The photograph of my second great-grandfather was in a book titled Black Confederates (Pelican Publishing 2001), which its editors and publisher  tout as a compilation of historical accounts, photographs and documents relating to blacks who served with rebel forces in the Civil War.  Lewis LeJay (1835-1921) is described in the book through an account given by Francis Chandler Furman, a Missouri geologist, who says he heard the story in 1970 from his father Greene Chandler Furman, who in turn heard it from his father, Francis Scrimzeuor Furman, who is the white man in military uniform standing next to Lewis LeJay in the photo.

According to the Furmans, Lewis had been born a slave on the plantation of Henry Marshall (1805-1864) in De Soto Parish, Louisiana. Marshall was perhaps the largest landowner in De Soto parish. His major holding was Land’s End plantation.  Marshall was a state senator and signed the Confederate Constitution as well as the Louisiana Ordinance of Secession. In 1858, Marshall’s daughter Mary was wed to Scrimzeour C. Furman, M.D., who was an officer in the first De Soto unit to enter the Civil War.  When Mary died, Dr. Furman married her younger sister, Mattie.  They had three children, a daughter and two sons, one of whom was Francis (“Frank”) Scrimzeour Furman. Frank became a physician like his father.

In 1917, the now-Capt Frank Furman was preparing to go to Camp Beauregard, LA, to become the chief of gas defense.  At Land’s End Plantation, Furman visited with the black servant he knew as “Daddy Lewis.”  Lewis gave the captain some advice about how to handle himself in combat.  Lewis’ knowledge in this area was derived form his experiences in the Civil War as a wagoneer with the Confederate artillery. He was supposedly shot in the shoulder and carried the bullet the rest of his life.  After having been shot and thought to be dead, he drove a wagon laden with gunpowder through Federal lines to supply a rebel company.

So Lewis LeJay was a black Confederate~or was he?  Were there black Confederate fighters or this a revisionist racist idea that’s right up there with Holocaust denial?

A researcher at a Finnish university says that “the role of African-Americans who fought for the Confederacy during  the American Civil War . . . [is] [p]erhaps one of the most silenced topics today in American history, and politically among the most delicate . . . .”  Indeed.

On the one side of the debate are those who categorically reject the notion that any black man fought willingly for the Confederacy.  These individuals generally acknowledge that there were some blacks with Confederate forces, but they contend that these were merely slaves dragged along by their masters.  Those on this side of the debate excoriate  as ignorant, racist, and dishonest anyone who dares to suggest that blacks may have been consensual actors on behalf of the Confederate  states. This group can brook no possibility other than the coercion of slavery as the reason for military action by southern blacks.

On the other side of the debate are those who claim thousands of blacks voluntarily served with Confederate forces; many motivated by affection for their masters and for the South itself.  Many in this camp also point to evidence of “happy slaves” who believed themselves better off with slavery than without it.

So were  there or were there not consensual black actors with Confederate forces? Is it racist to say “yes.”?

Let’s have a look at the evidence.  We will discover first that studies of the topic are sparse.  Some say that’s because there is no evidence worthy of academic study; others say that politics has squelched attempts to get at the truth of this matter.

Most historians agree that the Confederate states from the outset had no intention of recruiting black troops. In this respect, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were in apparent agreement.  Many  historians also agree that a number of enslaved blacks were present in battle zones often as “body servants” to their white masters who had joined the rebel forces.  But things get murky when the matters of black Confederate “volunteers” or formally organized black Confederate units are considered.

The book in which the picture of Lewis LeJay was found was edited by Charles Kelly Barrow, J.H. Segars, and R.B. Rosenburg. Barrow in particular has sought to “set straight” historical accounts of the Civil War and has authored or edited several works about supposed black fighters with the Confederate Army.  In 2002, the Southern Poverty Law Center, regarded as a near-iconic institution among a certain segment of civil rights activists, identified Barrow as holding several positions in the Sons of Confederate Veterans.  SPLC claims that SCV is run by individuals who are members of  “hate groups.”  In Barrow’s case, SPLC cites his membership in an organization called “League of the South.”

