But this is my mom, the one ilost.
Her birthday was April 7th. She turned 93.
She lived through Mother's Day and then
she got Covid passed within three days.
And so this is her pedigree chart piece
by piece Gigi. Best Richardson has
been untangling her family roots. This
was her mother. Her mother died
when she was nine years old,
so she was raised by her grandmother.
And that was her Gran father.
So all the way
back, not Gigi and her husband.
Skip Richardson owned the Richardson
African Diaspora Literature
Museum and bookstore in Tampa.
We ended up on the. Oprah List for 125.
African American bookstores.
We ended up on Conde Nast Traveler.
We were in the Green Book which is
local Gigi Self published author
teaches genealogy classes add teach
it right here or sometimes
out front as I worked on this
story to find an African American family
who traced their enslaved African
ancestors back to the Tampa Bay area.
I had quite a few obstacles.
Gigi explained why and it all starts 76
miles northeast of Tampa in Wildwood, FL.
In the community of Royal,
one of Florida's oldest African
American communities. The
people there, some of them still
only large plots of land that they
got right after emancipation.
They were able to hold onto it because.
Some people got there is what we're
not able to hold on because of the
laws and you know the reversal so.
Trying to find somebody actually in Tampa.
Quote unquote Tampa.
So the more research I did,
locali, I found out that some
of the larger families here.
In Tampa. Brought enslaved people
came from Brooksville.
They came at a time when they
had right after emancipation,
so it's not that they're not.
Descendants of enslaved people
here is that what people know.
About their ancestry.
What African Americans know about
their ancestry usually only
goes back a few generations.
And for African Americans with a family
connection in the state of Florida,
the search for enslaved ancestors
will take some work. A lot of work.
I posted a map of where the Blacks was
concentrated in 1900. Fans Lockett
lives in Columbus, OH and is one of
the admins of the Facebook group.
I've traced my enslaved ancestors
and their owners now even though
he has no family ties to the Tampa
Bay area as an amateur geologist,
he keeps Florida on his research list.
When
you look, Florida will scatter.
Florida was kind of unique.
Other other Southern states,
so it won't be hard to find
stuff in Florida to help me
with this story. Vance led me
to the book Passages to Freedom,
the Underground Railroad in history and
memory in Chapter 5 Southern Passage,
the forgotten route to Freedom in Florida.
I learned Africans resistance to slavery
started as early as 1526. That's nearly
300 years before Harriet Tubman
help slaves escape to the North
for three centuries, enslaved
Africans, mostly from
South Carolina in
Georgia, sought freedom in
St Augustine FL. Once they arrived,
they converted to the Catholic religion,
which allowed them to own property
work and even testify in court.
The journey to seek freedom in
Florida stopped in 1763 when Spain
made a deal with Great Britain.
Spain traded Florida for control of Havana,
Cuba after that deal.
To avoid becoming slaves again,
100 freed African Americans
left Saint Augustine for Cuba.
In 1818, the First Seminole War cost
freed African Americans and Native
Americans to leave Saint Augustine and
seek refuge in western South Florida.
Some of them made their way to
hunting villages near Tampa Bay.
Another exodus took place in 1821
when Florida became a territory
of the United States.
African
Americans who wanted
guaranteed freedom set sail to
Cuba and ask
for the others.
They took their chances and stayed.
Now that part of the research
is just the tip of the iceberg,
and it's necessary, especially
for amateur geologists like vans.
Vans picked up genealogy as a
hobby after a family member shared
a little piece of history with
him. My older cousin,
Gladys, is who's almost nine.
You know, about 20 years ago she gave
me a picture of when I ancestors.
I said she was enslaved.
On back of the picture say it went ring.
And I was curious and like I wanted
to notice lady and I want the
Norris story also back in 1988.
I got into big
fights with this guy over a
misunderstanding. Come to find
out where Cousins today after
the second fight. My brother,
what we want my assistant brother like
they should 'cause he did the talking.
I want to know how exactly we was Cousins.
In 2004, Vance learned he can
trace his family lineages with
the help of genealogy software. I
went to website downloaded so I
started putting my family history
on computer and to really dig
deep into his family history.
Vans realized he needed help.
I started going to the library research
and stuff and doing this I went to the
local Afro American genealogy Place.
And there I got a straight up disk.
I asked how can I trace my ancestors
enslavers and they all got up and
walked and walked away on my way.
This live internal firearm I was
going to find these people and I
was going to use the Internet.
An idea, so I'm up.
