Research At The National Archives And Beyond!

Keme Nzerem and Sam Rinehart are descendants of slave owner John Rinehart of Edgefield, South Carolina. They are interested in finding descendants of slaves owned by their family. Keme Nzerem is a British Journalist with a Nigerian father and German American mother. He has discovered that his mother's family - the Rineharts of Edgefield owned slaves.

The enslaved of the Keithly Plantation were buried on a small one acre known today as Sage Chapel Cemetery. The owner of the adjoining land was a German emigrant and abolitionist Arnold Krekel who came to America in 1832. On January 11, 1865, Krekel would be the President of Missouri’s Constitutional Convention who would sign the Missouri Emancipation Proclamation that freed the enslaved that were buried at Sage Chapel Cemetery and across the entire State of Missouri. Today, this beautiful graveyard still exists in the City of O’Fallon, Missouri and is being placed on the National Register of Historic Places. This is the research behind the story, and some of the stories that come from that research. Dorris Keeven-Franke has been researching history her entire life. Born in St. Louis, she resides in St. Charles and writes about the history of Missouri. She loves to share the stories of all the people, of all colors, cultures and countries. She is Director of Missouri Germans Consortium, Curator at the St. Ch

Happy 2019!   Join Bernice Bennett and her Genie Friends tonight for an open mic discussion on what your goals are for 2019. Joining me are Shannon Christmas, Janice Lovelace, Ph.D., Angela Walton-Raji, Antoinette Harrell, Shelley Murphy, Nicka Sewell- Smith, Leonard Smith and many more. We will discuss DNA, documentation, resources, history, leaving a legacy and much more. The call in number is 646-200-0491 and press 1 to speak to the host.     Music by AK Alexander Productions

Nicka Smith will share how she discovered that James Alexander Ventress, the namesake of Ventress Hall on the University of Mississippi’s campus was also a slave owner and owned her family. Nicka Smith is a professional photographer, speaker, host, and documentarian with more than 19 years of experience as a genealogist. She has extensive experience in African /ancestored genealogy, reverse genealogy, and family reunion planning and execution. She is also an expert in genealogical research in the Northeastern Louisiana area, sharing genealogy with youth, documenting the ancestral journey, and employing the use of new technology in genealogy and family history research.

During the closing days of the American Civil War, a little-remembered document, a census of the Federal Military Districts, was created. The document entitled, Census Department of the South – November 1864: For Jacksonville, Fernandina and St. Augustine, Florida – Ordered by the Department of the South, Hilton Head, South Carolina, proved to be an effective tool in augmenting genealogical research. That research led Yvonne Emanuel to the ultimate discovery of some unknown and formerly enslaved family members. This session will briefly review that discovery by showing how an unknown or little used document can aid in your research. Yvonne learned about family history from an aunt who once told her a family secret. As a child she wondered about what she was told, but did not know how to find out information regarding the story. Today she knows how to locate such information and assists others with their research. Yvonne makes presentations throughout Texas as a member of the East Texas Historical Associatio

Join Christopher Smothers for a heart wrenching story about Henry Brookhart, the man who was beaten, lynched and survived during the 1876 election season in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. Christopher Smothers founded Unearthing Your Roots, Inc. in January of 2018,  to provide professional genealogical services to people in search of their biological families and ancestors abroad. A native of Marietta, Georgia, Christopher is currently an undergraduate student in Interdisciplinary Studies at Chattahoochee Technical College while also planning to be in Boston University's Certificate Program in Genealogical Research in 2019. His ancestral roots are in Southeast Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland, and Virginia.  https://unearthingyourroots.org/ unearthingyouroots@gmail.com

  At RootsTech, we believe in the power of family – and discovering your family story has never been easier! RootsTech is the world’s largest family history conference held annually in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2019, the conference will also be expanding to London. RootsTech offers more than 300 breakout sessions on topics such as DNA, records, and preserving family memories as well as a gigantic expo hall and daily celebrity keynote speakers. In this broadcast, Tara Bergeson and Tyler Stahle talk about the upcoming RootsTech Salt Lake City and London conferences and what RootsTech is doing to plan and execute world-class family history events. RootsTech is hosted by FamilySearch International. Tara Bergeson, Director of Content, RootsTech Tara works as the Director of Content and oversees the RootsTech class schedule, speakers, registration, check-in, volunteers and customer service. Regardless of the stress level, Tara can always be found with a smile on her face and a calm demeanor. Tyler Stahle, Market

Rodney Sam will discuss the uniqueness of Louisiana Creole genealogy and a personal journey to learn about his Louisiana Creole heritage. He has conducted extensive research on the following surnames in his family: Sam, Rideau, Edward, Desmerais, Donato, Masse, Senette, Pitre, Charles, Jacques, Young, Fruge, LaChapelle, Tesson, Birotte and Meullion. The geographic locations for his research are in the following Louisiana parishes of St. Landry, Evangeline, St. Martin, Lafayette and  to a lesser extent St. Mary parish. Rodney Sam is an avid genealogist who has pursued a lifelong passion in studying the history, genealogy and culture of his Louisiana Creole ancestors. He currently works as a Library Services Specialist at the Clayton Genealogical Library in Houston.

