The Freedman Bank Records are sometimes useful to genealogy researchers and are available through FamilySearch, some online library collections, and other genealogy databases.
Here is my experience with them:
First, after emancipation from slavery, citizens who had been enslaved were allowed to own bank accounts for the first time. However, at this time not all ex-slaves had names they liked. Some continued to use a surname of their latest slave-owner, for example, but they were free to rename themselves. As a result, a number of relatives might choose different surnames. And some would rename themselves first and last. And some tried on a surname and didn't like it and changed it again. Changing names did not require a legal process.
Came the day that an African American client of mine, who really only needed his mother's death certificate, and learned the oral history he had been given was not correct when he read it, asked me to go a little further. Sure, that his mother's name was highly unusual, I gave it a search in Freedman Bank and because the name was so unusual, I was lead to that his mother had been named after her ex-slave grandmother. (From there I proofed as much as possible.) This was perhaps the fastest genealogy search I ever had that lead to the enslaved ancestor.
Another factor to consider is that the Freedman Bank didn't last too long. According to FamilySearch, The Freedman's Savings and Trust company failed in 1874 and many lost their savings.
Additionally, I found surnames that were German or otherwise not distinctly African-American or of English origins in this database. Some people who were not ex-slaves or African American did deposit in Freedman Bank. The decision to have an account was probably as easy as that they lived near a branch or believed in the cause. So these are BANK RECORDS and not everyone in the database was ever a slave.
And consider that ex-slaves may have deposited in one place and then moved.
Overall, I don't think this database is helpful to most people but it can't be skipped in case it is!
C 2019 Ancestry Worship Genealogy Blogspot
28 May 2019
18 May 2019
HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW
I loved this book because it's about art as communication, in this case the use of quilts to signal to slaves that wanted to run for their freedom that the time was ripe. Perhaps a house slave who knew when the plantation owners would be leaving on a trip would lay a quilt out - as the cover picture shows - as a sign. More, the DESIGN of the quilt could be memorized and actually be a map or series of directions for the escaping slaves to follow. Very clever!
I feel this book is a must read for anyone interested in American history or African-American history.
C Ancestry Worship Genealogy All Rights Reserved
11 May 2019
QUILTS as FAMILY HISTORY
EXCERPT from Jodi Thomas' fiction book 'Mornings on Main' which takes place in a small farming adjacent town in Texas.
Page 323 of paperback
'Jillian couldn't stop studying the history of the town written in stitches. Embroidered in flower bouquets and black shadows draped over headstones ... Pink roses of births and lacy ivy for deaths...'
REVIEW:
I don't normally read books of the romance genre but this book came into my life on a rainy day and I decided to give it a try. Characters that at first seemed implausible - especially as a cast - grew on me and slowly so that I found the ending satisfying. Character Gram is an elderly woman with Alzheimer's who also owns a quilting shop. Character Jillian is a woman born to a drifter who did his duty by her and then left her to drift on her own. Of course a woman with no roots, no friends, and no family needs a town where it seems every family has a long history and a man who cannot by heritage or integrity leave it.
Of genealogy interest is that the Jillian character is in search of her father and story of her birth. Gram is able to tell her, amidst memory lapses, that her mother was a married woman who left town but once lived on a farm nearby. Now as a genealogist, as I was reading this book I wanted to tell the characters how to find out more. Jillian's love interest finds a newspaper article about her father who was in town for the rodeo and he's able to verify a brief employment with a local company that had employee records.
The stories that serve as the basis for quilts left behind in the store helps create the small town in Texas atmosphere.
Which reminds me that YOU might just have a story quilt in your attic.
C 2019 Ancestry Worship Genealogy All Rights Reserved
Page 323 of paperback
'Jillian couldn't stop studying the history of the town written in stitches. Embroidered in flower bouquets and black shadows draped over headstones ... Pink roses of births and lacy ivy for deaths...'
REVIEW:
I don't normally read books of the romance genre but this book came into my life on a rainy day and I decided to give it a try. Characters that at first seemed implausible - especially as a cast - grew on me and slowly so that I found the ending satisfying. Character Gram is an elderly woman with Alzheimer's who also owns a quilting shop. Character Jillian is a woman born to a drifter who did his duty by her and then left her to drift on her own. Of course a woman with no roots, no friends, and no family needs a town where it seems every family has a long history and a man who cannot by heritage or integrity leave it.
