Thanksgiving: The perfect time to fill out your Family Tree

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. It's a holiday that's got a lot going for it. Not only is it a chance to spend time with loved ones and family, but it's got football, good food, and an opportunity for lots of good conversation. Because most families will have many different generations in one place on Thanksgiving Day, it's also the perfect opportunity to interview senior family members about your family's history. The oral history that is shared at holidays like this can be used to create or fill out your family tree.

Sharing Family stories is powerful for several reasons.

1) It begins the process of younger family members knowing where they came from.

2) It allows those of us who are genealogy buffs to uncover another story or two which may not have been mentioned at past gatherings, providing further clues in our search for family-related facts.

3) It is a chance to gather clues to lesser known but equally important side of family history: THE FAMILY MEDICAL HISTORY. As we talk about family members who have passed away, often we will get little bits of information which are valuable in predicting health challenges for our living family members.

For example: a few years ago, in my family, someone recalled that one of my grandmother's had a baby sister who had died very young. Upon further questioning we found that she'd died of pneumonia. At that same time, a cousin was going through a period of Illness with her young child, which was eventually diagnosed as cystic fibrosis-- a rare disease among African Americans. But piecing together, the story of my grandmother's sister caused someone else to remember another earlier ancestor who lost three children to pneumonia. We realized that the cystic fibrosis gene had been showing up in our family every generation or two for many, many generations--the way that many other African American Families have the Sickle Cell trait.

A friend and former co-worker of mine named Karen Pallarito wrote an article which was picked up by FORBES, among others, that suggests that we all add family health history questions to our after-dinner conversation at Thanksgiving. Pallarito suggests that important information can be gleaned on family tendencies toward high cholesterol, diabetes, cancer and heart attack as well as chronic childhood diseases and birth defects.

She pointed out that U.S. health officials are urging us to ask questions: not just about relationships and life stories, but about causes of death and major health challenges. It could have a direct impact on our own health. Everybody, should begin tracing their medical roots this holiday season. Asking relatives to help fill in the blanks of your family medical history could be one of the most important things you do to predict your risk for developing such chronic conditions as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer, as Pallarito reported.

This concept was covered a couple of years ago in Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/ but it can never be repeated enough.

So after dinner find out how your great-grand father died ...and while you are at it, be sure to get another civil rights story from your aunt, and another good war story from your favorite uncle.

See the entire story at the link below:

http://news.healingwell.com/index.php?p=news1&id=522236

My daughter Chelsea's Family Report

Part of the fun of this genealogy stuff is getting to share it with your kids. My wife Kelly and I were thrilled last week when our daughter, Chelsea, was assigned the task of interviewing us for a report on her family and culture. When the dust cleared, Chelsea had produced a 2-page report that was packed with all kinds of information...probably more than her teacher had bargained for... and we were just getting started!

With Chelsea's permission, I'm reproducing it here because quite a bit of it repeats the History of Grandma Mandi...Oral History....PRICELESS!

Cross your fingers that she gets an A+
_____________________________________________________

11-15-06

Chelsea Williams

Rm 202, Ms Conley Dunbar

My Family History and Culture

1. Does your name have any special meaning?

My name was given to me while my parents were in San Francisco, CA in Oct. of 1996, the weekend they learned they were expecting me. My Mom and Dad spent an afternoon at a bookstore near Embarcadero Center researching names and decided to name me Chelsea because one of my Dad's favorite songs is "I don't want to go to Chelsea" By Elvis Costello. and Chelsea is also one my Mom's favorite neighborhoods in New York --because of the art and culture in the area. Chelsea in New York was named after the same area in London that the Costello song was written about. CHELSEA's meaning in Old English is a Port of Ships or a "landing place for ships [on the river] marked with chalk or limestone"

I have two middle names. I was given McCOY because it is my mother's maiden name and my Mom said she thinks it is important to pass along family names because when people ask you about your name it is an opportunity to tell your family story.

My father added Alexandra because he liked the meaning. ALEXANDRA is a feminine form of ALEXANDER (it is from Greek) and means "Defender or Protector of Men"

2. Where are your ancestors from?

My ancestors come from West Africa primarily, and I have ancestors from other places too, including Native Americans (Cherokee, Shawnee and Choctaw) and a few of my ancestors were European (including French, English, Scottish and Irish), also one of my great-great grandmothers was from New Giunea.

3. Did your family migrate to Chicago Illinois from another state?

My family arrived in Illinois by way of four different paths. My mother moved to Chicago when she finished college in 1988 to work for an advertising agency. She met my father here in Chicago. She was born in Ohio and her family has lived there since 1817. Her mother's family is from the south and moved north during the Great Migration in 1919.

My father was born in Chicago but his father was born in western Tennessee . The Williams' moved north in the 1950's from Brownsville, Tennessee. My father's mother's family are also Williams' and they migrated to Chicago by way of New Orleans and Houston, Texas. They have been here for over 100 years.

4. Name something that is a significant part of your culture.

Oral history is a significant part of our culture. Oral history is described as an account of something passed down by word of mouth from one generation to another. People of African descent have always been story tellers and in West Africa the Griot is the repository or keeper of the oral tradition.

