Because I Was Lazy…

Theme song: You Remind Me by Mary J. Blige

The way you walk and the way you talk and
The way you move and you remind me, yes you do
Of the way you dress and the way you dance and
You really like to move it. You remind me

This is a message to those who wanted to do their family chart but didn’t although you have the resources.  If its calling you, then do it.   Do it then.  I wish I had did it when it first struck me because I wouldn’t be doing all this extra leg work now.

About 10 years ago I was working in the H&G dept at the local library.  A guy used to come in all the time doing his genealogy.  He was young, maybe 19 or 20 (I was 25/26 at the time).   His name was Dante my spelling might be off) and he was up on his genealogy.  He was back to the late 1800s, I believe.  He did a lot of research and went to a lot of the family reunions for the families he found to get more information and learn more about the people.

He was a real people person.

Anyway, I was working the genealogy desk one day and teasing him about going out to Oklahoma for another family reunion on another branch of his tree when he began to look at me funny.  He began to question me about my surname, my mother’s name, what was her surname and her mother’s name.  I looked at him oddly but answered him anyway ’cause it was Dante.  He then began to name all my Aunts and Uncles,  and my grandmother Cynthia.

“How do you know their names?”

He was my cousin.  His grandmother was my great grandmother’s sister.  (I forget which sister).  He then began to tell me he was related to another cousin twice (on the mother’s and father’s side). 

I was in awe that he had so much information stored.  And I was happy to be related to him because I really liked him, he was cool.  I meant to get the information from him but never did.  A few years later he married the local beauty queen and moved away.

I thought it would be easy to retrace his steps but its not.  His living resources are proving to be much more informative than mine.

O Dante, O Dante wherefore art thou Dante?

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.

Re-Inspired

Theme song:  Set Me Free by Tarika

Tonight, my husband convinced me to attend a booksigning and documentary premiere for the movie “A Prince Among Slaves“.  It was a really good short film about a muslim Prince who ended up as a slave in Mississippi.  Abdul Rahman Ibrahima was an educated muslim prince from Timbuctoo who was ambushed by on the way home from a battle.  His enemies ended up selling him to white slave traders which is how he ended up on American soil.

At the end of the film Ibrahima’s descendent from Liberia had a family reunion with Ibrahima’s descendent from here in the United States.  Everyone, from the smallest to the oldest was calling out their ancestral names.

One of the presenters tonight made the statement that at the beginning of slavery there were more muslims living in America than there are today.  She said a lot of the slaves that were here were orignally muslims and many of them held onto their tradition and passed them on.  She even played a song that showed how arabic music has influenced black music.  The first song she played was of a male arabic singer, singing the high notes that dive around.  Then she played a song by an old blues singer.  I never noticed before how similar in intonations and vocal acrobatics blues were to that arabic/indian sound. 

But Ibrahim worked tirelessly to free his children once he became freed.  And when he saw it was time to leave he went to back to Africa.  They said that a caravan of gold was coming to meet him in Monrovia until they got word that he had passed away.

He’s an interesting man.  I guess that’s another book to add to my reading list for the summer.

So now, I am back on track.  Well, I’ve always been, I just need to make trips.  I can’t do anything until I can go see relatives on my mother’s side to see if there’s information that I need.  And for my father’s family I need to send away for death certificates –yeah, kinda morbid.

But that is where I stand now

Bit by Bit

Theme Song: Don’t Run So Fast by Rahsaan Patterson

I am beginning to hate Ancestry.com.

Sunday I searched and I was unable to find anything so today I decided to switch and use Heritage Quest Online which yielded a better result.  With Heritage Quest I was able to do a search in 1900 in Perry County, Alabama.  I don’ t know which last name is correct: Ann Ivery or Ann Ivey.   The information in 1910 had Ann Ivery at 60 years old which would have made her birth year 1850 something.  In 1900 it had Ann Ivey as 35.  The only thing that lets me know that the correct family is my grandmother Pearl.  In 1920 Pearl was widowed at 36 and living in Bibb County, AL.  In 1910 she was 26 and living in Perry County, AL with her husband (Edward Griffin), her children and her mother.  In 1900 she is 15 years old and they are in Perry.  I discovered a sister named Ginnie (or Gennie, Jenny, Jinny…) and she is 22.

I have to go by the age of the children and not the floating age of the parent and the variants of Ivey/Ivery that pops up.  I know I am going to have a problem finding them in the 1890 census simply because a good portion of the census that year was destroyed. 

(sigh)

So…  it also has Ann as being single but in 1910 information was given that she was widowed.   In 1900 she was the mother of 5 children but only two of them were still living.  I wonder if I can find out what happened to Ginnie.  I wonder if she was dead by 1910 or not.

A friend from H&G department just came downstairs to help me decipher some scribbles on the census schedule.  She said that she has a handout from Tony Burroughs that he gave when he did a talk on African American genealogy.  Burroughs is an African American that has done two of his family lines back seven generations.  I don’t know if I can get that far back (or even have the energy to search that far back) but if I can just get to 1870 for at least two family lines I’ll be so happy.

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.