Of genealogy interest is that the Jillian character is in search of her father and story of her birth. Gram is able to tell her, amidst memory lapses, that her mother was a married woman who left town but once lived on a farm nearby. Now as a genealogist, as I was reading this book I wanted to tell the characters how to find out more. Jillian's love interest finds a newspaper article about her father who was in town for the rodeo and he's able to verify a brief employment with a local company that had employee records.
The stories that serve as the basis for quilts left behind in the store helps create the small town in Texas atmosphere.
Which reminds me that YOU might just have a story quilt in your attic.
C 2019 Ancestry Worship Genealogy All Rights Reserved
07 May 2019
"BLACK BLOOD" ALREADY IN ROYAL FAMILY ? DIANA's INDIA HERITAGE
Baby Boy Sussex has been born and of course the world awaits that first photo.
WASHINGTON POST : BRITAIN'S BLACK QUEEN : Will Meghan Markle ... article by Deneen L. Brown
EXCERPT: Some historians suspect that Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, who bore the King 15 children, was of African descent. Historian Mario De Valdes y Cocom argues that Queen Charlotte was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family Alfonso III and his concubine, Ouruana, a black Moor.
In the 13th century, " Alfonso III of Portugal conquered a little town named Faro from the Moors," said Valdes, a researcher on the 1996 FRONTLINE PBS documentary, "Secret Daughter." He demanded the governor's daughter as a paramour. He had three children with her."
Read the full article at the link. It's very interesting.
And then this older article:
ABROAD IN THE YARD: PRINCE WILLIAM DNA - INDIAN ANCESTRY
This article appeared in an Ancestry (The genealogy site) article.
Prince William will be the first British King with proven ancestry from India, a DNA test has revealed. His rare mitochondrial DNA comes from his 5 X great grandmother, "a dark-skinned native of Bombay."
EXCERPT: (Prince William's) genetic link to India was proven by saliva samples from relatives who share his direct maternal (mother Diana's) lineage to Eliza Kewark. She lived at the start of the 19th century in western India, "Without benefit of matrimony," with his Scottish ancestor Theodore Forbes, an East India Company merchant. ...
Geneticist Dr. Jim Wilson of BritainsDNA, who carried out the tests, found that Eliza's descendants had an incredibly rare tpe of mtDNA (haplogroup R30b), so far recorded in only 14 other people - 13 from India and one from Nepal. Dr. Wilson said that the mtDNA results, combined with the findings of South Asian DNA in the rest of the genome, meant that the evidence of Prince William's Indian heritage was "unassailable."
NOTE: Eliza had been reported as "Armenian," in other articles.
WASHINGTON POST : BRITAIN'S BLACK QUEEN : Will Meghan Markle ... article by Deneen L. Brown
EXCERPT: Some historians suspect that Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, who bore the King 15 children, was of African descent. Historian Mario De Valdes y Cocom argues that Queen Charlotte was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family Alfonso III and his concubine, Ouruana, a black Moor.
In the 13th century, " Alfonso III of Portugal conquered a little town named Faro from the Moors," said Valdes, a researcher on the 1996 FRONTLINE PBS documentary, "Secret Daughter." He demanded the governor's daughter as a paramour. He had three children with her."
Read the full article at the link. It's very interesting.
And then this older article:
ABROAD IN THE YARD: PRINCE WILLIAM DNA - INDIAN ANCESTRY
This article appeared in an Ancestry (The genealogy site) article.
Prince William will be the first British King with proven ancestry from India, a DNA test has revealed. His rare mitochondrial DNA comes from his 5 X great grandmother, "a dark-skinned native of Bombay."
EXCERPT: (Prince William's) genetic link to India was proven by saliva samples from relatives who share his direct maternal (mother Diana's) lineage to Eliza Kewark. She lived at the start of the 19th century in western India, "Without benefit of matrimony," with his Scottish ancestor Theodore Forbes, an East India Company merchant. ...
