to learn as much as possible about my father , and subsequently my YARBOROUGH ancestry, which was soon followed by all of my other family lines.

That's me with my dad on his 65th birthday.

I Didn't Know...

There was so much I didn’t know about my father before I became a researcher. I didn’t know that about his distinguished military career – about all of the honors and recognitions he’d received, as he worked his way to the rank of Army Major, before he retired in 1964; nor was I aware of the racism he faced while on that journey. I didn’t know anything about the Montford Point Marines, or of the two-plus years my father spent as one of the first to integrate the US Marine Corps, at the beginning of his military service. I'm proud to have received the Congressional Gold Medal, on my father's behalf (posthumously), under the authority of President Barack Obama, in 2015.

Dad, the military man. Date unknown, but early in his career.

I don't know what's going on here, but what I do know is that everyone's attention is on my Daddy!

 I didn't know that, before he joined the military, my father spent a year as a student at NC A&T; nor did I know that he continued to complete college coursework while in the Army, excelling in all of his classes, and stopping just short of earning his degree. He also earned a certificate as an Army Surgical Technician!          

I think the pic on the left is Marines and I know the one on the right is Army. 
The bottom shows the medal again, with his Marine and Army dogtags.

I didn't know what a fantastic writer my father was, until I happened upon love letters he'd written to my mother before they were married, and editorials he'd written to an Ohio newspaper, when he was stationed outside of Cleveland (where I was born).                                               

I didn't know that my father had 2 half-sisters and a half-brother, all of whom were deceased before I was born, and that I had a first cousin, born the same year as my dad, who lived in the Bronx and just passed a few years ago. I didn’t know that my father played basketball in high school, and was the quarterback of his football team at Nash County Training School. I didn’t know that the reason my father had to move to Nash County to live with his uncle (the principal of Nash County Training School) was because he was acting up in school, and his mother (widowed since my dad was 4) needed some help with him!

That's my daddy - #10! Where are his kneepads?

These are just a few things I didn't know about my father, but my quest to learn more about him, led to my now 23+ year journey as a genealogist. So, on this day, I choose to remember my father, not with tears, but with a smile. Thank you, Daddy, for inspiring me to do this work. I only wish you were here so I could CELEBRATE all of your magnificent achievements with you, and so that I could ask you the questions I didn't know to ask, and hear some of the stories you probably didn't want to tell when you were here.

This is the house my dad where my dad grew up, in Louisburg, NC, known (affectionately) to me as "Grandma's House." The house, which is still in the family, was built by my grandfather, Calvin Yarborough, Jr. and his brother, Samuel Yarborough, in 1911. 

 

            

These are the only pictures I've ever seen of my father as a boy. To the left, you can partially see one of his first cousins, George R. Greene, whose family my dad lived with, during his teenaged years. To the right, there he is will all three of his cousins - George, John, and Rolland Greene. Because of my father living with them, their relationship with him was like a brother, not a cousin. They are all in heaven, now.

                   

            

My father absolutely loved being a "Grandpa."
Here, he's with my oldest daughter, Natasha, who was born on his 58th birthday!

He had at total of 8 grandchildren, and he loved them all; and he now has 5 great-grandchildren, and one on the way!

My dad LOVED family (just as I do). Though he never returned to Louisburg to live, he (we) always went back to visit his beloved family. Sadly, I don't seem to have any photos of my dad with his mother, but here is a photo of him with his siblings on one of his (many) visits home.

The Yarborough siblings - they were so close. 
Arthur, Susie, and Calvin III

This photo shows my dad on a visit to Louisburg, with some of his favorite family members. In front are my two daughters. L-R, his sister, Susie, my dad, me, his cousin, John Greene, John's wife, Nellie, my dad's first cousin, Geral Yarboro Sargent, and his brother, Calvin III.

My dad with his cousin Geral and an
unknown relative

Dad with my Aunt Ruby,
my Uncle George's wife

At the first of only two (ever) Yarborough Family Reunions 1993 in Baltimore.
Seated: Cousin Geral and Cousin Madie
Standing: My dad (Arthur), Cousin Ralph, and Uncle Calvin (my dad's brother)

   

I gave this shirt to my dad for Father's Day, one year, and he LOVED it. The pictures are of my two daughters. I think it said, "We love you, Grandpa!"

                                      

                   

I love and miss you, Daddy!

Thanks for reading!

Renate

Permalink to this post: https://justthinking130.blogspot.com/2021/02/my-black-history-2-my-daddy-arthur-p.html

*All photos are the property of the author of this blog, and should not be used, saved, or copied without my explicit permission. Thank you.

Yes, Philadelphia Dunstons - We ARE Related!

 I need to vent.

