Historian
If you do African American genealogy, you’ve no doubt heard about the “brick wall” of 1870. That’s the year of the first post-Emancipation U.S. federal Census. Before 1870, we have to rely on records from the era of slavery, …
Continue Reading about Using Census Records for Black Family History before 1865
Finding Otho: The Search for Our Enslaved Williams Ancestors, by Kathy Lynne Marshall, officially hits the bookstores today. I wrote the foreword for this book, which is a rare work on black family history in Washington …
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Recently a colleague of mine emailed to ask me, “Do you have any advice re. the request below? Not asking you to do the research, just wondering if you have any tricks?” She was working with a researcher who knew when her …
Continue Reading about Finding Local Black Ancestors: A Genealogy Road Map