Panelist will discuss A Mind to Stay - White Plantations - Black Homeland. This story researched and written by Sydney Nathans begins in 1844, when North Carolina planter Paul Cameron bought 1,600 acres near Greensboro, Alabama and sent out 114 enslaved people to cultivate cotton and enlarge his fortune. Syd Nathans is a historian and author of "A Mind to Stay," which tells the story of a white plantation that became a black homeland to formerly enslaved people. Based on decades of oral interviews with descendants, the book illuminates how African Americans got land and why successive generations fought to hold it for 150 years. Angela Peay is a Stagville descendant. Angela’s genealogy quest has traced her direct maternal ancestry to Durham, North Carolina’s State Historic Stagville Plantation Site. Her maternal great grandmother was born in 1863 which was right at the cusp of slavery’s end.  She is pending lineage results from Ancestory.com. She currently works in the Pharma/Biotech field. Michael William

  After Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, thousands of Japanese and Japanese Americans were incarcerated in “Internment Camps.” German and Italians were also interned, but in smaller numbers. The various sites of confinement and the records created will be examined, covering the period of time immediately preceding World War II through resettlement and redress. Linda Harms Okazaki is a fourth-generation San Franciscan with a background in education. She is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists and the Genealogical Speakers Guild. Linda currently serves as past president of the California Genealogical Society. Her column, Finding Your Nikkei Roots, is published bi-monthly in the Nichi Bei Weekly. She is a contract researcher at AncestryProgenealogists, and in 2015, she and her husband founded the genealogy research company, Linda’s Orchard. An active member of the genealogical community, she is passionate about teaching people of all ages to research, document, and share their personal

Join Ada Anagho Brown - President of Roots to Glory Tours for a discussion about reconnecting with your ancestral home on the African continent.  Mrs. Brown and other Root Seekers will share their most recent experiences in Cote D' Ivoire. Ada Anagho Brown is a native of Cameroon whose family moved to the United States in 1975. She is the third child of the current Chief of Ngwo located in the Njikwa subdivision of Cameroon. Over the years, she has dedicated her life to promoting Africa.  For several years she worked with a non-profit American based organization whose mission was to give back to the children of the United States through music and culture. For the past five years, she has organized trips to Cameroon, Benin, and Nigeria with African Americans who traced their DNA to to those countries.  In 2012 she launched Roots to Glory Tours. Roots to Glory Tours is a company dedicated to “Bridging the Gap” between the United States and Africa.     www.rootstoglory.com

  For 21,609 young African American men who called North Carolina home, the First World War meant leaving families and familiar Tar Heel communities. The military service and sacrifice of those tens of thousands of black North Carolinians, however, are not well known among historians or the public. Their contributions, individually and collectively, have been generally ignored, simplistically rendered, represented by only a few, hidden away in disparate and scattered sources, or carried to the grave without articulation or preservation. The war’s centennial offers an opportunity to examine that void and to highlight the collective service black North Carolinians rendered. Janet G. Hudson is a historian, two-time winner of the Stephen L. Dalton Distinguished Teacher Award, and author of the prize-winning book, Entangled by White Supremacy: Reform in World War I-era South Carolina. Her project, Black Soldiers Mattered, is an online digital humanities project that explores African American soldiers from No

In 1838, Georgetown University and the Maryland Jesuits sold nearly 300 enslaved men, women and children to sugar plantations in southern Louisiana in orderto recuse the college from bankruptcy.  Until late 2015, Georgetown University folklore said that all of them quickly succumbed to fever in the malodorous swamp world of Louisiana, leaving no trace and no descendants.   But this wasn’t true. The Georgetown Memory Project was founded in November 2015 to discover what really happened to the Georgetown slaves sold in 1838.  The GMP was founded by Georgetown alumni, and receives no financial assistance whatsoever from Georgetown University or the Maryland Jesuits. To date, the Georgetown Memory Project has discovered that 206 of the Georgetown slaves were transported to Louisiana in 1838, while 91 more were left behind in Maryland.  In addition, the GMP has identified, located and verified more than 6,178 of their direct descendants (living and deceased).  This is their story. Richard J. Cellini, Esq. i

Examine the genealogical resources to trace your Puerto Rican Ancestors. Dr. Ellen Fernandez-Sacco is an independent scholar with over 14 years of experience as a genealogist. An expert in Puerto Rican genealogy, she works to increase access to information on enslaved and Indigenous ancestors. She is past president of the California Genealogical Society and a panelist on Black ProGen Live. Dr. Fernandez-Sacco seeks to expand knowledge of connections to the Caribbean through her blog. Her most recent post on Juan de la Rosa uses various resources to reconstruct context and the families connected to an enslaved ancestor to make their networks more visible. latinogenealogyandbeyond.com