I am a DUNSTON descendant. This is not a line I knew anything about, before I started my research in the 1990s. My grandmother, Anna Green, was the daughter of Susan Georgiana DUNSTON, who married John Wesley Green. That is where my Dunston line begins.

(As is the case with most of my lines, I have no photo to show of my great-grandmother, so I will just use this clipping from Ancestry to represent her.)

Researching the DUNSTONS

My Dunston line has been tricky to research, but I've done so with extreme care for over 20 years, now. What makes it trickiest is the fact that so many of the names are used over and over, sometimes within the same generation, and many of those names are common ones, like James, John, Anna/Annie and Laura. Because of this, I've been extremely careful about who actually gets a spot on the tree. I must be able to prove, with documents, that I have the right people in the right place - at least to the best of my ability. Anyone I'm unsure about either has a research note added to their profile on my tree, or they don't make it onto the tree, at all, but instead earn a place in my Ancestry "Shoebox," until such time that I can find definitive evidence that they actually belong to me.

Over the years, I've communicated with many Dunston descendants, all of whom have an ancestral connection to the area of North Carolina where my Dunstons are from: Franklin County. For some, the connection to this county is immediate, and for others it takes a few generations into their ancestry to get back there. Branches have conglomerated in nearby Wake (Raleigh) and Vance (Henderson) Counties, as well as a very large contingent, which migrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early part of the 20th century. And, quite a few of the Dunstons remained in Franklin County, mostly in the town of Franklinton, but with a few families in the county seat, Louisburg. (The Pennsylvania group originated in Franklinton.)

Through my research and also as a result of interactions with others in the genealogy community, I've met numerous Dunston descendants, who hail from various of the above-mentioned locations. Most of us were told, once upon a time, that all of the Dunstons from Franklin County were related. But, proving that has been a challenge, as we've worked collegially to try to explore how we might be - must be connected. In some cases, we've been successful, but the MRCA (most recent common ancestor) is so many generations back that we are not sharing any DNA to prove it. Therefore, we must rely on our carefully constructed family trees for documentation of our connections. And, in a few cases, we are not seeing any matchups on our trees, so we continue to wait, hoping one day a relationship may show us to be connected, but, if it doesn't, we continue to support each other's research and say that we are "cousins" anyway. :)

My Dunston Line

My own DUNSTON line goes back 9 generations (yes, NINE!) to my sixth great-grandmother, Patience Dunston, who was born in 1734. I first learned of Patience through the work of Paul Heinegg, the award-winning author of Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware. My direct line (below) is well documented from Patience, all the way down to me. I continuously search for, find, and add additional sources that support my findings - or, if they don't, changes are made. 

Troubled Waters

There is one line of my Dunston family that refuses to acknowledge their connection to me, simply because "they don't have those names." This is the branch that moved to Philadelphia, which is a line that descends from my third great-grandfather, Wilson Dunston (Sr.). This line, which descends from Wilson's son, James "Jim" Wilson Dunston, is documented on my tree and has come up as the connector between several of my DNA matches and me, as well as for people whose trees reflect that connection, just as mine does. There is just one problem though: it seems that the Philadelphia line, which boasts of having at least 3 family historians, has only been documented up to the generation that includes James "Jim" Dunston.  Because they are unaware (apparently) of James' parentage or deeper ancestry, they choose to denounce it or to even acknowledge and/or learn about his familial origins. So... Houston, we have a problem.

This photo was shared with me by the one Philadelphia Dunston cousin who believed and allowed me to share my research findings - the late Karen Serene Dunston. May she rest in peace. 

On the left is James Wilson Dunston, who was the son of my third great-grandfather, Wilson Dunston. He was the great-grandfather of the cousin denoted by the green dot, above. 

On the right is his wife, Harriet Ellen Fields.

This chart, created using my tree on Ancestry dot com, shows the relationship of one of the Philadelphia-born Dunston cousins and myself. (Said cousin is represented by the green dot.) The relationship, based on the sourced and documented work I've done on my tree, is undeniable. However, because this family has never heard of our common ancestor, Wilson Dunston, he, to them, does not exist; and therefore, we are not related. This stance has been taken by three different members of this particular family, over the course of a few years. I'm not going into the particulars about the difficult attempts I've made to communicate with them - even, most recently, as a result of this cousin reaching out to me - not vice versa. I understand that not everyone understands this work that we're doing; but I'm not in this to be mistreated, talked down to, dismissed and/or disrespected. I simply want to find and learn about my Ancestors, and sometimes that means encountering people who are unexpectedly (and unabashedly) ____________. (You fill in the blank.)

