Much love and birthday wishes today to Delorise Annrie Gines of Kansas City, Missouri. She’s the youngest child of William Edward Gines (1898-1955) and Annie Florida Corrine Long (1902-1986). And she’s my mother’s sister.

It was Aunt “Dee” who got me started on genealogy in a serious way. In 2003, for Christmas, she published the “2004 Gines Family Calendar.” She included names and birthdays of our ancestors, some of whom I had never heard of. That spurred me to get serious about genealogy. I still consult her about Gines, Long, and Johnson family history.

Although Aunt Dee is less than 15 years older than me, I’ve always considered her one person whose wisdom I can count on. She’s the Kansas City relative that I’m closest to.

She was born at home while my mother and her brother Kenneth waited outside on the front porch. But Mom peeked in and actually witnessed the birth. Like most of her siblings before her, Dee attended Central High School in Kansas City, and then like her sister, my mother, Delorise attended Lincoln University in Jefferson City Missouri graduating in 1963. She majored in secondary English education. But upon graduation she couldn’t find a teaching job, ended up working and learners department store as a display clerk and as one of the most highly educated elevator operators anywhere in the country. She went from there to Hallmark as a cost accountant, and then after several years to the welfare department. About six months after starting at the welfare department she got a call from her former high school English teacher. There was an opening for a primary school teacher. On Dolores recertified in primary education and took the job. Later she earned a master’s degree at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, and completed the course work for her doctorate. She worked as an educational consultant to the US Department of Education and ran a statewide program in reading for nonpublic schools. Altogether, Aunt Delorise spent more than 26 years in education. Later she was business manager for her church, Paseo Baptist Church in Kansas City.

She is devoted to the love of the Lord and has run ministries for couples to bring God into their relationships. And now she’s a published author — – the first in the family to complete a book. Her book, Just Wait, God is Working It Out! has sold very very well. She’s got two more on the way.

Delorise Gines has about 21 nieces and nephews and that many and more great nieces and nephews. She’s very active in her church and for years was a driving force in her sorority, AKA, having served a term as Midwestern Regional director.

She’s always been energetic and not afraid to go out on a limb when necessary. My brother found that out the hard way when Aunt Delorise was babysitting us one day in the 1960s. My brother had done something and Aunt Delorise had summoned him. Instead of coming to her, he ran. She ran after him. He climbed a tree to get away from her; much to his surprise, Aunt Delorise, then 25 years old, followed up the tree!

Wise, loving, generous, witty, devout, vivacious, determined, and youthful: these are the words that describe Delorise Annrie Gines. Happy birthday today, Aunt Dee.

A slow September around here… and speaking of slow, both California and Texas have been uncharacteristically slow in responding to my latest request for birth certificates and death certificates. Hopefully something will arrive this weekend and we can get back to some analysis.

I tried Ancestry.com’s newest database of newspaper birth, marriage, and death announcements from selected major newspapers. These papers include the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Constitution, the Hartford Courant, the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Defender. The database supposedly has more than 30 million names from 1851 to 2003. I was fairly satisfied with the ease-of-use of the site, and it’s interesting to see how different newspapers have over time treated birth, marriage, and death announcements. I must report, however, that I found no specific information relevant to my research; that’s in part due to the limited coverage of the database. Hopefully it will be expanded at in the near future.

No doubt many readers have not heard of the Chicago Defender. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

The Chicago Defender was the United States’ most influential black weekly newspaper by the beginning of World War I. The Defender was founded on May 5, 1905 by Robert S. Abbott with an investment of 25 cents and a press run of 300 copies. The first issues, which were created on the kitchen table of his landlord’s apartment, were four-page, six-column handbills and filled with news gathered by Abbott, as well as clippings from other, more established newspapers.

By 1910, Abbott was in a position to hire a full time employee and the Defender began to attain a national reputation. Using the yellow journalism techniques from other papers, the Defender began to attack racial injustice. The paper’s circulation was helped by Pullman porters and entertainers who distributed the newspaper south of the Mason-Dixon line. By 1917, more than two-thirds of the paper’s readership was outside of Chicago. It was the first black paper with a circulation over 100,000 and it is believed that as many as half a million people read the newspaper each week.

In the late teens, the Defender campaigned for blacks to migrate from the South to the North and was highly successful, tripling Chicago’s black population in just three years from 1916-1918. The Defender also attracted the writing talents of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.

And as I looked through the birth, marriage, and death announcements, I noticed that in the early years, the defender covered these events as they related to upperclass blacks in cities around the country. There are some very interesting stuff there. By the way, the Defender has gone through several changes of ownership and several changes in style and content. For my money the historical Defender was a much better organ than the current Defender.

A high school classmate cousin? That wouldn’t be so startling for a lot of people, but I went to high school a couple of thousand miles from where any of my then-known cousins lived. Of course that was also a long time before I knew anything about genealogy. A couple of years ago, I discovered that a high school classmate of mine is married to a woman who sings in the church choir where I attend. We reconnected and I see him from time to time. I saw him last Sunday and for the first time it occurred to me that his surname exists in my genealogy file. I asked him a couple of preliminary questions and now I suspect he is one of my Bowie cousins. A little more work to do on this one; stay tuned.

