Some Progress Being Made

Theme Song: Repetition by Charlie Parker

Since yesterday I’m on a bit of a roll.

I have excluded Alferd(Afred) and his wife Fannie as being my direct descendant,  I’m wondering if he’s not a great uncle of some sort.  I will have to look into that later. 

E~ (current genealogist/H&G worker/genealogy adviser/friend) told me to stay on point.  She said its easy to get sidetracked and begin looking for all kinds of names.  I told her I wanted to know the surname of William Bowen’s wife (Mat). 

But, searching back to the late 1880’s I was able to find out that William’s father is Wash Bowen.  His wife is named Synthia.  Wash and Synthia were both from Tennessee.  I got as far as 1880.  I may not be able to take them back further but I will try again another day.

And…

I finally was able to find my G-Grandad Jack on the 1930 census.  They have his name listed as Robison but everyone is there.  My uncles and aunts that I know.  I played around with the surname until finally he popped up.  Its like a puzzle.  You have to figure it out and work things around until you get pieces into the right place.

And another thing: looking around on the census track I noticed again the Fuqua name.  It’s the name that was on the video but I’m unsure of how the families are related to one another.  That’s something else for me to search but not today.  After I check out the video again.  I’m going to take the tape and transfer it to a DVD and maybe (with my daughter’s help) put portions on my blog. 

Yeah, I’m thinking big.  Bigger than I’m capable of I’m sure.

A Family Reunion, Of Sorts

Theme Song: A Familly Reunion by the O’Jays

 I wish grandma could see
The whole family
I sure miss her face
And her warm and tender embrace

I just came from my Aunt Geneva’s house.  She had a slight (mild) stroke that has made the right side of her face slightly paralyzed.  It was odd seeing one side of her face so slack.  It’s disturbing really.  I still see her the way I did when I was a little girl and now to look at her and realize she’s getting old, I mean really old…

It hurts.

I have been trying to get in contact with her for the last couple of weeks.  Her and Hazel.  Hazel called me back and then I called her back but then that was it.  Aunt Geneva hadn’t called me back because she was sick.  I will call my mother to night to inform her what is going on with her older sister, although I didn’t tell my Aunt that my mother had surgery for cataracts about a week or so ago.

But I went there and tried to get more information about what my Grandmother Cynthia and Grandfather Jack was like.  My Aunt just said they were nice, but she described what the house looked like that they lived in when they were in Rogersville back in the late 40s/early 50s.  At first I found myself tuning out, because its not what I asked but then I realized that was a bit of information I may be able to use someday. She described a house with a tin roof and two big rooms she said the rooms were connected by a hallway that was more like a porch.  In one room her uncles slept and in the other room the girls and grandparents slept.  That room contained a big fireplace and (I think) the stove or furnace… I forget.

(sigh) I’m getting like my Aunt Geneva.  She said that Grandma Cynthia used to talk about her family all the time: her uncles, her aunts, her grandparents and such.  She named names but my Aunt Geneva didn’t pay attention because she didn’t know who the people were.  I wish I could go back in time and ask the questions of my Grandmother that I was afraid to ask but never did because I was scared: like who were her grandparents and how she got the welts on her back.  But now I will never know.

Seven years ago there was a family reunion in Huntsville, AL.  I couldn’t go because I didn’t have a ride down; my uncle that was going to drive me (was if Clifton?  was it Connie?) had a heart attack and so I couldn’t go.  I went to see him in the hospital and he thought that I was my mother.  But anyway, the reunion down in AL was the Bowens-Fuqua reunion.  My aunt bought the video tape and I just now got a chance to watch it.  It was interesting viewing the tape.  I watched a good portion of the video where people were just saying their names and what person they were related to that brought them there.  The sound was bad on that part.  They came from different parts of the country Louisville, Tampa, Chicago and Lima (Oh).  And of course Cincinnati.  I got the feeling that Rogersville is a very, very small town.  My aunt said everyone knew almost everyone when she was there and everyone was related to everyone.  It seems that way because she pointed out a relative with the last name of Watkins (a Watkins married a Roberson) and I was like, Hey!  That’s my grandfather’s surname.  So know I have to dig around and see who this guy is in relation to my grandfather.