Examine the genealogical resources to trace your Puerto Rican Ancestors. Dr. Ellen Fernandez-Sacco is an independent scholar with over 14 years of experience as a genealogist. An expert in Puerto Rican genealogy, she works to increase access to information on enslaved and Indigenous ancestors. She is past president of the California Genealogical Society and a panelist on Black ProGen Live. Dr. Fernandez-Sacco seeks to expand knowledge of connections to the Caribbean through her blog. Her most recent post on Juan de la Rosa uses various resources to reconstruct context and the families connected to an enslaved ancestor to make their networks more visible. latinogenealogyandbeyond.com

  Lynn Rainville is the Acting Dean of Sweet Briar College, where she also directs the Tusculum Institute for Public History. Although her PhD is in Near Eastern archaeology, she has spent the last two decades studying historic American cemeteries, segregated schools, enslaved communities, poor farms, and World War I. She is the author of several books, includingthe recently released Virginia and the Great War (2018), Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia (2014), and the forthcoming book, Invisible Founders: How Two Centuries of African American Labor Transformed a Plantation into a College (2019). For more information: www.lynnrainville.org.

Mitzi Perdue will provide tips, techniques and checklists to help families thrive.  One of the most important parts of this has to do with knowing your family’s stories.  We are the stories we tell ourselves, and if we don’t know our family stories, it’s in its own way, a little like having Alzheimer’s Disease. Without memories we lose one  of the most basic factors that makes us us.  Mitzi Perdue holds degrees from Harvard University and George Washington University, is a past president of the 35,000 member American Agri-Women and was one of the U.S. Delegates to the United Nations Conference on Women in Nairobi. She currently writes for the Academy of Women’s Health, and GEN, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. Most recently, she’s authored HOW TO MAKE YOUR FAMILY BUSINESS LAST, Techniques, Advice, Checklists and Resources for Keeping the Family Business in the Family. She’s also the author of TOUGH MAN, TENDER CHICKEN, Business and Life Lessons from Frank Perdue  The book made #5 on Amazon’s Bu

By Any Other Name: An Exploration of Afro-Amerindian Heritage is a documentary film that discusses the interactions between Africans and American Indians from in the United States, with an emphasis on the state of Georgia in the 18th through the 20th Centuries. Steven D. Gayle is a filmmaker and educator originally from Philadelphia, PA now residing in the Atlanta area.  Steven earned his Bachelor’s in History Education from The University of North Carolina at Pembroke and a Master of Arts in Media and Communications from Norfolk State University. He is currently pursuing his PhD in International Conflict Management at Kennesaw State University. He has worked in the educational and media production fields for nearly a decade and is constantly seeking new ways to incorporate the two disciplines in different formats. In 2011 he co-produced, co-Wrote and directed the feature-length documentary about the musical history of Hampton Roads Virginia entitled, "7 City Legacy,"  which is now in the College of William

The O'Kelleys will discuss building bridges and healing the divide in the racial culture of America. They are an example that the horrible system from the past of slavery doesn’t have to linger into hate or dislike between races today. Many Americans share DNA of mixed ancestry.  We must come together as a nation understanding that we really are all family! Joyce Ann Huston from St. Louis, MO is a vocalist, trumpeter & genealogist enthusiast that began following a presentation on her family tree at the Las Vegas O’Kelley Family Reunion she hosted in 1991 where she resided for 25 years. She always loved hearing family stories from the elders & attending reunions. Ms. Huston was successful in finding one of her white slaveowner descendant lines whom they share DNA & embrace each other as family. In 2017, they appeared on St. Louis’ NBC News, in the Post-Dispatch & have appeared on multiple media outlets. Argie Hoskins-Shumway b. in 1935, resides in Provo, UT. She’s done extensive genealogical

This show will focus on the value of researching enslaved ancestors, free people of color and identifying the slaveholders in tax records in an Urban community such as Baltimore in the early 19th century. Donna Tyler Hollie received an MA and a Ph.D. in  History. After retirement as an administrator with the Baltimore City Department of Social Services, she served for thirteen years as professor of History and Chair of the Social Science Department at Sojourner-Douglass College.  She has contributed articles to a variety of historical and genealogical journals. In June 2009, she published African Americans of Fauquier County Virginia. Her most recent work, Through The Tax Assessor’s Eyes: Enslaved People, Free Blacks and Slaveholders in Early Nineteenth Century Baltimore, was published in November 2017. Current projects include an article on John W. Locks, a nineteenth century African American prominent in Baltimore’s religious, economic and political arena.     Noreen J Goodson was born and raised in Balt