Maryanne's Birthday - Bringing Family Together!

This past Wednesday, March 23rd, was my mother's 77th birthday. On Sunday prior, I hosted a little celebration in her honor, which was attended by her siblings, their spouses, a cousin, and my oldest brother, Ed. It's difficult for me to write much about the dynamics of this side of my family, because I am innately guided by the mantra, "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all." Not only did my father reiterate this phrase over and over again during my childhood, but I also heard it each morning on the radio station. I didn't realize (or remember) until searching for the exact voice to link into this post, that this was a line from the movie, Bambi!
Anyway, the gathering was a complete success, and my mother was truly happy to see her family members all together. It was a long day for her, and she was tired by the time we started taking pictures, but I do have a couple to share.

Mom was wide awake and excited about the "surprises" I had in store for her.

My brother, Ed, helping mom read one of her cards.

Mom with her sister, Gwen, and brother, Howell. (I forgot to get the 7's for the cake, so I used the number one to indicate that she is the #1 Mom!)

Maryanne Hill Hoggard Yarborough was born March 23, 1934 to parents Daniel W. and Mary Hill.  I thank God for allowing her to celebrate another birthday!

Roots Television - Where Have I Been?

At this moment, I'm just sitting here shaking my head.  Where have I been?  I've been seeing fellow bloggers and tweeters making mention of Roots Television for as long as I've been a member of this community, but for some reason, I have never clicked on one of the links to this amazing resource for genealogists and family historians!  That is, never before today. 

I've just viewed two segments of the "Ancestors Series", and I'm just amazed at how well-done these videos are, and how well they explain the feelings and experiences that I've had as an African-American researcher.  For me, the videos didn't offer a lot of new information, but I can see where they would be of great help to a beginning researcher.  I can image that once I watch some of the other segments on the site, I will certainly find information that will help me, too. 

So now, with my "tail between my legs", I'd like to take this opportunity to share the first two segments of the "Ancestors Series" on Roots Television with my readers.  I plan to include these in my next "Family News" email update - the newsletter that I send out to my family members, each month.  I think that if they will take the time to view these videos, many of my relatives will gain a better understanding of the work I'm doing, and the critical role that they can play in helping to enhance the research!
If you are a "newbie", don't miss this opportunity to expose yourself to a fabulous source of guidance for the African-American genealogy researcher!













Enjoy!
Renate

Tombstone Tuesday - Jacobina Sherrod Hawkins

My third-great grandmother, Jacobina/Jacobine Sherrod Hawkins, wife of Philemon; mother of Archibald, Madison, Lucy, Nathaniel (my gg-gf), Fannie, Mary, and Benjamin. Her grave is located in Oakwood Cemetery, Louisburg, NC.  Photo Source: http://www.findagrave.com/ (Memorial# 41496203)

Mysterious Monday - Diagnosis: Pellagra

This Mysterious Monday is not about a picture.  Instead, it's about a disease, and the startling finding I've made of it in my family history  The name of the disease is Pellagra.  You can read all about it, here and here.

I have written before about my great-grandfather, Calvin Yarborough, Sr.  This post is about the wife of his son, and namesake - my grandfather, Calvin Yarborough, Jr.  My grandfather died decades before I was born, but it was a desire to know more about him and my grandmother, Anna, that actually started me on my genealogy quest 15 years ago.  Calvin was married twice - first to Toynetta Littlejohn, and then to my grandmother, Anna Green.  Calvin's first wife, Toynetta, is the subject of this post.

For many years, I've tried to find evidence of Toynetta's death, so that I could get a better sense of the timeline between my grandfather's two marriages, and of what life may have been like for him and his three oldest children.  Until last week, I could never find a death certificate for Toynetta, despite my searches on the Internet, as well as visits to the Franklin County Register of Deeds office, where the death certificates are housed.  In my research, I'd found that several members of Toynetta's birth family, the Littlejohns, had died of tuberculosis in the first decade of the 1900's, as had some of my Yarborough ancestors, so I've been assuming all this time that it was this same disease that took her from my grandfather, especially considering that Calvin, himself, was later consumed by it.  But, thanks to a surprise finding of Toynetta's death certificate (when I wasn't even looking for it), I know differently.  Toynetta did not have tuberculosis.  She died of pellagra.

