Dan is about 28 years old and bi-racial. His dad's side is African American and his mom's side is "white". He knew very little about his family and was particularly interested in any slave connection there might be. Off I went on a journey of learning - for both Dan AND me.
Though Dan's dad's family currently lives in the Toledo area his family has roots in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Virginia and South Carolina. His mom's family settled near me in Monroe County, Ohio. Due to my living near Monroe County and to the abundance of information available on "white" families his mom's family proved fairly easy to research and before long I had a stack of info and records on my desk.
The search for Dan's "black" family wasn't so easy. In all my years of helping others with their family trees and teaching classes on it I'd only been asked once or twice for help by a black person who was researching their roots - and my help was limited to trying to point them in the right direction. I found out just how hard and frustrating it is for people of color to find their families.
I did manage to get Dan's lines back to the 1870 census - the first census where slaves were free and counted by name - in Kentucky and in Indiana, but it was a struggle. It was also a wonderful learning experience for me and really tested my knowledge........and my patience.
I did find one website that will be a real help in the near future - it's a new project being undertaken by the Virginia Historical Society called Unknown No Longer. They are sifting through records looking for slave lists and are creating a database with all the slave names in it that will be searchable by name, location, record type, etc. Not only will it list the slaves in Virginia, but if the owner lived in Virginia at any time and moved and took his slaves with him to another state - they'll also be in the database - so, eventually, I might be able to find out more info on Dan's African American families.
For now, I've got a huge pile of documents and records I need to organize and get in a binder. It's time to introduce Dan to his family. :-)
