Tag: African American Genealogy

Happy Anniversary African Roots Podcast! Episode # 440

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Wow!!!! Welcome back to the African Roots Podcast–something that I have been saying for 10 years!  You can reach me at AfricanRootsPodcast@gmail.com. That’s right, my first podcast was taped April 2, 2009 and what an amazing decade has passed. Today is the 10th anniversary of this podcast! Hard to believe that I have had the honor to speak to you for the past decade. I never expected to have a podcast for a decade.

Ten years ago the online community was small–there were not too many people broadcasting about African American genealogy. Antoinette Harrell was there with Nurturing Our Roots, and Bernice Bennett has arrived and still going strong. And some new podcasters have arrived, and they are welcomed to the online broadcasting community.

This has been an amazing experience, and I decided to look at the things that I spoke about 10 years ago. I did conduct book reviews, and the topics are fascinating. At that time DNA was quite new and at that time the primary name that we heard was that of Dr. Rick Kittles, who was speaking at various genealogy events. Things were going on in New England at the NERGHC conference in New Hampshire. I was discovering new sites—well new to me.

This is a short note to simply say Happy Anniversary to the podcast, and I have had some wonderful experiences. One of my favorite interviews occurred several years ago at MAAGI when Gary Franklin and Renate Sanders discovered that they shared history from North Carolina. They met at our Brick Wall session, but I was so excited to interview them after they discovered what they learned at that session.

My experience has been a wonderful one, and I have broadcasted from St. Louis, from Allen County Library in Indiana,  and Salt Lake City, and even the Jamboree on the West Coast.

Thank you all for tuning in to listen, look at how things have happened, records that were not online, and new databases, look at the new relationships that have emerged. This has been a wonderful experience!! Thank you for being there. I just wanted to say Happy Anniversary to all of you as listeners, and thank you for tuning in from time to time!

Thank you all….and let’s see what is coming around the next corner!!!

In the meantime, as we begin this new chapter—keep researching, keep documenting and keep sharing what you find……….!!!!

Digging the Roots – Episode #432 Talking DNA

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In this episode I am here with my good friend and colleague Shelley Murphy and we recently attended an event at Poplar Forest, the “other” home of Thomas Jefferson. We were there for African American Family History Day!

 

On Saturday September 22, we both presented there, and we talked about numerous issues at Poplar forest including looking at documents and we discussed methods of analyzing documents to tell the family story. Shelley was able to get the class to move beyond simply having a document, but to analyzing it and asking her favorite question—“So What?”

And I enjoyed the opportunity to get to share the story of how I was able to extract a story from a Civil War record, by telling the story that I found from one of my favorite ancestors—Uncle Sephus Bass! There was much interest in not only the story of Uncle Sephus and the 4 ancestors who were captured and who later escaped from Nathan B. Forrest but also of the US Colored Troops. Truly that was a wonderful day with much discussion about our job to find the story from the records.

The following day, Shelley and I sat down to reflect and our conversation evolved into one of  our responsibility as family historians—which these days is enhanced so much more by DNA and its impact on genealogy

As we spoke, we asked questions— What do we do with sensitive information? What is our responsibility? Especially this arises when it comes to DNA. What do we do when find out that family members are not closely related to us? What is our role? Do we share it–and how do we handle it?

Listen to this lively discussion between Shelley and myself about our responsibility as researchers. I hope you enjoy our dialogue. Thanks for listening and remember to keep researching, keep documenting and always keep sharing what you find.