But the June 2005 Statement on Racism adopted by  the League of the South states:

We believe that Christianity and social order require that all people, regardless of race, must be equal before the law. We do not believe that the law should be used to persecute, oppress, or favour any race or class.
We believe that the only harmony possible between the races, as between all natural differences among human
beings, begins in submitting to Jesus Christ’s commandment to “love our neighbours as ourselves.” That is the
world we envision and work for.

We believe that the politics of race — baiting whites against blacks and blacks against white has been profitable for
politicians but catastrophic for the South and Southerners.

We believe that all Southerners – black and white – want and need the same things: a safe country for their families,
liberty, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Let’s suppose for a minute that SPLC is “correct” and that Barrow is a racist. Does  that impeach his research on the Civil War?   In other words, can one be simultaneously a serious scholar and a “racist”?  My answer is, “It depends.” One thing it does not depend upon is the content of the view taken by the supposed scholar. Are Palestinian or Israeli academics disqualifed from membership in the community of serious scholars because of their points of view?

But back to the main issue.  In the May 10, 1862 number of Harper’s Weekly, it is reported:

The correspondent of the New York Herald, in one of its late numbers, reports that the rebels had a regiment of mounted negroes, armed with sabres, at Manassas, and that some five hundred Union prisoners taken at Bull Run were escorted to their filthy prison by a regiment of black men.

The image below appeared in Harper’s on January 10, 1863, captioned “Rebel Negro Pickets Seen through a Field Glass.”

A number of African-Americans actively promote the notion there were black Confederate soldiers who have gone unrecognized.  Prominent among them are Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., and Nelson Winbush.  Jordan is an archivist and scholar at the University of Virginia.  He’s written a book called Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia, 1995), which Publishers Weekly called an “exhaustively researched treatise.” Winbush is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Florida.  His grandfather, Louis Napolean Nelson, is said to have served with Company M, 7th Tennessee Cavalry, rising from cook to rifleman to chaplain.

Both Jordan and Winbush are outspoken about the need to tell the whole story about black Confederate troops.  Professor Jordan has been quoted as saying:

“Numerous Afro-Virginians, free blacks and slaves, were genuine Southern loyalists, not as a consequence of white pressure but due to their preferences. They are the Civil War’s forgotten people, yet their existence was more widespread than American history has recorded. Their bones rest in unhonored glory in Southern soil, shrouded by falsehoods, indifference and historians’ censorship.”

University of Virginia Professor Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.

Estimates of blacks who served in Confederate ranks range up to 80,000, although 65,000 seems to be a widely accepted number.

What would motivate a black man to serve the Confederate cause if he were not coerced into doing so?  Perhaps he might think he had a greater chance of survival if the agrarian South survived.  A Northern victory would mean uncertainty, ambiguity, more discomfort.  Or perhaps he might believe that there were rewards for himself and his family to be had from grateful Southern authorities if the Confederacy prevailed. present Or perhaps black Confederates represent an early manifestation of that psychology now described as “Stockholm Syndrome.”

I think there is little historical doubt that blacks served the Confederacy and that such service in many cases extended beyond that of personal valet.  I think there were a variety of motivations.  But two things should be clear: (1) the fact that the world may not have been as tidy as we now would wish it to have been is not an excuse for the exclusion, revision, or distortion of history; and (2) the fact that blacks may have served the Confederacy adds nothing to the emptiness of its moral and constitutional accounts.

What do you think?

Photograph of Prof. Jordan by LuAnn Williams from Spring 2004 Newsletter of the Carter Woodson Institute;

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.

One of the men named Henry Gines (and that’s a whole other story) was married to a woman named Adline Gines.   Wanting to know more about her,  I obtained her death certificate some time ago.   [Her name is spelled "Adline" on her death certificate and I've seen it spelled that wya at least one other place.  On the census records, not surprisingly, it varies from "Adline" to "Adeline" to "Adaline".]