But anyway, I finally got to view some of the part where someone did a bit of genealogy on the family.  All I can say is “Thank you, Jesus” that someone did some stuff because searching on Ancestry.com is a b.  Today I played around with it and played around with it and still nothing with the last name of Bowens or Roberson (or anything similar).  The cousin who did it I need to find and say thanks to because maybe now I can do a bit more.

She got back to 1910.  There were three brothers: Simms Bowens, William Bowens, and Charlie (Charley) Bowens.  They were living in Rogersville, AL (and I swear, I searched that).  On the 1910 they just have it as Bowen (sans S). 

Simms Bowen is married to Mary and they have two children named Catherine and Alberta.

William Bowen (my great-great grandfather) is married to Matt (my great-great grandmother) and their children are Sinthia (my grandmother Cynthia) Charlie, Lesley, Lilly, William, and Caroline.

Charlie Bowen is married to Loretta and they have two sons named William and Lucien (spelled Lushion). 

Simms and William are living close to one another and another name on there looks like and Alfred Bowen and Fannie Bowen.  Alfred is 71 and Fannie is 63 which is old enough to be my the brother’s parents.  If that is them (please let it be) maybe I can move further back.  I’m thinking it has to be.  My family has a penchant for naming people after other family members and my grandmother’s name was Fannie.

So I have to search back further.  Get my names together and the birth years right.  Maybe I can finally make some headway on this family tree.

But where is that dark horse Jack Roberson? 

While watching the video tape I asked my Aunt when the next family reunion was.  I felt ashamed about never attending and sending my daughter as my proxy with my mother.  My Aunt said she didn’t know, the older generation is too old to plan it and its now for the younger generation to carry it on.  I mentioned that perhaps we should and said something to the effect that I could help plan and when we went to see Aunt Anna  she told her I was interested in doing it.

“You can’t do it by yourself, its too much,” Aunt Anna said.  “You need a committee, they need to meet once a week, every Friday night…” She then began to tell me how it was to be done, if its to be done properly and offered herself as a member of the board, although she thinks it should be done by the young people.  She mentioned how the last time she helped to organize it a cousin called her bossy.

“Naw, really” I thought sarcastically.

“You need to know who your people are,” Aunt Geneva said.  “You need to know your family.”

I thought about the people I saw on the tape and the names I jotted down.  Years ago I would have dismissed this charge from her and thought I am who I am regardless of who came before me or what blood relations I might have.  Older now, I see I was wrong.  I’m curious about these people who share a similar bloodline, if only if its just to make sure my daughter doesn’t marry a close relation. 

I’m also curious to see what I will find.

Bringing Back Old Information

Theme Song: September by Kirk Franklin and Maurice White

“Bah di yah/Tell me you remember/Bah di yah,/When your heart felt like September”

 When I went to visit my cousin Howard last year he gave me an interesting perspective on my father’s family.  I love Howard, though, and I wonder if I got my quirky sense of perspective and a tendency toward dramatics from the Griffin side because Howard is funny. 

One thing I do know about my father’s side is the men have a thing for younger women, it seems.  One day I was in a pharmacy getting a prescription filled and standing in front of me was a woman who looked to be about my age.  I was in my late twenties, early thirties then.  The woman said she was picking up a prescription for a Ward Griffin.  I started chuckling and said to the woman, you know what, that is so odd that is my father’s name.  She got her prescription, left and then came back with another woman asking me who I was and when was the last time I saw my father.  I told her my name and told her I hadn’t seen my father in years because he died in January 1994.  The woman told me my father wasn’t dead and he was living with her. 

I was thought she was insane.  My father was a mack; my mother and his wife were at least 27 years younger than him but I didn’t think he could get a woman this young especially not in his current state.  I asked her if she knew Howard?  She said she did; that Howard was Ward’s brother.

“No, Howard’s my cousin,” I told her.  We were both thoroughly confused.  She kept insisting she was living with the Ward Griffin who was my father and I had no idea who this person was.  He was probably a cousin I had never met.  I only met a few relatives on my father’s side and Howard was the only one who regularly visited while I was growing up because my father helped to raise him when his father passed away.