Pellagra, for those who don't know, is a vitamin deficiency disease, which is characterized by the "4 D's": diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death.  In the early 1900's there was an epidemic of this disease in the southern states.  Apparently, the disease appeared in 1902 and peaked in 1915-16.  Toynetta died of it in May 1914.

Ancestry.com. North Carolina Death Certificates, 1909-1975 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data: North Carolina State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics. North Carolina Death Certificates. Microfilm S.123. Rolls 19-242, 280, 313-682, 1040-1297. North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina.

What is most interesting to me about this, and what presents the mystery, are the circumstances as presented by Toynetta's death certificate.  I've learned from reading about Pellagra, that its victims were isolated in hospital settings, away from the general population, so I guess this is how Toynetta ended up in St. Agnes' in Raleigh.  I'm aware that this was the Colored, or Negro hospital for decades.  But, still, it surprises me that Toynetta somehow ended up there from Louisburg, a town close to 30 miles from Raleigh.

On her death certificate, Toynetta is listed as single, though she was definitely a married woman.  The hospital seems to have no information on her.  It almost seems as if perhaps she went there on her own, or was left on their doorstep.  Where was Calvin?  Why wasn't he (or anyone) there to provide information about her to the hospital?  Surely, she was demented from the disease by the time she arrived there, just four days before her death, but why didn't anyone know anything about her?

Toynetta's body was returned to Louisburg for burial, but this was handled by a company out of Raleigh.  Why didn't the undertaker from Louisburg (Blount) who was handling most of my family's (and the Littlejohn's) handle the arrangements?

Toynetta Littlejohn Yarborough was born in 1884, and died May 3, 1914, possibly demented and seemingly alone.  She was survived by her husband, Calvin Yarborough, Jr., and four children, Vida (7), Priscilla (6), Felix (4), and Fredrick (9 mths).  Her son Felix, who turned 5 the month after she died, followed her to the grave in September 1914.

My grandfather, Calvin, remained a widower for five years after Toynetta's death, an unusually long time for a man of of that time period, who had small children to raise. He married my grandmother, Anna, in 1919.  I can only imagine the sorrow he must have carried in his heart after losing his wife, and his young son in the same year.  I hope to learn more about the circumstances surrounding Toynetta's illness and subsequent death, as well as Calvin's life as a single father, who ended up courting and marrying my grandmother-to-be.


Source information:  Information about the disease, Pellagra, was obtained for this post from the following articles:
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/985427-overview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Search Terms

It's been a while since I've participated in Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun , but after reading a few of the posts from this week's task, I was curious, so I decided to go for it. 

The "mission" (as Randy puts it) was as follows:
1) Go to your Blog Statistics website (e.g., StatCounter, Google Analytics, etc.) and find the page for "Keyword Searches" done on your blog.


2) Tell us some of the funniest or most interesting keyword searches and your reaction to them. Write your own blog post or put them in a comment to this post, or in a comment or status on Facebook.

I use the free counter provided by Sitemeter http://www.sitemeter.com/. I do not pay for the upgrade.  Perhaps if I did, there might have been a page for Keyword Searches, as Randy suggested, but I didn't see one, so I had to click through each of my hits (no big deal) to see if the person had found me by way of a keyword search, or otherwise.  I had read the instructions for the mission on Saturday, and thought I remembered what I was supposed to be doing, so I didn't look at them again before I started.  For some reason, I thought that I was supposed to look at the last ten search terms that people had used to come upon my blog, so that is what I did.  It wasn't until I'd finished that I went to Randy's site to get the exact terminology to copy and paste (above) into my post, and I then saw that I hadn't exactly followed directions!  Oh, well.  Se le vie...