The death certificate states that she was born in Benton, Louisiana on May 10, 1864.  Benton is in Bossier Parish, east of Caddo Parish.  Her parents were from were from Vanceville, between Benton  and Shreveport.  But the thing that caught my eye first was the name of the informant: Bell Wheeler.

About five years ago, I had come across the name of Belle Wheeler in an index of California deaths.  The index indicated that she was from Louisiana, but had died in San Francisco.  The index also included the information that her father’s surname was Thomas and her mother’s surname was Gines.  At the time, it was taking literally years to get death certificates from California, so after awhile I forgot about Belle Wheeler.   When I saw her name on Adeline’s death certificate, my interest in her was re-kindled.

There  were more than a few folks named Belle Wheeler or Belle Thomas in Louisiana.     I eventually found that Belle Thomas had married  Mose Wheeler sometime between 1900 and 1910.  Mose Wheeler died in 1922.  Belle Wheeler turns up a number of times in the Shreveport city directory living at 1146 Crofton Avenue in Shreveport, the same address as Adeline Gines. But the nature of their relationship was not clear.

Recently I found that I could get death certificates from the City and County of San Francisco much faster than from the state.  So I sent $12 to the San Francisco Vital Records office and in about a week, I had Belle Wheeler’s death certificate.  And that’s when things began to get strange.

According to her death certificate, Belle Thomas Wheeler was born on December 25, 1897 and died on January 19, 1954 (sadly of carbon monoxide poisoning from  an improper;y ventilated heater.  The coroner declared it an accident). Her father is said to be Tom Thomas, and her mother . . . Adeline Gines!

I went to find such a family in the census records.  I found one relevant record.  In the 1900 census of St Landry Parish,  the household of Tom Thomas was enumerated thusly:

1900 U.S. Census, St Landry Parish, LA, Household of Tom Thomas

Consider this for a moment.  Tom and Adeline Thomas have been married for eight years in 1900.  Note that Belle Wheeler’s death certificate states that she was born in  December 1897.  Note further that no child named “Belle” appears with this family on the 1900 census. Butwho is Belle Bride and what does “conc”, in the space for marital status, mean?

Well, I alos found in the 1900 census the following record from Concordia Parish:

1900 U.S. Census, Concordia Parish LA, Household of Tom Thomas

Compare these two records. Note that the Concordia Parish record has a person named “Belle” who’s actually a minor and whose name is Belle Thomas. But her birth date doesn’t match the death certificate. It’s off by fourteen years, which doesn’t even seem close enough for “government work.”  And what about the wife/mother’s name: Anna for Adeline?   It’s almost as if these two records ran into each other and each picked some of the other’s stuff before going their separate ways!

On the matter of Belle Thomas’s supposed December 1897 birth, in the 1900 census, I found a Bella Thomas in Plaquemines Parish, born August 1897; but her parents were Joseph and Susan.   I also found a Bell Thomas in Red River Parish, born April 1898; but her parents were King and Sarah. It’s more likely that the informant, said to be Belle’s daughter, got the birth date wrong rather than the parents’ names.

Then I found Belle Wheeler on the 1910 census in Bossier, then in 1920 and 1930 in Caddo Parish.  But this Belle Wheeler was born in about 1890.  This Belle Wheeler was married to Mose Wheeler.  And this is the Belle Wheeler who lived at Adeline Gines’ address.  So this is the Belle Wheeler who signed Adline Gines’ death certificate and this is the Belle Wheeler whose mother was said to be Adline Gines.

Now if Adline Gines was the mother of Belle Wheeler who was born in about 1890, when did Adline marry Henry Gines?   Well, Henry’s death certificate says that he died in 1934.  It lists his spouse as “Adline Gines” of Vanceville, Lousiana.  She’s actually the  informant.  So we knew that they were married sometime before 1930.  In the Caddo Parish Clerk of Court’s office, I found a record of a 1921 marriage between Henry Gines and “Addie Clay.”  Is “Addie Clay” really “Addie” Thomas?   Did she marry someone else after Tom Thomas?   And, by the way, what happened to Tom Thomas?

