National Day of Listening (NDL)

Rosalind M., of AAGHSC's Mississippi Study Group, had reviewed Isabel Wilkerson's book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, for the group at the November meeting.  This morning, at BookTV.org, I saw Isabel Wilkerson's name at the bottom of my TV screen.

Wilkerson and Michele Norris, former ABC news correspondent and author of The Grace of Silence, were discussing their new books at the 2010 Texas Book Festival.  Soon, their respective back stories came to a close and Norris mentioned National Day of Listening, the day after Thanksgiving.  A well known journalist, Norris teared up as she spoke of her father. 

With regret, she told the audience, "...my children will never hear my father's voice because I never recorded it."  As we spend time with family over the holiday weekend, remember NDL, a day to spend time with family members and video/tape record family stories for the future generations.  Click here for an Instructional Guide.

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Slavery in the 20th Century?

Slavery By Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, by Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas Blackmon, is expected to air on PBS in 2012.

NB: For more information, visit the website of Doug Blackmon.

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Everything Old is New Again

"...And, face it, the twenty-ten elections are so last Tuesday."
Candy Crowley, Host of State of the Union

As President Obama admitted, "...I'm not recommending that every future president take a shellacking like I did last night."  Why should I even care about last Tuesday elections?  Today, while watching American History at C-Span 3, I was reminded of the U.S. Presidential Election of 150 years ago, yesterday.

Consider the Tea Party fringe movement within the Republican Party.  Generally speaking, third-party candidates benefit the incumbent party.  And what happens when there are four presidential parties as was the case in 1860?

• Stephen A. Douglas
• Northern Democrats won 29% of the Popular vote
• John C. Breckinridge
• Southern Democrats won 18% of the Popular vote
• John Bell
• Constitution Unionists won 13% of the Popular vote
• Abraham Lincoln
• Republicans won 40% of the Popular vote 

As you see the Democratic ticket (today's Republicans) was divided.  Will history repeat itself in 2012?  Time will tell.  Question? Comment?  Email me!

Election Day 2010

"If we are to go forward, we must first go back..."

M.L. King, Jr.

With Election Day 2010 behind us and in light of the Republicans pending takeover of the House of Representatives, it's only fitting that we look back at another time  and another place.

With the passage of the 15th Amendment (1870), black men were allowed to vote -- albeit briefly.  During Reconstruction (1865-1877), today's Democrats were yesteryear's Republicans, the Party of Lincoln. 

Other than perjorative references found in in F.Z. Browne's Reconstruction in Oktibbeha County (1913) and Thomas Battle Carroll's Historical Sketches of Oktibbeha (1931), not much is known about the following Oktibbeha County Congressmen.

• Anderson Boyd
• Benjamin Chiles
• David Higgins
• Randall Nettles

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Source: Freedom's Lawmakers (1993) by Eric Foner

Giving Back to the Genealogy Community

At a Saturday genealogy meeting, a new member of the group asked us if we had heard of Find-A-Grave.com.  We all nodded our heads; some of us had even downloaded pictures from the site.  I was surprised to find out that I was the only one in the group who had also uploaded pictures there.

Just last week, I had resurveyed our family cemetery.  In 2006, I had even donated information gleaned from headstones and even uploaded a couple of pictures from the cemetery to Find-A-Grave.com.  In my research, I also found several surnames unfamiliar to me.  Not exactly sure what I would do with them, I filed away their names for future reference.

Why was I holding on to information that family members knew nothing about?  With a fresh eye, I looked over Find-A-Grave.com.  In addtion to donating interment information, I could also sign up as a volunteer for my local community?  I entered my zipcode and saw that there were three open projects close to home.

I could do that, I told myself; but, first, I'm going to forward the family cemetery interments over to Find-A-Grave.com!

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RSS Explained In Plain English

For the better part of year, I've been hearing about RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds. My response, typical of most people browsing the Internet, was "Why do I need that?"

I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea. I can just save the URL to my Favorites, right? Why do I need to subscribe to an RSS feed? Click here and the answer will soon be obvious.

Take your research to the next level. Subscribe to The Sand Creek Sentinel for more genealogy tips.

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The Battle Of Antietam: September 17, 1862

How well do you know your Civil War history?

Today marks the 148th anniversary of the single bloodiest day of the Civil War at the Battle of Antietam. If you can answer the following four questions correctly, I’ll give you a pass on the above video.

• Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, & Missouri remained a part of the Union and were exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation? True or False?

• Antietam is to the Union as __________ is to the Confederacy.

• What action did President Lincoln take after the Union victory, at Antietam, in September 1862?

• Who was Abraham Lincoln’s presidential opponent of 1864?

Bonus
• According to President Lincoln, which Union general had a case of "the Slows"?

NB: Yale Professor David Blight is the Director of the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the author of A Slave No More. You might think that discovering two previously unpublished slave narratives in the 21st century is remarkable and it is. As family researchers however, even more remarkable is the research done to validate the events recorded for posterity by Wallace Turnage & John Washington.

