Roots of Cypress: An Afro-Diasporic Familial Tapestry

Happy Mother's Day! Today I want to dedicate a post about the labor Black women have historically been tasked with as caretakers of both their own children and the children of their oppressors. This topic is somewhat sensitive but I feel like it's worth discussing and examining the lives of my maternal ancestors in relation to misogynoir and socioeconomic status. I will give a content warning for discussions of antiblackness, misognyoir, and sexual abuse.  It's well know and well documented that Black women were often domestic laborers who cared for the children of middle and upper class white families. My maternal ancestors were no exception. In fact one of the three pictures of my maternal great great grandmother Anna Beamon , is her with a child she cared for.  The picture is one of the saddest I have of a direct ancestor. Anna, who I know was a strong willed yet fun loving person, looks disaffected. Holding a small white child on her hip, her face in a scowl possibly fr...

After a long hiatus, I've decided to return to writing on here.  Today I want to write a brief article in honor of my great grandfather William Henry Young Sr. aka "Chick", whose 106th birthday is today. In this article I will be alternately referring to him as Chick and William Sr.  William "Chick" Young in his zoot suit, ca. early 1940s Chick was born on March 12, 1920 in the then newly formed Allendale, South Carolina. Some records such as his draft card and his marriage license indicate Orangeburg as his birthplace but genealogical research confirms Allendale as my family's origins. Allendale is a small town within in the county of the same name, located in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. The county was formed in 1920 from the southern parts of Barnwell County and northern parts of Hampton County, making it the youngest county in the state. It is also the least populous and one of the poorest to this date.  Chick was orphaned at a yo...

Family histories can be very complex and shrouded in a lot of mystery and conflicting information. Some family origin stories are embellished or misheard or misremembered. Some are purposely rewritten for one reason or another. We know how common it is for people to falsely claim indigenous American heritage, this happened in my family as well; despite having apparently some kind of genetic relationship with indigenous Americans, I have no well documented evidence of any indigenous North American ancestry and if I do have any, it was likely through some of the free people of color that I descend from.  One of the most intriguing journeys I've been on with my genealogical research is my paternal grandmother's family, particularly her biological father's family. As discussed in previous post, my grandmother Victoria was the daughter of Lawrence Santos Jr , a man of Cape Verdean and allegedly Afro-Puerto Rican descent. When I began doing my genealogical research a few years ag...

Today is the Fourth of July and an ancestral anniversary.  I have a general sense of indifference to the American Independence Day as my ancestors were not free and still are not free and there is no true independence on stolen land. However, today is the 121st birthday of my great great grandmother Bessie Lee Fulton.  Bessie was born on July 4, 1904 somewhere in Ohio, to James Van Fulton and Mamie E. Dantzler, the youngest of two daughters (her older sister being Ollie Bell Fulton). At some point, the Fultons moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina not far from Kings Mountain, North Carolina, where James was born and raised.  Bessie (second row, first on the left) with her first grade class, possibly Spartanburg SC, ca. 1910 Bessie spent her early childhood in South Carolina before moving to West Philadelphia as a teenager with her family in the late 1910s. It was in Philadelphia where she would meet her husband, Frederick Morris Young. They got married on Septe...