Pembroke Pines, FL, August 13, 2010 --(PR.com)-- Historical Biographer/ Autobiographer Marilyn R. Hill-Sutton today announced the release of The Knight Family Legacy: One Family’s Story published by Outskirts Press. This remarkable true-life story tells the tale of Major John Knight Jr. - a White plantation owner, attorney, and decorated Confederate Civil War veteran and reveals the Knight family’s slave-owning history; Major John Knight’s valor during the Civil War; the forbidden union between him and his mulatto slave, Violet Knight; his decision to leave his estate to Violet and their … [Read more...]

Author Alex Haley, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning Roots: The Saga of an American Family sparked a surge of interest in genealogy in the 1970s, is the subject of a new museum opening today. The Alex Haley House Museum and Interpretive Center is in tiny Henning, Tenn., 45 minutes north of Memphis, and includes the 10-room bungalow that was home to his grandparents, along with a new $1.2 million interpretive center where, fittingly, visitors can research their own roots. The 1919 house where Haley spent many boyhood summers (and where he's now buried), has been open for tours in the past, but … [Read more...]

On Saturday, August 21, South Floridians will have the opportunity to experience an authentic Black culture that can be traced directly back to the enslavement of Africans from the West Coast of Africa. Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah Geechee Nation, and a contingent of Elders from the Gullah Geechee Wisdom Circle; fishermen; cast net and basketmakers; musicians; historians and artists will convene for a great reunion with Africans from the diaspora and our Seminole and Miccosukee brethren. The African American Research Library and Cultural Centered, located in the Rev. Samuel Delevoe … [Read more...]

Lisa Lee has traced her family lineage back to the early days of legal slavery in America. Her fascination with genealogy began in 1970 when, as a 14- year-old girl, she began interviewing her grandparents about family history. The California resident said she believes she is a "born" genealogist and that for each family, one person per generation is "chosen" as the ancestry researcher. "I think the ancestors really do want to be found," she said Saturday in an interview at Harrison Park in Owen Sound. Lee was the keynote speaker at this year's 148th Emancipation Festival, held … [Read more...]

For years, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx could trace his ancestors no further than a mid-19th century slave auction in Moore County. Until Thursday night. That's when he learned that a DNA test reveals he's descended from the Fulani people of northern Nigeria, a tribe of nomads, herdsmen and warriors almost 6,000 miles away. "It's pretty powerful," Foxx said after a presentation of the findings at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture. "It opens a new understanding that I didn't have before." Read more . . . … [Read more...]

For more than 75 years, the descendants of Stephen Tarpley have held family reunions, and this year, over the Fourth of July weekend, more than 270 descendants reunited in Danville, Virginia and dedicated a headstone to their ancestor, buried at Union Hall Baptist Church. Tarpley and his wife, Delaware “Della,” bore 13 children. The reunion in Danville represented five of those children. Tarpley has approximately 1,800 descendents through seven generations, many of them still living in Pittsylvania County. The family alternates between the North and South each year for “food, fun … [Read more...]

Washington, DC (PRWEB) July 20, 2010 If you think ‘Mobile Ancestry’ is another new app … think again! In an old-school move, African Ancestry, the company that pioneered DNA-based ancestry tracing for people of African descent, is going “mobile” by loading up a van, a video camera and one of its co-founders and taking ancestry tracing on a 14-city trek to help African Americans more easily and accurately access their ancestral roots. The first-ever ‘We Are Africa’ Road Tour kicks off on August 1 in New Orleans and culminates on August 19 in New England, hitting 12 cities in … [Read more...]

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today Footnote.com (www.footnote.com) and Lowcountry Africana (www.lowcountryafricana.net) announced the launch of a new collection of historical records from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History containing estate inventories and bills of sale for Colonial and Charleston South Carolina from 1732 to 1872. FamilySearch International donated the copies of the microfilm of the original historical documents. “Research about African American history and genealogy has often been especially difficult because of limited access to primary source … [Read more...]

Every African American family has a history but not every African American family knows much about their family history. Slavery tore black families apart and thus made a continuous history linked with one particular family line very difficult to track. Stories linked to the past are most often oral passed down through generations by family members who are “keepers of the stories”. On my family history journey, I discovered the importance of listening to those old family stories as told by the “keepers”; using the stories as road maps to find my way more and connect the dots of my … [Read more...]

Back when Mamie Locke was growing up in Rankin County, Miss., she had a great aunt who seemed to know the whole family story. Not only could she tell who was who for several generations back but she also remembered where they came from and who they were married to. Combined with some rare surviving plantation records, that long family memory enabled Locke and her clan to do something not many African-Americans can do — trace their history from modern Mississippi to slave-era Alabama — and then even further back to early 1800s Virginia. But beyond that they ran into the same … [Read more...]