A Genealogist S Guide To Discovering Your African American Ancestors

Tracing one's African-American ancestry can be uniquely challenging. This guide helps overcome the obstacles and pitfalls of specialized research by offering a proven, three-part approach.

"I teach the kings of their ancestors so that the lives of the ancients might serve them as an example, for the world is old but the future springs from the past." Mamadou Kouyate "Sundiata", An Epic of Old Mali, a.d. 1217-1257 Two major questions of the ages are: Who am I? and Where am I going? From the moment the first African slaves were dragged onto these shores, these questions have become increasingly harder for African-Americans to answer. To find the answers, you first must discover where you have been, you must go back to your family tree--but you must dig through rocky layers of lost information, of slavery--to find your roots. During the Great Migration in the 1940s, when African-Americans fled the strangling hands of Jim Crow for the relative freedoms of the North, many tossed away or buried the painful memories of their past. As we approach the new millennium, African-Americans are reaching back to uncover where we have been, to help us determine where we are going. Finding a Place Called Homeis a comprehensive guide to finding your African-American roots and tracing your family tree. Written in a clear, conversational, and accessible style, this book shows you, step-by-step, how to find out who your family was and where they came from. Beginning with your immediate family, Dr. Dee Parmer Woodtor gives you all the necessary tools to dig up your past: how to interview family members; how to research your past using census reports, slave schedules, property deeds, and courthouse records; and how to find these records. Using the Internet for genealogical research is also discussed in this timely and necessary book. Finding a Place Called Home helps you find your family tree, and helps place it in the context of the garden of African-American people. As you learn how to find your own history, you learn the history of all Africans in the Americas, including the Caribbean, and how to benefit from a new understanding of your family's history, and your people's. Finding a Place Called Home also discusses the growing family reunion movement and other ways to clebrate newly discovered family history. Tomorrow will always lie ahead of us if we don't forget yesterday. Finding a Place Called Home shows how to retrieve yesterday to free you for all of your tomorrows. Finding a Place Called Home: An African-American Guide to Genealogy and Historical Identitytakes us back, step-by-step, including: Methods of searching and interpreting records, such as marriage, birth, and death certificates, census reports, slave schedules, church records, and Freedmen's Bureau information. Interviewing and taking inventory of family members Using the Internet for genealogical purposes Information on tracing Caribbean ancestry

Presents the obstacles and advantages of searching for Black family history, including information about places to research, and documents and techniques used to uncover genealogical history, even though considered lost or incomplete.

This practical guide takes beginners step-by-step through the research process, and includes advanced tips for more experienced researchers. You'll learn general guidelines of genealogy that ensure success; how to use major American records such as census and naturalization records, ship passenger lists and passport applications; how to use minor American records such as family letters, church and cemetery records and newspapers; how to find Italian vital records - civil documents that record births, marriages and deaths; how to read the margin notations in Italian records to learn even more about your family; how to interview relatives; and how to make the most of every piece of information you uncover. This easy-to-use reference even includes information on Italian naming traditions, how to read foreign handwriting from hundreds of years ago, ingenious tips for using an English/Italian dictionary, and a letter-writing guide you can use to request data from Italian officials - in Italian!

Although the search for African American ancestry prior to the Civil War is challenging, the difficulties are not always insurmountable. Finding Your African American Ancestors takes you through your ancestors' transition from slavery to freedom, and helps you find them using the federal census, plantation records, and other helpful sources. The book also considers ways to locate runaway slave advertisements, to identify an ancestor's military regiment, and to access the valuable information from The Freedman's Savings and Trust records.

Research techniques specific to the reader's own ancestors' national and ethnic backgrounds enable them to learn where and how to find information they need. Ethnic research techniques and ethnic resources make this book unique from any we've ever published. Ethnic research techniques lead researchers to records based on customs or migration patterns of specific ethnic groups. Ethnic resources are organized around national and cultural backgrounds rather than geography and social statuses such as married, divorced, sued, and so on. Clear, authoritative instruction typifies both the content of this book and the reputation of its author, Sharon DeBartolo Carmack.