Timehost: This is the fourth in our series of TIME Yahoo! Chat discussions about Black History Month. Tonight we're going to focus on how people can learn more about their own personal and family histories. Our guest is Sandra Lee Jamison, author of the new book, "Finding Your People: An African American Guide to Discovering Your Roots." Welcome, Sandra!
Sandra Lee Jamison: Good evening!
Timehost: Let's take the first question...
REALPLAYERBOY asks: Where do you start to track your family tree down?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Start by interviewing
your oldest living (of course) relative.
Their stories about where the family
originated is your first clue.
Specifically, you're looking for what
counties your family lived in.
County records are the key
to open the treasure trove of family history.
With county information you can track
your ancestors to federal census records.
For African Americans,
this is useful until 1850.
Timehost: Speaking of 1850...
jangi54 asks: I have info from the 1850 census of people from W VA. It lists them as free inhabitants. Does this mean that they were free AA people?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Possibly.
You'll need to do some more
digging in the local records.
Consider looking at the neighbors
in the W. Va county where your ancestors
reside.
If most of the population is colored,
black, mulatto, or even African,
your ancestors were probably also "of color".
West Virginia has a very
rich and diverse African American history
... as they say, a lot of miscegenation.
Check your state historical society for African American
genealogical societies at www.state.wv.us
ARAYOFHOPEINC asks: 4 years ago, I just located my birth mother & 12 sisters & 6 brothers, I felt compelled to search for them so that I could find my roots, not only for my knowledge but for that of my children. I think that your book is FANTASTIC
Sandra Lee Jamison: Thank you.
Yours is the second adoptee success story I've heard.
A young man told me how he
searched for his birth parents in South Carolina and one name
linked him to a family --
and all the hugs and kisses that implies --
that extends his adoptive family five fold!!
candypeaches281 asks: What if the county records are lost, lets say, in a fire or cannot be found?
Sandra Lee Jamison: It happens,
but you have to be positive
and be specific about the county.
When there's a fire
or flood or other tragedy
at the county level, you man be able to reconstruct
those records at the federal or municipal level.
ajcool123 asks: Where would you go if you couldn't talk to a family member about this, or they didn't know?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Good question!
I had to circumvent some family secrets myself.
If no one's talking, you have
to look for death and marriage certificates,
family bibles, or even cousins
who might help with the research.
The family bible connection is awesome.
Even in the moderately religious
family, the family bible was a place where
births and deaths were chronicled. It took a little snooping,
but I peeked in Aunt D's bible and found dates and
names of aunts and uncles I
never knew. Tracking them down led
to the family branches that
no one wanted to talk about.
jangi54 asks: I have located my grandfather in the 1870 census. After that he virtually disappeared as well as his family. Where do I look now? I have no living relatives that I know of and I really want to know what happened to him, his wife and all of my grandfather's siblings.
Sandra Lee Jamison: That's the time when things get tricky,
and you have to reach out to others
who are experts in that African American surname you're
researching and/or that area of the country. Are you connected
with an African American genealogy club?
Timehost: Jangi54, let us know if that's the case..just send in your answer -- or follow-up questions!
Stamm444 asks: How widespread was the practice of slaves taking their masters' family names on gaining freedom?
Sandra Lee Jamison: It was pretty widespread,
and therefore it's the first "assumption" you should
make, but it wasn't 100% the case.
You're going to have to track multiple names, and
often the names are linked to a particular trade,
profession, skill or simply the former slave's free state -- i.e. Freeman, Freemen!
openandsee asks: What if your name comes from an adopted family?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Yes, yes. That's a special
area of genealogy that's hard to crack
without the participation of birth parents
or unsealed records.
Have you looked at the Adoption Network and
the site Open Records for Adoptees at www.bastards.org/activism ?
There's lots of regional efforts for opening records of adoptees.
Hey, you folks are good at getting me to give away my tidbits
without buying the book "Finding Your People"!
Timehost: Oh here, we have a follow-up from jangi54...he said he could not track his ancestors after 1870...and Sandra asked whether he was a member of a genealogy club...
jangi54 asks: My area does not have an AA genealogy club. The nearest one is about 2 hours away.
Sandra Lee Jamison: Are you close to a Family History Library?
The Church of Latter Day Saints has an awesome network of cross-referenced family histories.
You might link to a pre-1870 record there.
Millions of names are linked there.
jangi54 asks: Yes, I am in walking distance of one. Could find only census info on my family. Do not where else to look at the FHC.
Sandra Lee Jamison: Did you try to connect to another
name within that census?
Perhaps a sibling of your relative
has a more useful trail of records.
acrufield asks: Genealogy seems to be an interpretation of found facts. What books can you recommend reading to get an accurate historical context in which to make valid interpretations?
Sandra Lee Jamison: My book of course!
But there's a brand new book I discovered called
"Finding Your Way Home" that I give kudos
to for being both comprehensive and
conversational.