I have a hard time sorting out the post-1910 Tom Thomas I want from the numerous Tom Thomases in northwest Louisiana at the time.   A possibility is one Tom Thomas, 66 years old, who in 1930 lived in Bossier parish with a 17 year old grandson.  His marital status is given as “widowed.”  But Adeline was still alive.  If t6his our man, then either (1) he (or whoever gave the census information) didn’t know that Adeline was still alive, though no longer married to him; or (2) he had married someone else after Adeline, and she had died; or (3) either the informant or the census taker would rather have reported widowhood than divorce (I’ve  suspected that that was sometimes the case, especially in the southern states).

A better prospect is another Tom Thomas, 6o years old, who lived in the same area of Bossier Parish as the man disucssed above. But  this second man lived alone.

Even death certificate give little help in pinpointing the “right” Tom Thomas.

Here is a summary of what we believe we “know”:

1. That Adline Gines was born Adline Jackson in Bossier Parish Louisiana.
2. That Adline Jackson married Tom Thomas.
3. That Tom and Adline had a daughter named Belle or Bella.
4. That Belle or Bella married Mose Wheeler.
5. That Mose Wheeler died in 1925.
6. That Adline Jackson Thomas married Henry Gines sometime before 1934.
7. That Henry Gines died in 1934.
8. That Adline Gines died in 1951.
9. That Belle Wheeler apparently had a daughter named Flossie Harris (the informant on her death certificate)
10. That Belle Wheeler died in a rooming house in San Francisco in 1954.
11. That prior to their deaths, Belle Wheeler spent a lot of time living with her mother Adline in Shreveport.

Now here is what we hypothesize:

1. That Belle Wheeler was actually born perhaps a decade earlier than the most recent records indicate.
2. That Adline and Tom were no longer married by 1921.
3. That Adline married Henry in 1921.

Both of these lists show that the more we’ve learned, the more we don’t know.

North Carolina?  Arkansas?  Alabama?   In the last post, we saw that all of these had been offered as possible birthplaces for my gg-grandfather, John Wesley Bowie.   I said I’d bet on Catahoula Parish, Louisiana.  Why?

What does one do when confronted by multiple conflicting data?  Let’s start with the fact that the researcher at first has no idea as to the veracity of any asserted fact.  But to make sense of the world and to do so in a rational manner is the reason that a research develops an hypothesis.  A hypothesis generally is based on some matter of fact from which the researcher has conjectured, speculated, deduced, or inferred the facts which  constitute the hypothesis.

Here, my hypothesis is that John Wesley Bowie was born in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana, and not any of those other places.   Examine the facts which support this hypothesis.  First, most of the rest of his family are said by record evidence to have been born in Catahoula Parish. But consider: in my immediate family, my mother was born in Missouri; my parents were married while attending college in Missouri; after college, my father was stationed in the Army in Missouri; my parents’ first three children were born in Missouri; all four of their children were born within 50 months of each other. If the 1960 census turns up missing in 2032,  where would you (assuming you’re around then) surmise that my youngest brother was born?  You’d probably be wrong!].

In any event, there is no evidence that John Wesley Bowie’s parents, Rufus and Sophronia Bowie were ever in any of the other places suggested by the records.   Then  there is the matter of timing. The earliest record, the 1860 census, was taken when John was five years old.  It’s likely that informants could remember his birth just that few years earlier.  On the other hand, we don’t know who gave the enumerator the information; it may well be that someone surmised that since the young,man was present in Catahoula, he was born there–a logical fallacy for which I’m sure there’s an appropriate Latin phrase!

Notice that the most unlikely assertion of a birth place (North Carolina) comes up in the last census in John Wesley Bowie’s lifetime, the 1920 census, taken when he was in his 70s.  And on that census, nobody apparently knew in which state John Wesley’s father had been born.  By 1952, at least one of his sons had no idea where John Wesley Bowie was born.