I went home and called Howard who said, “Yeah, Ward’s my brother named after Uncle Ward.  You never met him?”

So here are two blogs I wrote last year when I did a start/stop on a genealogy search.  Hopefully I (or someone else) will be able to glean some things from them.

The Lives of Black Folks Current mood: hungry Last week PBS showed the end of the tv show African American Lives.   Since I work in a library it has been a topic of discussion for me and two good friends, one who works in History and the other who spends every moment she can researching her family line.  During the weeks the show aired articles have shown up in the newspapers about doing genealogy research, my favorite being this one. Watching the show has inspired me again to do some sleuthing, that and a visit to my maternal aunt.  She called me up on Sunday, the day before her birthday, complaining she lost her birth certificate and the copy of her mother’s death certificate.  Since we have copies of death certificates here at the library for that year I was able to quickly locate it (acutally, Doug located it and made a copy for me) and took it to her on her birthday.  I took Mimi with me because she is doing a family tree chart for her Biology class.  My aunt wasn’t around when we got there so we sat and spoke with my Great Aunt who has always drove me crazy.  Now she’s almost 70 and still irks me at times but I’m cooler with it now.  I don’t visit them as often as I should and so at first I was chewed out for not coming around.  Soon we got around to stories, what it was like when they first came to Cincinnati.  What was my great grandfather and grandmother like.  What was my grandmother like, she died so young.  My aunt is just a year younger than my great aunt but she couldn’t remember her mother at all.  My great aunt had some memories of her although not a lot.  Many times when we go to programs on black history we often deal with historical figures, but not family.  I think that is what I liked most about African American Lives, it deals with what we should be concentrated on this month: the black family.  The icons are important but history is made up of people living, working, loving and dying.  Too often I hear black people speak of the black experience in generalities, not about what their family went through or accomplished.  We took a picture of my grandmother home and downloaded it.  I don’t know if Cricket got all of her questions answered although she did ask for a copy of the picture of her great grandmother.  Next week we are scheduled to see my first cousin on my father’s side to ask him genetic questions.  He always has been funny and Mimi enjoys visiting him and eating his wife’s macaroni and cheese.  More to come on that next week….

African American Lives: part deux
Current mood: frustrated

Early Saturday evening I braved the cold (well in a car) to attend our first book club of the year.  My daughter was in tow because she had plans to meet her friends around 8 over in Cov.  Five people including myself were supposed to show up and only the usual three did: me, D, and J.  I don’t know if it was a tribute to our love of reading, our lack of an exciting social life or we were the only black women stupid enough to trudge out in the cold.

We met at Simones.  It was my 2nd time eating there.  When they used to be next to the laundromat they had a more soulful cuisine.  Now they’ve moved into the new upscale building on the corner and there is no catfish or greens on the menu, only high class fare with entrees on the cheap side begin at 15.00.  Well, the brother is working it out and getting paid.  I can’t fault him for that.

When I get there (and get there late because Cricket doesn’t understand the concept of be ready when I get home) J was waiting inside the door and D was getting her flirt on.  We meet at a bar table because, unbeknownst to me, you need a reservation.  Damn, when have you needed a reservation at a restaurant in the hood?  We are surrounded by white folks so I guess that answers that. I asked her who the guy she was flirting with and she was like, “I think he’s the owner.”  And I was like, Oh.  Hate to tell her, but bruh is “family“.

So, forty minutes into the conversation we finally get down to discussing the book, which my daughter, of course, had to note. Out of the three of us D is the only one who read Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad.  I didn’t finish it because I was too busy reading other things and started the book late and J didn’t finish it because she has mental block against the books I pick and thinks they are all verbose. So we discussed what we could, which sidetracked us onto black history and genealogy.  We all realized that now we have a better understanding of history than we did when we were in high school.  Maybe it’s because we are reading things that interest us or learning more about ourselves that help us put things better into context.  D is big in genealogy and she commented that now learning  more about her history line has helped to put history into better perspective.