The source will kind of guy always kind
of being being the resourceful guy that
he is. Vance found several people to help
him and he made a pact with one of them.
I started asking questions and he said
there and said I'm gonna help you.
You help me that you'll pay back to me is
you help the next person for free too.
They taught me how to do things
and so I started finding stuff.
And I found out that one of my third
great grandads foreign civil War.
He got away from master for an
award and he had 129 page Polotan
National Archives. Genealogy
tracing is an investment in time
and money and not everyone has an
equal balance of both to spare.
If you don't have.
No, the the means to easily
put food on the table.
You're not necessarily thinking about.
What? Your ancestors were doing.
If you ask the geologist to do
work for you, that costs money.
It's expensive and you know sometimes doing
the research yourself is even expensive.
Even today, you go on and you have to
pay for memberships to ancestry.com,
or you have to, you know all these things.
So there's a price point to knowing
your own history pending on who
you're asking and where you are
can be anywhere between you know.
$2030 an hour up to 100 and some
odd dollars an hour depending
on you know who you are,
who you're working with an it really?
It also depends on how quickly you feel you
need the information and it also
depends on how far back you want to go.
A couple of years, decades,
centuries for most African
Americans looking for their history,
the story stops at 1870.
Geologists, historians and
researchers refer to this.
Obstacle as the 1870 brick wall.
1870 United
States Federal census is the first
federal census that recorded formerly
enslaved individuals by their own name.
So prior to this date,
it can be very difficult to
find a record that might have an
enslaved individuals name on it.
I have a feeling that a lot of these
folks got to 1870 on the census and
didn't know where to go from there.
Genealogy
companies like ancestry.com and 23 andme
have been helping people connect the dots.
On family trees since the late 1990s,
some people were able to trace their
family line all the way back to the 1600s.
But for African Americans, it's not so easy.
So to help them get past the 1870 brick
wall faculty members at the University
of marylandlaunchedenslaved.org,
a database that will collect
documents of enslaved Africans.
To fill the database and slave.org is
accepting documents from family historians,
genealogy societies and everyday
people who have a piece of history
of their enslaved ancestors.
We're
particularly interested in historical records
of various types of historical records,
which produced in a whole bunch
of different places and times
about named enslaved individuals.
Slavery and enslavement was very much
about imposing names on people and
fracturing their lives and their families
and stealing their their livelihoods
in their in their in their bodies.
It was very much also about enslaved
peoples living their lives.
Sleep.org is a portal using something
called linked open data protocols to be
able to discover and identify sources
which may exist in a whole bunch of
different places but named individuals.
But even if it's not about
a named individual.
Even if you don't find the named individual,
you might find something about a
particular time or a place people
associated with a named individual
or may never be interested interested
in individual you're interested
in a particular time and place,
and out of that thing come to discover.
Or these are the individuals,
the people who actually lived in
that time and place and experienced.
What slavery,
freedom and the various kinds
of dimensions of that look like
at that time and place?
Do you think that you're going to have?
Any challenges extracting
the data that's lingering behind the
1870 brick wall? Oh sure, there's
all kinds of that.
Writes all kinds of challenges,
so it's you know it's finding the data,
finding the finding sources,
and there are a lot of them,
but their totality of sources.
You know somewhere in very familiar
places you know in labor Congress,
for instance, National Archives,
and then some,
was held in private collections.
Private institutions or private homes
and then County County clerk offices.
You know that like that has property
records and court records and so that
you know just this dispersal of the
documents and many of these documents
have not been digitized or they're not.
Even if they might be
available to the public,
you know you have to have a certain
kind of ability in a skill set and
time because it takes a lot of time.
So you might be thinking where do you start?
Well, you start from the beginning.
Whatever beginning is iaccessible to you.
Gigi helped her husband Skip Trace
his roots on his family tree and
the search all started at a funeral.
He was grateful to learn the story
of his ancestors and how they never
gave up on their dreams to be free.
Leave you alone. Proud because.
They came through. Tough situation to get
to where they got to living in commercial
Georgia and coming down here and.
Having the land and stuff and being able to
take care of their families like they did
and leaving things to help them survive.
I feel real power in the thought of
my wife does she did so much research
to find that out for me. We all.
Just happy to be connected with her. Yeah,
and we found that through a funeral he
lost his half sister and when we went
to the funeral people start saying
oh, we know
you, we remember you, your cousin,
you know, so that's how it always is, yes.
So that started to research and a lot
of them didn't know the whole story.