Given these circumstances, and assuming we’ve looked at all evidence presently available,  I would say that it is reasonable to surmise that John Wesley Bowie was born in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana.   I’m not saying it’s true; I’m saying that it’s logically accurate.

And that’s how we make sense of our world, because there are some (maybe most) “truths” we will never know for certain.

[BTW, my youngest brother was born outside the United States].

(Yeah, it took awhile to get this together!)

Randy Seaver at Genea-musings has made a relatively regular item a feature called “Saturday Night Genealogical Fun.” It usually involves some quiz or meme or game and is highly popular with the Facebook genealogy crowd and others. These items are not only fun, but they give family historians and others the opportunity to get into their data or apply their skills. For various reasons, I haven’t been able to participate very often. This weekend, though, things worked out so that I could take up Randy’s challenge. It was entitled “Ahnentafel Roulette,” and here’s how it’s done:

1) How old is your father now, or how old would he be if he had lived? Divide this number by 4 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your “roulette number.”

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ahnentafel. Who is that person? [What's an "ahnentafel"?]

3) Tell us three facts about that person with the “roulette number.”

4) If you do not have a person’s name for your “roulette number” then spin the wheel again – pick your mother, or yourself, a favorite aunt or cousin, or even your children!

Without going through all the math, I’ll tell you that my roulette number came out as 20. I used my primary database which is currently in RootsMagic 3 (I have version 4, but haven’t put this primary database there yet).

In RootsMagic 3, the ahnentafel can be created by following this pathway: Reports>Lists>Ahnentafel. With me as the root subject, No. 20 is John Wesley Bowie (1845?-1926?).

John Wesley Bowie would be my great-great-grandfather and my genealogical connection to James Bowie, free man of color, in Louisiana. Three facts about him:

1. He was married to Amanda McCray (1848-1924).

2. He lived in Longview, Texas.

3. He and “Mandy” had thirteen children, one of whom, Elias Bowie, Sr., was my grandmother’s father.

So is that all there is to this little exercise? No. Recall I said these things give researchers a reason to get into their data a little bit? Well, in this case, that proved to be a very valuable opportunity.

I discovered in my data discrepancies about where John Wesley Bowie had been born. Conventional wisdom, as reflected on the website maintained by my cousin Steven C. Bowie, holds that John Wesley Bowie was born in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana. Catahoula is basically original ancestoral ground for Bowie FMC descendants.

Here’s how John Wes;ey Bowie appears in census records:

1860 census, Catahoula Parish, Louisiana

[in household of Rufus Bouie]

1870 census, Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana

[in household of Julien Berzat] [Berzat's daughter was married to John Wesley's uncle, Albert Bowie]

1880 census, Gregg County, Texas

1900 census, Gregg County, Texas

1910 census, Gregg County, Texas

1920 census, Gregg County, Texas

So this is strange enough, but then I looked into death certificates. I could not find one for John Wesley Bowie, but I found some for some of his children. The death certificate of John’s son Bob Bowie, who died in 1939, states “father’s birth place” as Arkansas. Ed Bowie’s 1943 death certificate says that his father was born in Arkansas. In 1952, brother Robert [a different person from Bob] died, and Arthur Bowie wrote “unknown” where the certificate asked for father’s birthplace. When Arthur himself died in 1959 in Grayson County, Texas, there was no place on the death certificate form to indicate either parent’s birth place.

Just where was John Wesley Bowie born? I’d still bet on Catahoula! I’ll explain why in the next post.

I really don’t have much in the way of  photographs on my ancestors’ school days.   I have in the past posted school census records from the very early twentieth century in Milam County, Texas, where my gg-grandmother and her descendants lived.  But I know virtually nothing about my Louisiana ancestors’ school experiences.

I have got somewhere a decent set of pictures of my siblings as they went through school, but I can’t find them right now!  So in the absence of that, I present some pictures and information about my parents’ high schools, both of which played significant roles not only in their local communities, but in the African-American community nationwide.

