There are some ancestors I have given up any hope of ever seeing in a photograph. So it was with my second great-grandfather, Lewis LeJay of De Soto Parish, Louisiana. He was the husband of Syntrilla Brayboy and they were the parents of Sylvia LeJay. Sylvia married Richard William Gines, and they became my mother’s grandparents.
Researching the LeJays has been the biggest challenge of my genealogical excursion. I have written a number of times about how difficult it has been to find them. See here and here.
A couple of weeks ago, my cousin Karen Burney called with breathless news. She had seen a picture of Lewis LeJay in a book! I just about fell out of my (wheel) chair!
She told me to check a certain search term on Google Books to see the photograph. And I did! As excited as I was to see his picture, I did not at first realize that the circumstances of the picture lay veyr near the core of a roiling controversy about American history. I broach that topic in the next post. But first, the photograph:
Lewis LeJay (left) with Army Capt Francis Scrimzeour Furman, at Land’s End Plantation, De Soto Parish, Louisiana, 1917; ( Photo in C.K. Barrow, J.H. Segars, & R.B. Rosenburg, eds., Black Confederates, Pelican Publishing, 2001)
What’s controversial about this picture? See the next post.
Tags: African-Americans, De Soto Parish, Families, LeJay, Louisiana
February 21st, 2010 at 7:15 am
How wonderful! My favorite genealogical “fantasies” revolve around finding pictures. I can’t wait to read “the REST of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say.
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Awesome picture. You KNOW I’m on tenterhooks! Can’t wait to hear the rest of the story. I hope you don’t mind that I used it in a recent blog post. I probably should have asked first! Sorry! Hope you’re feeling better!