The reason I wrote my book was to make the issue
of searching for your roots less daunting for
the average person.
PittOJD asks: What resources did you use to research your book?
candypeaches281 asks: Ms. Jamison, how did you go about researching the info for the book?
Sandra Lee Jamison: I started at the Schomburg Center in New York City.
They had a workshop
that gave an introduction to
the fundamentals.
I was blown away when, after two hours,
I found my great grandfather in a census microfilm
including the names of a few aunts and uncles
who were alive at the time.
It wasn't as easy as I thought it was ...
but nor was it as difficult. I wondered
why the library wasn't
filled with more folk doing this kind of research.
So, I set about learning as much as I could from books, people, and
the Internet and set out to make it
as accessible as possible.
The history of the African-American is awesome and
the stories that don't make it to the Grammy's, ESPN, and
the front pages of the newspaper
are the real stories of black history and achievement.
t2tru4u asks: What steps would I take to actually try to check on my family tree when both sets of my grandparents are deceased, so I don't know anything about either of the two?
Sandra Lee Jamison:
If you have Social Security numbers
for your grandparents,
check for those records in the Social Security
Death Index.
Finding the place (again county) for your
grandparents' birth and death
should open up more resources to you.
ARAYOFHOPEINC asks: Do you think that adopted African-American children should find their birth parents after they reach the age of majority, in order to find their roots ?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Knowing your birth parents can be so
important, not only to a person's psychological health but also
their physical health -- i.e. medical history --
that it should be seriously and perhaps aggressively pursued.
Stamm444 asks: Sandra, do we have any records from Arab or African traders on which villages were the origins of particular slave shipments to North America?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Records exist, but
the slave ships often
transported slaves taken from a
variety of African villages!
One ship's manifest may have listed cargo -- which
included enslaved Africans -- from the northern and
western regions of the African continent.
Tracing an ancestor
to a specific slaver is quite an achievement for the
African American genealogist.
Tracking a ancestor to a specific nation -- and remember the nations of Africa
were not the same nations we know today! -- is
extremely difficult --
but not impossible.
If you keep in mind that slavery was "business",
you'll realize that record-keeping was important to the trade. By the way, the records do exist.
Linking the names in those slaver's manifests and auction records
to the present descendants is the challenge.
Timehost: We have a few follow-up comments and questions from people who earlier asked about tracking down their own family histories...
candypeaches281 asks: What if all you have is a street name, and the town the street is in? For example: my great grandma, her name is Verden and all the Verdens lived on one street as much as she can remember, in a small town called Franklin, Louisiana. But that's all we have. Is that all I need to find my roots? We went to Louisiana, and the street was not there. It was gone, so what can we do?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Louisiana has some terrific resources.
Check in the city directories at the historical
society for the county or parish for your great grandma ...
more specifically check the COLORED directories.
Louisiana has some terrific resources on the web and some of the most colorful racial histories out there. Again, here I go
giving away hints: www.state.la.us
Timehost: You mentioned to Jangi54 that one might look for people with similar last names...
jangi54 asks: At the time I had no other name. I have found others that have the surname, but do not know if they are related. But I keep on pushing on. One interesting thing is that I have linked up with a white woman, researching the same surname in the same area and county. We believe there is a link, but cannot find it. We keep in close correspondence.
Sandra Lee Jamison:The very recent phenomenon of white people
searching for their black
ancestors has been a real boost for AA genealogy (see Ed Ball's book "Slaves in the Family").
violinlady44 asks: My friend has recently taken in a biracial child (her great niece). How important is it for this little girl to "identify" with her black roots?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Hmmm.
Personally, I think it's important
because to not identify
her black ancestry is to imply that
there is something shameful or bad about the extra melanin in her skin.
This is a little off the subject, but
many of the black pioneers who fought in the early civil rights movement ...
and I'm talking about way back to F. Douglass and J. Plessy
were biracial. And I'd like to think that kind of "fire in the belly" for racial prejudice and
injustice continues into the millennium with biracial and multiracial kinfolk.
ajcool123 asks: Do you have your whole family's relatives figured out?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Are you kidding!?
I'm just getting started, and the more you discover, the more
you realize you don't know. I started tracing one line and went back to the early 1800's -- and got sidetracked with another family line (piggybacking off the research of a cousin) because
I am curious about a particular family name!
I can track the last slave in
both my paternal and maternal lines.
And I'm in awe about the stories of how their descendants
worked in mills, quarries, kitchens, factories, etc. and raised their families
to be so optimistic about the future.
Timehost: Thanks, we're going to have to wrap things up now, but do you have any closing thoughts, or advice for people who want to find their family roots?
Sandra Lee Jamison: Do it!
As I said at the beginning; it's not as easy nor as difficult as you might think. And our ancestors deserve to have their stories
told and remembered.
TIME.com Special Report: Black History Month
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