My mother attended Crispus Attucks Elementary School in the 1930’s and the historic Lincoln High School and Junior College (as it was then called) in Kansas City in the 1940’s [not to be confused with Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, which my mother also attended].  The school is now known as Lincoln College Preparatory Academy.  For African-Americans at  the end of the the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, Lincoln was one of the premier black schools in the whole country that attracted top faculty–many of whom held doctorates in their disciplines. The Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri observed in 1908:

One of the most noteworthy features of the public schools of Kansas City is the excellency of the high schools. At present there are four regular high schools equipped in all their appointments according to the most approved modern methods. . . . The Lincoln High School was established in 1887 for the education of the negro boys and girls of the city, and in which they not only pursue the branches of study common to most high schools, but they have in addition to Latin and Greek, French and German. Kansas City was the leader in taking the position that negroes only should teach her negro children in the negro schools [this position being considered very progressive at the time].

The Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri, Howard L. Conrad, ed., Vol. 5,  p. 509 (The Southern History Co.: 1901) [Google Books link (accesses 9 Sept 2009)]

Here is a photograph of the way Lincoln High School looked in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Historic Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri

Crispus Attucks

Crispus Attucks, of African and native American descent was the first casualty of the Revolutionary War; shot dead by British troops on Boston Common, March 5, 1770. Among my mother’s classmates at the elementary school named for him was Roger Wilkins, lawyer, professor, and civil rights leader.

My father attended the equally acclaimed Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston’s Fifth Ward.

The "New Phillis Wheatley High School

This school was named for the great African-American poet, Phillis Wheatley.

Originally located on Lyons Avenue, the school was remodeled for the first time in the 1940’s as my father’s class attended.  By the time they graduated in 1951, Wheatley was said by the Houston Chronicle to be “the finest negro high school in the South.”   At a reported cost of $2.5 million, it was the most expensive in Texas history to that point in time.

The annual Thanksgiving Football Classic between the Wheatley Wildcats and the Lions of the Third Ward’s Jack Yates High School was an event as important as any in black Houston. The demise of that great rivalry is considered to be one of the unintended consequence of the integration of Texas high school athletics in the 1960’s.

My father attended the ceremonies for the school’s 80th anniversary in 2007.  A year behind my dad at Wheatley was the late Barbara Jordan (1936-1996), who became a lawyer and later, an influential member of Congress.

Congresswoman Jordan (Phillis Wheatley class of 1952) was known for her great intellect and soaring oratory.

Anyone who arrived in Kansas City or Houston in the 1960’s or 1970’s would think I’m either crazy or lying about the prominence of these schools.  These schools by then had suffered tremendous decline caused in part, ironically, by the Brown vs. Board of Education case, which outlawed segregation in public education.   An unintended consequence was that African-Americans who could “get out,” did get out.  And the competition for faculty talent attracted some of the best and brightest teachers elsewhere, frequently to formerly “white” high schools.

After much litigation and agitation, it’s fair to say that the 1990’s set these schools  back on their original pathways.   Lincoln still serves a largely black population, while Wheatley’s student body is more likely to speak Spanish.

Now, just for grins, here are some pictures from my own school experience:

From left to right:

1.  My senior class portrait, Monterey High School,  Monterey, California, 1972

2.  Can we all agree that there’s nothing geekier than winning the school letter in science ? Van Buren Junior High School, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1969.   See this post for a story about a Van Buren Junior High School science class.

3.   The afore-mentioned school letter, now a musty forty years later.

4.  The Vanguard Cheerleaders, Van Buren Junior High School, 1969:  Debbie Williams, Debbie Padilla, Kathleen Gregory; (standing) Marta Hoge, and Harriet Whitener. Where are they now? [BTW, over on Facebook, I’m hosting the 40th VBJHS Class of 1969 Reunion.  Classmates are invited to come!

5.  One of two school letters I won more or less legitimately as a member of the league champion Monterey High wrestling team. This is the JV one.  The varsity one is still on the jacket.