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Spinning History Through The Movies

With a renewed love of history, I'm always looking for documentaries or movies that serve my twin interests in history and family history. Yesterday, flipping through the TV channels, I stumbled on National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007) and later, Wild, Wild West (1999).

National Treasure: Book of Secrets follows National Archivist, Ben Franklin Gates (aka Nicolas Cage) and his father, Patrick Henry Gates (aka John Voight), as they seek to uncover the back story of Abraham Lincoln's assassination and 18 missing pages from the diary of John Willkes Booth.

In Wild, Wild West, at the behest of President Grant, Jim West (aka Will Smith) & Artemus Gordon (aka Kevin Kline) team up to battle wits with Dr. Arliss Loveless (aka Kenneth Branagh) and his "lady-fiends". Kenneth Branagh's southern accent is right on.

Yes, okay, so Roger Ebert ripped both of these movies to shreds but that doesn't mean that you can't still enjoy the Civil War tie-in.

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Pawn Stars: Labor Day TV Marathon

I'll make this short and sweet. Don't call me tomorrow because I'll be watching my newest guilty pleasure, on the History Channel, all day long!

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Born in Africa: Martha & Amey

The other day, while reviewing the 1870 U.S. Census for Oktibbeha County, for the umpteenth time, I came across two African-born women. In 1808, Congress officially banned the international slave trade from Africa but it continued illicitly. Considering that, it was possible that Martha Walcer, born about 1820, was born in Africa. On the other hand, Amey McVay [sic], born about 1790, was definitely a more probable candidate.

Beyond an 1871 marriage listing for Samuel McPhail to Rodie Parramore, of Oktibbeha County, MS, I was unable to further locate Amey's immediate family. I did locate a Spencer McPhail on the 1900 Oktibbeha County Census but I couldn't find the tie-in. As far as Martha, I couldn’t location her or her family on the 1880 census.

Fortunately, I have plenty of other options to explore.

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Evernote: The Best Organizational Tool Ever!

Location! Location! Location! is to Real Estate what Organization! Organization! Organization! is to Genealogy. If you're like me and have notes on assorted slips of papers (e.g., napkins, backs of receipts, and post-it notes) and in too many notebooks to count, then you'll soon appreciate just how wonderful this software application can be in organizing all of your genealogical research.

In addition, I'm in the process of creating a website. Jotting down ideas, adding video links and pictures is a piece of cake and finding those same items is a breeze with the search feature. While I've downloaded the Windows-version, there is also a Mac-version of this software available, as well as an iPad, iPod, and an iPhone version. I love the 21st Century!

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What is Past is Prologue

--William Shakespeare, from The Tempest

Four years ago, today, I discovered the world of genealogy. Four years later, I've discovered a love of history and an affinity for oxidized pages, traveled gravel roads far and wide and crawled shelves high and low, and I've been reacquainted with "old" cousins and met several "new" cousins. Best of all, I've met many kindred spirits in the process and attended two wonderful family reunions: the most recent one, held just last month, in Minneapolis, MN.

Update: "We cannot erase the past but it is in our power to change the future." ---Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, to Palestinian leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, during 2010 Peace Talks in Washington, DC.

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Tim Pinnick: Someone You Should Know

Years ago, Harry Porterfield, a local Chicago reporter used to have a segment on the afternoon news entitled "Someone You Should Know." Tim Pinnick, genealogist, lecturer, and author, is one of those people.

Last year, while at the International Black Genealogy Summit, in Fort Wayne, I bought his book based on the glowing feedback about his two-part presentation: Finding and Using African American Newspapers. Being from the Chicagoland area, I immediately honed in on the Chicago Defender, which in its' heyday was delivered by Pullman Porters and had local correspondents across the country.

As a result of exploring newspaper research, I found 1200+ columns referencing residents of Starkville or near Starkville: not Starkville, Colorado; not Starkville, Georgia; not Starkville, New York; but, Starkville, Mississippi! In fact, earlier this year, based on my findings, I gave two presentations at the first annual STL-AAHGS genealogical conference entitled Putting Meat on the Bones of Your Ancestors Lives with Newspaper Articles: The Highs of Oktibbeha County, Mississippi.

Thanks to Tim, my genealogical research has a whole new focus. Want to know more African American newpaper research? Check out Tim's new class at familytreeUniversity. Moreover, thank you B.J. Smothers for sharing your many 2010 FGS Conference interviews. Be sure to watch all of them and visit AfriGeneas.

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Visiting Virginia

Barely awake this morning, I stumbled on an interesting travel short on TCM -- Turner Movie Classics. "Visiting Virginia (1947)", produced and narrated by James A. FitzPatrick, was particularly interesting from a genealogical perspective.

Always wanting to know more about exactly how my early American ancestors might have lived, I was fascinated by this episode, which was rich in history and agriculture (e.g., cultivating tobacco and making sorghum). For my fellow family researchers, I'd definitely recommend viewing these short, shorts.

Regretfully, I was unable to locate "Visiting Virginia" at YouTube.com.  If your genealogical research has an international focus, you'll definitely want to see more of James A. FitzPatrick's filmography.

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