Here, starting from the most recent, are the ten last search terms that landed folks on my Into the LIGHT. 

my brother arthur white

diary writing - death of brother affected me

betty howell new Norfolk

tribute to brother died

tribute to a brother

into the light blog

photos of mulatto slaves

a tribute to my brother

tribute to my brother

a tribute to my brother

Clearly, the post that I did about my brother, Arthur, A Tribute to My Brother, is generating the most hits via search terms on my blog!  I don't know why, but this really surprises me, just as it did that this post has generated the most comments of any on my blog.  I guess I was expecting to see more of my surnames pop up, or maybe the locations in which my ancestors lived.  But what I also noticed in several of the details, was that many of the searches were from overseas and/or Canada.  This made me wonder if, perhaps, people were looking for ways to pay tribute to fallen soldiers.  Just a thought, but who knows, really?  Anyway, I will just consider it an honor that, for whatever the reason, even more people than I'd anticipated are learning about the life of my brother, Arthur!

Renate

Christmas Reflections - 2010

As the holiday season begins to wind down, I find myself reflecting on the choices I made for myself (and my family) this year.  Although it's just my daughters, my mother, and me, we have established a few holiday traditions over the years, most of which were pushed aside this year in lieu of a "different" kind of Christmas.

One of my oldest holiday traditions is to create a "card tree" on my laundryroom door with the Christmas cards I receive in the mail.  I use to get so many cards that I couldn't get them all on the door, but now, with the Internet and all, it's been a few years since that has happened.  (Sometimes there's tinsil around the door, or bows between the cards, but none of that, this year!)




Without going into a lot of detail, I'll just share that our recent Christmases have been somewhat less than the joyful occasions they should have been.  Sure, we exchanged gifts, attended church on Christmas morning, had a big dinner, and went through all of the usual motions of the holiday.  But, our three-generation, all-female, basically isolated Christmases, which are always hosted in my home so that my mother can participate, have begun to take their toll on me - emotionally, and physically.  So, this year, I devised a plan to change the pace (and the scenery), and gifted my daughters and myself with a Christmas trip to New Orleans.  I'd been working on the idea of a holiday trip for several months, and had explored several options, but the overwhelming guilt of knowing that taking the trip would mean leaving my mother alone on the holiday, kept me from actually booking anything until December 12th.  By that time, my original plans to book a Caribbean getaway for the three of us had become out of reach, financially, so after a few days of scrounging around the Internet, I settled on New Orleans, a city that was then boasting temperatures in the 70's, which sounded great to us, since we were in the frigid 20's and 30's.

My daughters arrived home late on the 23rd - actually just before midnight.  The next day, we proceeded with our plan to have Christmas with my mother, and to make it as much like the actual day, as possible.  We picked her up and brought her over for gift-giving, dinner, and caroling.  We showered my mother with gifts, as we always do, and she loved them all. My oldest brother, Ed, who just lost his wife last month, surprised us all by showing up, something that has never happened before.  So, as an added blessing, my mother actually got to spend a holiday with two of her children, for the first time in over a decade.  We all had a good visit, but as the evening grew late, the girls and I realized we needed to start preparing for our departure the next morning, so we got ready to take my mother back to her assisted living home.  On the way, we took our traditional "light ride" (as we call it) through Newport News Park.  Normally, we do this on Christmas night, and it doesn't take long at all.  Little did we know, this is apparently the thing to do on Christmas Eve.  The line and the ride through the park ended up taking almost an hour and 1/2!  When we finally got back home, my daughters tried to get me to open gifts that they had for me, but I'd requested that we not exchange gifts, so that we could spend more freely in New Orleans, so I refused, and that was that.