Concluding with Gratitude

I'm very thankful that what I've experienced in dealing with this family line has not been the norm during my 23 years of formally researching my ancestry. I've met so many relatives, on several different lines, and these are the only ones that have behaved in this way and not wanted to know or discuss anything about our shared ancestry. This Dunston line, for whatever their reasons, chooses to stay in the dark about their own pedigree. That has nothing to do with me. I thank God for the Hills, the Rosses, Yarboroughs, Davenports, the Tredwell/Littlejohn descendants, and several other cousin connections I've made over the years - some due to the blessing of good solid traditional research, and others thanks to irrefutable DNA evidence (which doesn't lie).

I was told that this is my second great-grandmother, Laura Dunston, who was a Dunston already before she and Wilson "Wils" Dunston married. This is the only known photo I have of one of my direct Dunston ancestors. 

Walk in the Light - Beautiful Light!

Today was a slap in the face; but it will take more than this to stop me from my quest to find my ancestors and to connect with those who share them. I started this journey to find out who I am and what I'm made of. Like Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for President of the United States said in his nomination acceptance speech, as he quoted my (Ross descended) cousin, Ella Josephine Baker: "Give people light and they will find a way." And, like Joe, and like Ella, I choose to follow the light. Why? Because, just as Joe said, "Light is more powerful than darkness." 

If any of my Philadelphia Dunstons happen to read this, know that I love you, because you are my family. If you want to reach out to me, I'll be ready to share and move forward; and, just as I've told the three that I've spoken to, if you have evidence that is contrary to what my research has shown, I am open and willing to hear and consider it.

I needed to vent. 

Thanks for reading.

Renate

                                      (I do not own the rights to this music.)

Permalink to this post: https://justthinking130.blogspot.com/2020/08/yes-philadelphia-dunstons-we-are-related.html

Family Forever - A Green-Hawkins Virtual Family Reunion!

Graphic (provided by Evite.com) from the invitation to the Green-Hawkins Virtual Meetup

On Saturday afternoon, April 18, 2020, my Green-Hawkins family line had our first-ever Virtual Family Reunion Meetup, and it was great! We all descend from one mixed-race couple, my second-great-grandparents, Nathaniel HAWKINS and Anna GREEN, of Louisburg, NC. Nathaniel and Anna had six children together, between 1864 - 1879, from whom we all descend.

Nathaniel and Anna's six children were born between 1864 and 1879. The last child, Esther, was born the year Nathaniel died. 

This, like all of my family lines, is a disjointed, and mostly disconnected family. For the most part, people only really know their immediate families and their first cousins. This meetup, the brainchild of one of our younger cousins, Jamila, was designed to begin to change that. Working together, for about three weeks, Jamila, our cousin Willa-Jo, and I created an agenda and set up this event for today. Though I've had a Facebook group for this line, for seven years, this activity gave us a first chance to truly meet and interact with each other. Our participants ranged in age from 5 months to 100 years old, and stretched from the east coast to the west.

The Agenda

We had 35 households to RSVP, but I believe at the highest point there were 21 families on the call, with approximately 30 people participating. We heard from our centenarian, first; and then two other family elders - first cousins, in fact - in their 80's introduced themselves and shared some family insights. Next, I gave a very brief history of Anna and Nathaniel and encouraged everyone to read the posts that have been made in the Facebook group, to get caught up. :

Next, we wove through the participants, each giving a brief introduction (including introducing other members of their household) and, if they knew it, telling which of Nathaniel and Anna's children was their direct ancestor. About half way through, we paused, so that I could give a very brief overview of the history; then we resumed introductions. The next thing was (at least for me) one of the highlights of the meetup. My super-talented cousin, Willa-Jo, had prepared a lovely slideshow, using photos that I've posted, over the years, in the Facebook group, along with a few extras I'd sent her. The background music for the slideshow was the song, "Family Forever," which was written by Willa-Jo. (Shameless plug - if you need a beautiful, perfect song for your next family reunion, let me know, and I'll put you in touch with my cousin.)

The chorus to Willa-Jo's song says:

We are FAMILY FOREVER,

Growing together

Loving each other,

Dying never!

And, since I can't show the ppt, here's just a little snippet of the slides.

After the slide show, which was about 11 minutes long, we did a little housekeeping about the family tree, the survey that had been sent out, my blog, DNA testing, and the Facebook group. Also, there was an agreed-upon consensus that we must plan for an in-person reunion, for 2021, so a committee will be forming for that! People then asked a few questions, and it was time to go. We closed with a beautiful prayer, given by my cousin Rochelle. As we all waved goodbye and checked out of the meeting, one by one, I felt the warmth of our Ancestors, as they smiled on us. No matter what, we are FAMILY FOREVER! Thanks for reading!

Renate

Permalink: https://justthinking130.blogspot.com/2020/04/family-forever-greenhawkins-virtual.html