A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your African-American Ancestors by
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.
Finding Your African American Ancestors by
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.
Finding a Place Called Home by
"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 Home is 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 Identity takes 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
Black Genesis by
When this book was originally published in 1978, it was the first book to provide researchers with information on resources and a methodology specific to African-American genealogy. Now, owing to the unprecedented growth of interest in the subject, this landmark publication has been completely updated and is once again the premier guide to African-American genealogy. The 2nd edition of Black Genesis provides guidance not only to the same basic resources presented in the original edition but also to a substantial amount of additional material. The original goal, however, remains the same--to introduce the novice and professional researcher to African-American genealogical research methods and resources.
African American Genealogical Sourcebook by
This text provides historical genealogical data on African Americans. The book includes emigration history, genealogical records specific to African Americans, and a directory of genealogical information.
