When I got married, I learned that my husband’s family has family historians that have kept excellent genealogy records. One side of his family can be traced back to the 1600s in Slovakia, and the other side to the 1500s in Italy. In fact, for many years the town in Ohio where my husband’s family lived had an annual celebration. All of the families that came over from Collelongo, the community in southern Italy where many of their relatives had come from in the early 1900s, gathered to celebrate community and to keep the connection to their roots.
Rooted. That is how I would describe my husband’s upbringing. His family was plugged into the town, and multiple generations lived there for years. I am awed by the connection to the past he has. To know where one comes from seems like it would offer a deep understanding of who you are and why you are. I felt jealous, even robbed, and a bit like an orphan in comparison. Until my mid-40s I barely knew who my grandparents were, let alone where an ancestral home might be. But, like many African Americans, I was not alone in my lack of knowledge about my ancestry. On both sides of my family, no one spoke about the past much. We were family, but how the pieces fit seemed unimportant. We all kind of went along calling certain ones Auntie, or Uncle, or Cousin. We were just kin.
However, in 2016, several people on my mother’s side got together and began research of our family history. They revealed their findings at a family reunion. It was your typical African American family reunion – a cookout held at a park, complete with matching T-shirts. It was here that I learned about my great-great-great-great grandmother, an enslaved woman on a Wake County, NC plantation. Her name was Feely. For some reason, finding her made me feel connected/complete/whole in some way.
Being able to trace my ancestry back to the early 1800s is an incredible gift. Although I know I am God’s child, it helps me to feel more rooted and less like an orphan in this world. I have a family. I have a story.