Melvin Leslie John Miller, 90, of Los Angeles will be buried today in that city. He died Monday, September 18, 2006. He was born in Tyler, Smith County, Texas in 1916, the seventh child of Mose and Anna Miller. His siblings were Joe, Rube, Annie, Noble, Wilbert, and Gladys. As a small child he was raised by his aunt and uncle Will and Annie Square of Tyler, Texas. Melvin Miller married Lucy Ann Hutcherson in Tyler. Lucy died giving birth to twin boys, one of whom died at birth. The surviving twin, Louis Mannuel Miller, is the father of my sister-in-law Creola Lee Miller Manson of San Jose, California.

Born in poverty, Melvin Miller made a success of himself and for his family. He was much beloved by his five grandchildren and his great-grandchildren.

Winning the lottery… finding a long-lost love… discovering that you are a real princess: all fairy tales, right? Well, as the song says, “fairy tales can come true; it can happen to you…” Maybe not you, but for Sarah Culberson, it happened. Read the story here.

The September 17, 2006, issue of Parade Magazine asks in its lead article, “If you had a one day to spend with someone who’s gone… who would it be? What would you do?” The article by New York Times best-selling author Mitch Albom, is written from the frame of reference of having one more day to spend with a deceased, beloved family member. Everyone it seems has a loved one they’d like to see just one more time.

But what if you could choose to spend one day with someone, anyone, on your family tree? Who would that be? Why?

Like most people, I would find this a very difficult question, because there are so many ancestors I would love to see if not for a day, at least for an hour. But if I had to choose just one, it would have to be James Bowie, a free man of color in Louisiana in the early 19th century. As I’ve mentioned before, my cousin Steven Bowie has done substantial research on this ancestor of ours, the results of which may be found at the site linked here. But Steve has been unable to pinpoint James Bowie’s paternity. So that would be the first question I would ask James Bowie. Naturally I’d want to know from him about his wife, Chaney, and about life as a free man of color in Louisiana during the 1800s. And then I would tell him about the remarkable lives of his many, many descendants.

As an alternative, I’d pick Charlotte Manson, the earliest named direct ancestor I can find in the Manson line.

Charlotte Manson was born either in the Carolinas or in Georgia near the end of the 18th century. Space most likely, she was the.daughter of Scots-Irish immigrants to in America. I have been unable to trace the family past Charlotte. I’ve written about Charlotte before. She was the mother of Jane Manson, and the grandmother of Matilda Manson, who is my third great-grandmother. Showing my lack of imagination, but my desperate genealogical curiosity, I would ask Charlotte a lot of obvious questions. First, I wanna know who her parents where and when they came to America. Could she have been the daughter of George Manson of Savanna, who’s listed in the 1793 tax rolls of Chatham County, Georgia? Or perhaps her father was either James, John, or William Manson, all of whom appear in the 1799 tax lists in Jefferson County, Georgia?

The 1790 federal census of South Carolina enumerated space Mary, George, John, Thomas, and William Manson, all of whom could be the parents of Charlotte Manson. One Wright Manson turns up in the 1800 census of South Carolina. Charlotte might have been the offspring of one of the several Mansons who arrived in Savanna in September of 1775 aboard the Georgia Packet. These immigrants included Barbara, Elizabeth, and Thomas Manson. That same month ship called the Marlborough also docked in Savanna, with at least three Mansons onboard. So I’d want to know from Charlotte which of these folks she’s related to.

Then I’d have to ask Charlotte a rather indelicate question: who was the father of her daughter Jane?

Of course I’d also ask Charlotte about life in 19th-century Georgia. And I would tell her all about the incredible people who are her many descendants. She would be amazed and no doubt proud to learn of the historical results of her apparently out of wedlock relationship with a man described in court records simply as being “of the Creole or Indian race.”

In the 1920′s, Hattie Bryant and several of her children lived here. Jessie Bowie and her brother Elias Bowie, as well Herman Walker and Evaline lived here. It was in the Bryan family for a very long time. No running water, no indoor toilet; and until relatively recently, no street adress. Ahhh, the 20th century!

Of the 14 children of the Rev. James William Long (1866-1945) and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Liza Jane Johnson Long (1870-1946), only four were girls. the eldest girl, Christina Alta Long, born in 1898, was the seventh child overall. Her sisters were Rosetta Bell Long, born 1900; Annie Florida Corrine Long, born 1902; and Mary Beatrice Long, born in 1905. The Long sisters were born in that order; after Mary’s birth not another girl was born to the family.

“Tina” married Earl Neal in 1916. They had three children, three grandchildren, and a number of great grandchildren. Tina died at age 102, on September 14, 2000.

