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...

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...

This post was originally meant to be created little over a month ago but it's still topical given my previous post. The title of this article is Cape Verdean Creole for "Heritage of a Creole" and it's directly related to today's topic. Today I'll be writing about my great great grandfather Lourenço dos Santos, aka Lawrence Santos Sr. and my ongoing journey to understand him and my family history. Lourenço  dos Santos (Lawrence Santos Sr.), ca. 1930s There's a few things that we can attribute to Lourenço with certainty:  - he was born on the island of Fogo in Cabo Verde - he immigrated to the United States and married Myrtle Boston in 1923 and settled in Philadelphia - he died at some point in the mid to late 1940s. All other information is unconfirmed and I am actively in the process of researching. The information I provide in this post could be incorrect but it possibly aligns with my family history.  Some of the oral history I was relayed to...

Today in 1904, one of the most contentious members of my family tree was born. She would also be wedded on this day in 1923. That person is one of my paternal great great grandmothers, Myrtle Santos, nee Boston.  Myrtle Boston (1904-1977), ca 1940s                                    Myrtle's life is a classic example of the clash between family lore, documentation and genetic testing. What I know for certain that Myrtle was the mother of my paternal great grandfather, Lawrence Santos Jr . Everything else is contested. I'll start this post off with the lore I was given to by my relatives that I reconnected with. According to my aunt and cousins, my great grandfather described our family history as such: Myrtle Boston was an Afro-Puerto Rican either born in Santurce, Puerto Rico herself or her father originated from there. Her family somehow got to the US and assimilated into African-Amer...

Another ancestral anniversary today! It's the 101st birthday of my great grandfather Lawrence Santos Jr. His story is pretty interesting. Finding my great grandfather was a culmination of years of curiosity, oral history, research and genetic testing. When I was about 6 or 7 years old, my paternal grandmother Victoria, informed me that my biological great grandfather was "a darkskin man who was Portuguese and Puerto Rican". At the time, I didn't quite understand what she meant, but I accepted it as fact. My grandmother was raised by a man named Marvin Smith and her mother Elizabeth Lee Young. My grandmother was the oldest and Elizabeth had 8 more children after her. My grandma claimed to have met her biological father in the 90s. But that was all I knew of him for the longest. Over the course of my childhood, I just assumed I was African American, Afro-Puerto Rican and maybe Portugese but the latter always was a mystery to me. I didn't understand how Blackness and...