I guess I will see as now at the request of Cricket I am learning more about my own family line.  On Sunday we went to see cousin Howard, my first cousin on my father’s side.  From my conversation with him the previous week I wasn’t sure if I could believe anything he told me.  Everytime I talk to him he comes up with a new revelation which he backtracks on and this time wasn’t an exception.  Like a few years ago he said my father’s mother was a white woman (which I don’t think she was although looking back I can’t remember if my father said she was biracial or white).  Last weekend Howard said that my father’s father was white and I’m like, okay, senility is now setting in on my cousin because he’s tripping.  He was altering my image of my dad, claiming he was lighter when he was younger (which could be true).  But my father was not biracial and couldn’t be white and I ain’t claiming just any old white person on my family tree.  I’m like Jeffersons, you gotta show me the DNA before you can come to the family reunion.

So we go there and Howard brings out all these family pictures.  Now he tells me the weekend before that one side of my family are colorstruck and only want to intermarry with other lighter blacks and they have disdain for darker hued blacks .  They like his wife, though, and she verified his story.  And she is deep, deep chocolate.  So I don’t see why they will like her but dislike other darker family members who they are related to by blood and dismiss them just on the basis of color.  So he shows me pictures of nothing but darker family members, none of the lighter skinned ones.  And I’m like, where are the Chicago cousins?  They are part of the ones he claimed were so colorstruck.  If they were they didn’t show it when I visited them years ago.  And one has a son who is darker than me.  They were the ones who showed me a pic of my grandmother and from my memory of the picture she could pass for white or maybe Native American (it was a black and white picture).

Its hard searching out family names with older family members (although Howard isn’t that old, he’s only in his 60s).  The problem is memory.  Things that I remembered my father telling me Howard discredits.  No one wrote things down. On both sides of my family no one has really done a family tree. When my father was alive he didn’t remember his mother’s maiden name.  I guess I can kind of understand it.  People are were so busy working and living that they didn’t think to ask about the past, they just took some things for granted. 

Besides the info for her Biology Class project I think the main thing my daughter has come away with is to check potential boyfriend’s family tree.  Howard is the only one on my father’s family that I really know but I didn’t know he had children.  I just assumed he and his wife couldn’t have children (although I knew she had kids) and here it was he had kids before they married, one a few years older than me.  D talked about dealing with the wall of secrecy while doing her family tree.  Maybe it was the shame of oow births or the stigma of slavery or sometimes people die young and they are forgotten. 

I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get to an interesting story about the family or if there is one to be had.  The writer/researcher in me wants to keep digging.  I guess I will see what there is to see.

Naming Names

Theme Song: Chant to Call the Indians Out by Wyton Marsalis

In my previous post I said I couldn’t find my Roberson family on the census, although I found them last year on the 1930 (or was that 1920) census roll in Alabama.  I don’t know what happened to make them disappear from Ancestry.com.  Last night I checked all the places I thought I could have tucked away the printed information but I couldn’t find it.  Mama called me this morning to give me the names again and tell me what areas we lived in.  From what I know we have always been in Alabama until the great migration that sent many African Americans to move North.  My Great Grandfather Jack didn’t want to make the move but most of his sons and daughters were living in Cincinnati so he was convinced to move here.  He didn’t live too many years after they came.

My mother gave me the names of all of my Great Uncles and Aunts.  A lot of them are dead.  I only have two Great Aunts living now and I forget how many of my Uncles have passed away.  They always hated that I couldnt’ tell them apart but the Roberson’s have some strong genes.  The boys all looked alike. 

My mother also told me that someone did a family tree for the Robersons and I have to ask around to see who still has it.  She also gave me the phone number of her half sister in Alabama so I can ask about her father’s family.

 Sometimes the person translating it onto the net just can’t read.  Yesterday I found my paternal grandmother Pearl on the census with the name Pearl but Ancestry had her name as Rose.  They are blind.  I finally was able to go back to the 1910 census with her and her kids and her husband.  Her mother was even living with them. 

Hopefully someone who is doing research on these families will be able to offer me help or in time I will be a good source of information for them.  Once I get the scanner working again I can scan documents onto the site and pictures as well.