Geneticist Dr. Jim Wilson of BritainsDNA, who carried out the tests, found that Eliza's descendants had an incredibly rare tpe of mtDNA (haplogroup R30b), so far recorded in only 14 other people - 13 from India and one from Nepal. Dr. Wilson said that the mtDNA results, combined with the findings of South Asian DNA in the rest of the genome, meant that the evidence of Prince William's Indian heritage was "unassailable."
NOTE: Eliza had been reported as "Armenian," in other articles.
06 May 2019
DNA OF CHRISTIAN CRUSADERS NOT EVIDENT IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES
TECHTIMES : ANCIENT DNA REVEALS CRUSADERS... by Allan Adamson
EXCERPT: Chris Tyler-Smith, a genetics researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and colleagues extracted DNA from the 13th century remains of nine medieval crusaders. The remains were found in a mass burial pit near a crusader castle in Sidon, Lebanon... "We show that all of the Crusaders' pit individuals were males; some were Western Europeans from diverse origins, some were locals (genetically indistinguishable from present day Lebanese), and two individuals were a mixture of European and Near Eastern ancestries, providing direct evidence that the Crusaders admixed with the local population,: the researchers wrote in their study.
And this DAILY MAIL - CRUSADERS MARRIED LOCAL WOMEN - SONS FELL IN BATTLE
EXCERPT: These mixed families were short-lived however, with brutal battles wiping out the offspring and modern-day inhabitants showing no relationship to the Crusaders.... Analysis of DNA extracted from nine skeletons dating back to the 13th century shows the family members often died together in battle from horrific wounds.
****
I'm lucky - and not - to "know" that one of my ancestors was alive in the 1400's.
Trying to prove this, however, is a nightmare. I'm at about 1820 and only back to a GG Grandparent on this old, almost extinct surname. When I imagine my long ago ancestors, I research the history of their time and place - their niche. As this was a wealthy noble, I recently looked at a web site that gave some examples of the kind of clothing he would have worn and tried to imagine if he or any of his family were Crusaders. He was probably an Italian who moved to Central Europe. I'm not a snob about nobility. One of the reasons it's exciting for a researcher to attach to nobility is that there is a greater chance of records and documents having been made and so being able to go back further.
EXCERPT: Chris Tyler-Smith, a genetics researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and colleagues extracted DNA from the 13th century remains of nine medieval crusaders. The remains were found in a mass burial pit near a crusader castle in Sidon, Lebanon... "We show that all of the Crusaders' pit individuals were males; some were Western Europeans from diverse origins, some were locals (genetically indistinguishable from present day Lebanese), and two individuals were a mixture of European and Near Eastern ancestries, providing direct evidence that the Crusaders admixed with the local population,: the researchers wrote in their study.
And this DAILY MAIL - CRUSADERS MARRIED LOCAL WOMEN - SONS FELL IN BATTLE
EXCERPT: These mixed families were short-lived however, with brutal battles wiping out the offspring and modern-day inhabitants showing no relationship to the Crusaders.... Analysis of DNA extracted from nine skeletons dating back to the 13th century shows the family members often died together in battle from horrific wounds.
****
I'm lucky - and not - to "know" that one of my ancestors was alive in the 1400's.
Trying to prove this, however, is a nightmare. I'm at about 1820 and only back to a GG Grandparent on this old, almost extinct surname. When I imagine my long ago ancestors, I research the history of their time and place - their niche. As this was a wealthy noble, I recently looked at a web site that gave some examples of the kind of clothing he would have worn and tried to imagine if he or any of his family were Crusaders. He was probably an Italian who moved to Central Europe. I'm not a snob about nobility. One of the reasons it's exciting for a researcher to attach to nobility is that there is a greater chance of records and documents having been made and so being able to go back further.
04 May 2019
PUERTO RICO GENEALOGY RESEARCH? HUNTER COLLEGE RESOURCES MAY HELP!
CENTROPR HUNTER COLLECTIONS - PUERTO RICO
Search around this site. There is probably more about Puerto Rican arts and culture and important people than average citizens, but it's a start. Hunter College is located in New York City which has had a substantial Puerto Rico-an population. And remember when writing your family history to include rich ethnic and cultural details.
Search around this site. There is probably more about Puerto Rican arts and culture and important people than average citizens, but it's a start. Hunter College is located in New York City which has had a substantial Puerto Rico-an population. And remember when writing your family history to include rich ethnic and cultural details.
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