On Christmas morning, I was up early getting my bag packed when my cell phone rang.  It was a recorded message from Delta Airlines, letting me know that our flight to New Orleans had been CANCELLED.  I won't take up much space in this post writing about the ensuing drama from this, but I'll just say that you've never met DETERMINATION until you've met me.  We made it to New Orleans on Christmas, albeit many hours later than originally planned.  The Big Easy was freezing cold, with temperatures in the 40's and cold, cold winds blowing, but still, we had a fun trip, taking in the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of New Orleans!  

My daughters and me on the streetcar in New Orleans.

We returned home late last night.  My oldest flew out first thing this morning, to return to her home in NY, and my youngest left this afternoon to drive back to DC.  (They both have to work tomorrow.)
So, that was it.  The Christmas that really wasn't.  This year brought none of our usual traditions (except the light ride) - no opening one gift on Christmas Eve (when I usually still tend to give my daughters new pajamas...lol - no Christmas morning casserole - no putting up or taking down the tree (I didn't even decorate the house, since the girls wouldn't even be here to enjoy it).  I could go on with what we didn't do, but I won't.  What we did do was spend 4 days together, sharing the experience of traveling together for the very first time since my daughters have been "grown".  We made new memories - some good, some not so good - but we made them together, and I hope my daughters will share some of the stories from this trip with their children, some day..  Not much about the past five days has felt like Christmas, but knowing that one of these days, my daughters will (hopefully) be married, with families of their own, I'm glad we took the opportunity to do this now.  Still, though, 2010 kind of seems to me like the Christmas That Wasn't, so I think if I had it to do again, I would definitely not choose to travel on the actual holiday.  I'd stay home, have my "traditions", and then leave on the first thing moving on December 26th!

My girls on Bourbon Street in NOLA

By the way, about those gifts that my daughters were NOT supposed to have gotten me:  Before we went to the airport on Christmas morning, my youngest daughter convinced me that I had to at least open the gift from my oldest, because it was something that I'd want for the trip.  Under pressure, I opened it, and was surprised to find that I was the proud new owner of a NOOK!  Of course, after that, I had to open the gift from my youngest, which turned out to be a lovely new blanket-scarf, the heavy type that I'd been wanting for a long time.  So, even though I still wish they'd stuck to the agreement, I am truly happy and thankful to have two such thoughtful and loving daughters, who are now able to bless me with so many nice things. :)

Me with my new shawl and NOOK reader. :)

Mysterious Monday - A Yarborough Ancestor?

On a recent trip to Louisburg, NC, I was given the opportunity to begin looking through some of the belongings of my deceased cousin, Geral Yarborough Sargent, the same cousin whom I wrote about in a previous post. My cousin Geral was a "double Yarborough", in that her mother was a Yarborough, and so was her father (though they were not related).  The Yarborough name is very common in and around Franklin County, in both the Black and White communities. The Caucasian Yarboroughs were a wealthy family of slave-owners, thus leaving a plethora of freedmen who chose to adopt the YARBOROUGH/YARBORO surname after 1865.  Cousin Geral's father, Hillard, was from one set of these Y's, and Cousin Geral's mother, Mattie Yarborough, was the daughter of my formerly enslaved great-grandparents, Calvin and Priscilla.

On the day of my visit, I found several photographs of people who may possibly have been my ancestors.  Most, I'll likely never know the identity of, but hopefully, my cousin Geral's "adopted daughter", Madie, will be able to help me with a few.  But, for this Mysterious Monday, I'd like to post what appears to be the oldest of the photographs.  I have no idea who this woman is/was.  She has some features that lead me to believe that she was probably an ancestor of Geral's, but on which side?  For all I know, I could be looking into the eyes of my own great-grandmother, Pricilla, but I think it may be more likely that this could be Cousin Geral's paternal grandmother, Matilda (Hill) Yarboro.  Matilda was born on January 1, 1844, and died 98 years later, on her birthday, in 1942.