Much of what we know today about my mother's family (the Tyler family) is a combination of written, documented history and oral history that was passed from generation to generation. An example of this is the story of my great-great-great-great-grandmother Ann Fowler. The story was passed down that she was brought to Ohio from a small town in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in New York at the age of 5 by a family named the Kelley's in 1817. She grew up, married a man by the name of William McAfee and they had 5 children, one of whom was my great-great-great grandmother Maria McAfee Tyler.

We also know that Ann's mother was captured in West Africa, sold into slavery in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) and then sold again and taken to North America to the slave markets of Rhode Island. She was bought by a family that lived in Connecticut and it was there that she had a child whom they named Ann.

When my mother was a girl not much older than me, she remembered her great uncle telling the story of Ann Fowler. When my mother grew up she used technology to help her authenticate the story of Ann Fowler. She was able to learn of other family members who descend from Ann fowler and used the internet to research my family's history. My mother was able to make a connection with living descendants of the Kelley family who owned my great-great-great-great grandmother and there was a book written about the Kelley family and they mention Ann in the book. It confirms her age, the year she was born and the circumstances under which they became her owners.

Because Ohio was a free-state, once she came to Ohio she was no longer a slave and her children were born free. We are lucky to have a picture of Ann Fowler and I have brought a copy of it to class.

The Tyler family has been written about in Newspapers and recognized in other ways. "The Tylers... have the longest lineage of any black families with roots still in place in Columbus, Ohio," wrote Bob Thomas, in the Columbus Dispatch, on April 3, 1994. A historical marker was dedicated to the Tyler Family Legacy in 2005 and also in 2005 the Ohio Historical Society developed an exhibit based on the history of the Tyler family. It is the featured topic of Ohio's 2007 National History Day Project "Triumph and Tragedy in History. This part of my family History can be found at the website http://www.tylerfamilylegacy.com.

My father's family traces its origins to several family's of former slaves in Haywood County near Brownsville Tennessee. I went to Tennessee with my grandfather just two weeks ago. This part of my family also has a lot of oral history which has been confirmed by historical records.

My great-great-great-great Grandmother from my dad's family was a woman named Mandi Williams. We know that she was born free in Africa some time around 1805. We know that she was the product of a large African family of 13 brothers and sisters, but we do not know where she fell in this family, the exact composition of the family, the surname of this family or in what exact area of Western Africa they lived. We do, however, know that they (and she) were of the Mende Tribe, and that her tribe's name was the source of her own first name. The year of her abduction, transport and sale into slavery was 1821 after the end of the legal slave trade. She was 16 years old.

We have been able to locate her name in the slave records of the Rayners, of Charleston, South Carolina as well as those of the Williams and Thum families in Tennessee. She was listed along with the cattle and livestock of their farms. She told her daughter, Harriet Rayner, and grandson, Dennis Williams, that upon her arrival in America, she was sold in the slave markets of Charleston, South Carolina for $250.00. After the Civil War, Mandi moved to Western Tennessee and took the name Williams after family of one of her former owners. She lived there for 36 years. At the time of the Emancipation, in 1863, Mandi was 58 years old. Mandi Williams died in 1899, in Haywood County near Brownsville Tennessee. She was 94 years old. No known pictures of her survive. This part of my family history can be found at the websites http://www.descendantsofmandi.com and http://www.shortaustinfamilytree.com.

I am thankful that my family continues to pass down our oral history because I know where my family comes from and I am proud of my ancestors and what they endured.

The Short/Austin Family Connection

Many of you know that our family shares several connections with another family which also has it's roots in Haywood County TN. The Short/Austin Family, which produced both Alice Short and Luella Short--who were cousins and the wives of Wash and Dennis Williams respectively, is another old and distinguished family from Western Tennessee. Much like us, they trace their lineage back to a slave woman named Silla (Perscilla) Short (whose life was roughly contemporary with Mandi). You can find their web site at www.shortaustinfamilytree.com. The SAFT web site is absolutely first rate, in fact, The Short/Austin Family Tree was one of 3 finalist out of hundreds nominated for family web site of 2007 by www.BlackWebAwards.com.

The link to the complete list of final nominees is below. The family web site nominees are located at the bottom of the list.

The final Nominee list for the Black Web Awards 2007
http://www.blackwebawards.com/list_of_all_finalists

Visiting this site, holds interest for any African American Family, but because of the connections, it is especially so for members of the Williams-Rivers Family. When you get the chance I highly recommend that you check it out. The site was built and is maintained by Lamont Beauregard, who would qualify as a cousin to many of us because of the connections. Do check it out!!!

The Family Tree is Back

Well I've finally updated the Williams-Rivers Family Tree. Last May (2006) I took down the Family Tree portion of the site due to concerns over personal information contained there about living family members. As the World Wide Web has progressed and gotten more popular, identity theft has become a real concern, and I'd noticed that other sites no longer listed much information on living people.

This realization came at a point when my plate was fairly full, so rather than risk it, I decided to take the tree down, and repost it when I could output a more "private" version of the Family Tree. Well it is done, and now as with most other genealogy sites on the web now, the Descendants of Mandi respects living family members by not sharing personal information.

Just for information sake, I had not received any complaints about anything, but I decided why wait for a problem to occur?

Hope you all enjoy the revised site.

Eric J.