Welcome back to the African Roots Podcast! You can always reach me HERE.
I hope you have all had a great week and were able to get some good research in as well. We also had a holiday week, with Veteran’s Day. I hope you were able to honor the men and women in your family and among your ancestors who served the country. I was excited to see the many wonderful posts that friends on Facebook, Twitter and other parts of Social Media have been sharing as a way to honor their loved ones. Of course there are many ways that we have to honor them, by writing, blogging and telling the story. Have you shared your own stories? Perhaps in a family publication. It does not have to be extensive, even a newsletter is a good platform to write and tell that family story. The key is not just to tell it, but to tell it frequently. That is how it is remembered.
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I mentioned that this has been a good week where people have been sharing information. Of course we have all heard about the distinguished black aviators, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, the famous black pilot of World War II. Well I learned that among those distinguished African Americans was a Latino, a Dominicano, who also was trained to fly. His name was Esteben Hotesse and this was discovered by Edward de Jesus who has been compiling data for a special exhibit on Dominicans in the second World War. He discovered the name Esteban Hotesse and followed his life as a child immigrating with his parents, and who was later trained by Chief Anderston down in Alabama. Of course we know that African descendants are all throughout the Americas, and the Dominican Republic is no exception. But this was a nice piece of information to see this week.
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Also one fellow researcher identified a set of brothers who served in the USCTs and who enlisted together. this was great to see. My Bass family produced two sets of brothers, Sephus and Braxton Bass enlisted at the same time that Sephus’s two sons Henry and Emanuel Bass enlisted as well.
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If you missed this week’s bi-weekly episode of the Black Pro Gen hangout, then you should go and catch up on YouTube. This week was the first of two weeks of Brick Wall Busters, on Black Pro Gen, and we had two challenging cases to address. All of us were able to give a few suggestions to the submitter with the questions, and to hopefully steer her in the next direction. Two significant suggestions 1) Time to visit the old community. Living only 4 hours away it was time to go to the town, walk the cemeteries, and visit the courthouse. Probate records, chancery court records, land and vital records would be essential. And of course to also walk the old cemeteries, the old burial grounds where the ancestors lived and died. 2) Because one of the challenges was that nothing was found on this ancestor prior to the 1910 census. The suggestion was made to go the the Clayton Library (where the submitter lives) and pull out the Soundex. In many cases, people are not easily found, because they are indexed erroneously. Soundex will pull them up, more efficiently in those cases.
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Fold 3 Provides Access to Native American Records
There is still time to access the records of Fold3, Native American Collection. This is mentioned because of the 14,000 African American records embedded in that collection. In addition, among the Mississippi Choctaws are several hundred African American records (out of 7000.) So do take a look.
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Last night’s episode of Bernice Bennett’s show was Forging Freedom, with Dr. Amrita Chakarabati Myers, who has studied the history of Free women of color in antebellum Charleston. This is a little known area of research, the study of free women. She spoke of the varying degrees of freedom, and pointed out how fragile freedom really was for Black women fortunate to have held that status. Their status as free could always change at the whim of the family of person who manumitted them. She share info on how also free people were required to pay taxes on their own selves, something not required by non-blacks in South Carolina. The discussion was excellent. If you missed it, listen to online as a podcast. Ms. Bennett’s show airs every Thursday evening at 9pm EST on Blog Talk Radio.
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Well, as you know, I am still working my way through NANOWRIMO. I have written 20,000 words so far, and hope to cross 25,000 by early next week to stay on target! My project has been a genealogy story that I have told many times. Well this time, I decided to get a bit into the head and mindset of my ancestors 150 years ago. So many small stories to tell as well, within the larger story. I am enjoying it and am admittedly surprised that I have lasted this long. So—the lesson for me, is to look at the stories that I have told, and then write the narratives. My process has been to walk the ground with them. When a sister left behind the recruits for the colored troops, where did she go, how was the journey, what could/would she have seen?
So–we shall see how it goes! My goal is 50000 words by month’s end, and hopefully it will go well.
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In the meantime, as I wind down, thank you for being part of the loyal listening audience. I appreciate you all for tuning in each week. In the meantime, keep researching, keep documenting, and keep sharing what you find.