“Rosie” never married but had a companion of over 50 years. I don’t know much about him, except that his name was “RJ.” Late in life, Rosie became an ordained minister and taught herself to play the piano. She died on May 17, 1994 at age 94.

The third Long daughter, went by her second name, Florida, and was usually known as “Flo.” Pretty but shy, Flo dreamed of being a dancer, an ambition that did not sit well with her Baptist preacher father. She met the handsome easy-going, William Edward Gines in about 1925. He had come to Kansas City from Shreveport, Louisiana. They had six children, in addition to “Eddie’s” daughter, Grace. Of all Long sisters, Flo has the most descendants, with 20 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren, and at least three great great grandchildren. She died in 1986, just months before the death of her son Perry.

The great sadness in the Long sisters’ lives came in 1921 with the death of their youngest sister, Mary. She died of tuberculosis at age 16.

The Long sisters: Tina, Flo, and Rosie (1977).

One of the first issues we dealt with in our research was why Matilda Manson uprooted her son from Hootenville, Upson County, Georgia, in 1884, and moved to Rockdale, Milam County, Texas. You recall that the evidence is pretty strong that she left Georgia because George Preston Birdsong, the apparent father of her son Otis, moved to Texas with his brother Albert. The question left unanswered is why George and Albert Birdsong left Georgia for Texas. That was the question which took me to Upson County, Georgia, in May of 2005. That trip didn’t result in an answer to that question.

But consider the following as the basis for a hypothesis that needs researching: George Preston Birdsong’s father, known as Larry, was dead. The Civil War was over, and with it a way of life that the Birdsong family had enjoyed. There is some evidence that Larry’s widow Susan had difficulty maintaining the family’s property in Upson County. The 1880 census reveals that in Milam County, Texas, there was a family named Thweatt. There is some evidence that these Thweatts were connected to Susan Thweatt Birdsong’s family. The hypothesis is that George and Albert went to Texas to join their cousins. We’ll pursue this hypothesis and see how far we get.

Spotted this piece from Reuters when I logged on this morning:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google News is getting a sense of the past to balance out its relentless focus on the present.

Google Inc. has added the ability to search through more than 200 years of historical newspaper archives alongside the latest contemporary information now available on Google News, the market-leading Web search firm said on Tuesday.

“The goal of the service is to allow users to explore history as it unfolded,” said Anurag Acharya, a top Google engineer who helped develop the news archive search.

“Users can see how viewpoints changed over time for events, for ideas and for people,” said Acharya, who also built the Google Scholar service for academic researchers and once was a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Read the rest of the story here.

I’ll check it out and see what it’s all about!

The Gilberts

I was told quite some time ago, long before I had started on family history as a serious endeavor, that my mother’s great-grandmother was an Indian. When I started a serious quest for a family history a few years ago, I was given to understand that the great-grandmother who “was an Indian” most likely was a woman named Sarah Gilbert. But for the longest time I couldn’t find Sarah Gilbert. About 2 1/2 years ago, as I was looking for Ezekiel Johnson, I found Sarah Gilbert. According to the records of Clay County Missouri, Ezekiel Johnson and Sarah Gilbert were married on September 5, 1867. The 1880 census for Jackson County, Missouri, found Ezekiel and Sarah living in Kansas City, with their children Mary, 11; Henry, 10; Richard, 8; Ambrose (or Amos), 6; Robert, 4; and Mattie, 2. The oldest child Mary, was Mary Elizabeth Liza Jane Johnson, who in 1888 married James William Long, and eventually became my mother’s grandmother.

The 1880 census describes Sarah as 31 years old and born in Missouri. The 1880 census, along with the 1867 marriage records, are the only verifiable evidence of Sarah Gilbert Johnson that I can find. I’ve search for her in Clay County Missouri, since that is where the marriage took place. A few families named Gilbert lived in Clay County starting in about 1860, census records show. But none are named Sarah and none match Sarah’s demographics. And there is no way to connect any of the Gilberts in Clay County to Sarah Gilbert. So next I looked in Platte County, the next county south of Clay and north of Kansas City. There are a number of Gilberts in Platte County from the 1840s on. But again none match the demographics of our Sarah Gilbert. A possible match is 16 year-old Sarah Gilbert found in Ridgeley, Platte County, in 1860. But I’m not convinced that this is our Sarah Gilbert either.

I am intrigued, however, by something found in the pre-1910 Missouri State birth and death records database. According to that source, a child named Mildred Banks was born in Platte County on July 23, 1883. Her father’s name was Philip Banks and her mother’s maiden name was Rachel Gilbert. Philip is described as 60 years old, and his wife Rachel. By the time of the 1880 census, Philip and Rachel are living in Kansas City with their children Grover 29; Milly,15; Dolly, 14; and Bessie, 10. But after that, we pretty much lose track of the Banks family. Certainly there are no more clues which link Rachel Gilbert Banks to Sarah Gilbert Johnson. We have no confirmed parents for Sarah Gilbert and no confirmed siblings. So, the Gilberts are on the list of lost families.