Where to Begin

Today’s Theme Song: In This Life Together by Kindred the Family Soul

Last Christmas my husband’s grandmother asked me for my complete name.  J and I had just gotten married in the fall and she wanted to include me and my daughter on the family tree she was maintaining.

“I have a lot of information,” she told me. 

“When you come back next year I’d be interested in seeing it,” I said.

“You would,” she looked surprised and happy.  “Would you like to keep it?”

I agreed I would although I found it odd that I would become the family historian from being married into the family for a few months.  One of J’s sisters took me aside later and told me she was happy I agreed to take it.  Granny has been trying to entice the family in their roots and previous branches for some time now but no one is up for tree climbing. 

For some people knowing where they are from doesn’t particularly interest them.  I should note right here that my husband is Korean and his adopted family is white.  He wonders why I want to take the information since really its not his family. 

I shrug my shoulders.  “I don’t know.  I just think it should be kept alive.  No one wants to be forgotten.”  I’m looking forward to the next family holiday where I will see her and I hope she will bring everything with her.  Maybe even pictures.  My husband assures me she will.

For years I have been wanting to embark on my own family history search.  I start every once in a while to look up a name here and a name there but then stop because it seems so daunting.  It has been hard retrieving information from my family.  When I was pregnant with my daughter I bought a baby book that had a family tree in it and I called up my father to see if I could get information from him about his parents.  At the time my father was in his mid-late 70s (he always got mad if I added an extra year or two to his age)  and I was 21.  He didn’t see why I needed to know although I told him for the family tree.  He told me his mother’s name was Pearl and his father’s name was Edward.  He said if it was a girl not to name her Pearl because there were enough Pearls in the family. 

“What are you going to name it if it’s a boy?” he asked. 

“I don’t know, after the father I guess,” there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to name a son Ward.  Maybe I would use his middle name Jewel for a girl but no child should bare the burden of the name Ward.

My father was suffering with bad circulation.  In 1988 after my 15 year old sister had a baby he had a heart attack and had one leg amputated.   Now in poor health he needed the second leg amputated but refused to be legless.  I could hear the pain in his voice but still couldn’t help but take it personal when he snapped at me.  He was angling for me to name the child Ward and I told him I would think about it.  I asked him what were the names of his grandparents.  Could he remember them?

“How can I remember something that long ago,” he said angrily.  “I don’t remember them.  Why do you want to know?”

I have always been thwarted when trying to find out about my family.  No one knew anything and if they did they didn’t want to tell even the simplest things, like names.   I wonder if its that way in every African American family.  We have so much shame and hurt that no one wants to tell anything.  We don’t want to think about what happened to us in the past because thinking about it just keeps us there and we are trying to survive. 

But something in me won’t let me just leave them back there.  Mostly Fannie. Fannie will not let me leave her behind and she has been on my mind since I was a little kid.

One day when I was little I noted that my mother called my Grandma by that moniker also but my Aunt Anna called her mother.  I asked her why didn’t she call her mother.

“Because she’s not my mother, she’s my grandmother,” she explained.  “My mother’s dead. ”

“When she die?”

“Long ago, when I was about your age.” She told me if I wanted to see a picture of Fannie that my Aunt Matt had a picture of her.

“Why don’t you have one?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

Little by little I found out Fannie had died from tuberculosis.  I didn’t ask Fannie’s brothers or sisters but found the information gradually from my Aunt Geneva and my mother.  It was like pulling teeth with deep roots without the benefit of novocain.  They quickly changed the subject when I asked.  She was married to some man when she came up here to Cincinnati from Rogersville, Alabama.  His last name was Shoulders.  My family didn’t like him and my Great Grandfather liked him even less.

Finally I asked my Aunt Anna, Fannie’s younger sister about he husband.  “I saw her husband a few years ago.  I didn’t even speak to him.  Why you want to know about him?  He’s probably dead now.” (Which was untrue.  He died a few years after she divulged that little bit of information.)

But that husband is not my grandfather.  He was just the man she married before she came North.  My grandfather died a few years ago but he couldn’t tell me much about Fannie either.   He was married with a family when he met her, but he saw her walking up the street and decided to holler at her.

“Why did you do that?” I asked my Grandfather Risted.  I really liked him.  He was humorous and easy going. 

“Because she had a big behind,” he said.  I was shocked a 70 year old man (my grandfather!) would talk so easy with me this way and I began to laugh.  He lauged with me.  “I saw her walking up the street and I said she got a nice behind so I have to talk to her.”

From her picture I saw she was pretty and had an astigmatism (which most of her sibling’s had but only my nephew inherited of all the younger generation).  From my grandfather I learned she was physically attractive.  But I still wondered who Fannie was on the inside.  Was she rueful?  Why did she marry a man her family disliked and move to another city and leave her children behind.  Was she closer to her mother or her father?  What were her dreams for her daughters?  What music did she like?

Last spring for biology class my daughter had to do a project about inheritable traits.  My mother is pigeon toed which she inherited from my mother.  She is also nearsighted and she got that from her father’s family.  We talked to my Aunts (Geneva and Anna) to see what family traits aside from astigmatism is inheritable.  The subject then turned to Fannie.  Aunt Geneva said she couldn’t remember her and when she died she was so little.  My Aunt Anna remembered a bit of her.  No one remembered where she was buried.  I came to work the next week and did some research and found that Fannie (Roberson) Shoulders was buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetary on the west side of town.  I even got her death certificate that was signed by her father.

“See,” I gave a copy of the certificate to my Aunt.  “You were about eight years old when she died.  Mama was five.  Do you remember anything?”

“No,” my Aunt said.  “I still don’t remember.”

Yesterday I went back to ancestry.com to refind the information I located last spring for my daugher’s project but I was unable to find my mother’s family again.  But the information I couldn’t locate for my father’s family showed up.  I was happy and sad at the same time.  I moved miles in the search for my father’s family but since I have misplaced the information for my mother’s family I’m back to ground one. 

So now I’m on a journey to find these people.  A lot of my older Uncles and Aunts are dying off which is probably why I should have started years ago but I have to begin at the point where I am.  I talked to my mother this morning before coming to work and she admonished me for not calling family members who are in town with me anyway.  You can’t be too busy for family, she said.  You need to call them and see if they are okay.  Whenever my mother comes to town my daughter is my designated representative and has to go see all of the old family members with her because I’m usually at work.  My mother takes my daughter with her to family reunions and nursing homes to see the old legacies of our family.  Most of the times they just talk about what’s going on with the younger generation or their health.  My daughter doesn’t care right now but maybe one day she will. 

We are in this life together.  Blood connects us even if the surnames are different.  People say one of the reasons African Americans are floundering is because we don’t know our history.  I find the younger generation in my family struggling.  Hell, I struggle myself.  I wonder if finding out who these people were that came before me who shared my blood will make a real difference to me or my siblings, my cousins or my nephews and nieces.  Will I even be able to find out anything substantive other than the names? 

I don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out.