Photo Credits:

1. Lincoln High School: The Black Archives of Mid-America, Kansas City, Missouri, http://www.blackarchives.org/node/788 (accessed 10 September 2009).  Photographer unknown, exact date unknown.

2. Crispus Attucks (Artist’s conception): Wikipedia Commons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crispus_Attucks.jpg (accessed 9 September 2009).  Artist, photographer unknown.  Believed to be in public domain.

3. The “New Wheatley High School,” Wikipedia Commons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WheatleyHighSchoolHoustonTX.JPG (accessed 9 Sep  2009).  Photographer:  WhispertoMe. Date: 18 July 2009. Public Domain (released by photographer–see Wikipedia linked cited above).

4.  Barbara Jordan: Library of Congress. 1973. Available at Black Americans in Congress, Office of the Clerk, United States House of Representatives, http://baic.house.gov/member-profiles/profile.html?intID=67 (accessed 10 Sept 2009).  Public Domain (work of the United States Government).

5.  Craig Manson, Senior Class Portrait: Photographer unknown.  Date: 1971. Originally published in El Sussurro 1972 (Monterey High School Yearbook). Copyright 1972, Trustees of the Monterey PeninsulaUnified  School District, Monterey, California.

6.  Van Buren Junior High School Letter Award: Image scanned by Craig Manson, 9 Sept 2009. Original document in the possession of Craig Manson, Cramichael, California.

7. Van Buren Sweater Letter: Image scanned by Craig Manson, 9 Sept 2009. Original artifact (1969) in possession of Craig Manson, Carmichael, California.

8. Van Buren Junior High School Cheerleaders: Copyright 1968, FarWestPhotography, Denver, Colorado.  Originally published in The Albuquerque Tribune, p. B-7, January 30, 1969.

9.  Monterey High School “Block M” Award: Image scanned by Craig Manson, 9 Sept 2009. Original artifact (1971) in possession of Craig Manson, Carmichael, California.

In 1870, however, the Bank began engaging in more speculative and risky investments.  By the time a nation-wide depression came on in 1873, the Bank was in a very poor position to defend its assets.  The bank was terminated on June 29, 1874.   Thousands of depositors lost their money.

Nonetheless, while it operated, the Freedman’s bank was an important institution in African-American communities.  Today the records of nearly 500,000 depositors offer a significant element of African-American history and genealogy..  The records are maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration and are available on sites like Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest,

In the last ;post, we displayed a depositor card for George Gines [Guion] who’s identified there as George “Guynes.”   We know that this is the same family as the one enumerated in the 1870  census as follows:

The Bank record in this case is not as detailed as some are, but it provides us with excellent information. For example, it seems to validate our revised hypothesis that Ed and Henry are not the same person. That still raises the question of just where Ed was at the time of the 1870 census.

This record gives us some new information to consider. The record says: “Draws for himself [and] Walpool.”  And it adds: “Wills to family.  Deposited by Walpool.”

So who were the Walpools? It’s not a name I’d ever heard  in connection with the Gines family.  Could this be Dinah’s family?  Census records say she was from Georgia.  Bank and census records place the Walpools as natives of Crawford County, Georgia.  This is not sufficient to tie them together, but it’s an important clue. We’ll explore that angle some time in the future.  But the matter goes to shpw how Freedman’s  Bank records can open many doors.

(click on image to enlarge)

Next in a multi-part series

As with a physical barrier, breaking through a genealogical “brick wall” may expose an entirely new landscape.  The new landscape must be explored, analyzed, and documented.  In other words, once the barrier is breached, the real work begins.  If one realizes this fact early, the new territory can be tackled in an organized fashion.  On the other hand, if one is not prepared for this, it may seem like a dike has been cracked and one will be overwhelmed at the tasks!

In the case we’ve been considering, I found that I have  several hundred new potential documented ancestors and collateral relatives that I need to vet for possible addition to my files.  I also have a number of new researcher contacts with whom I may exchange information.  A brick wall is a barrier on two sides!

I’ve got some new locations to explore as well.   And I’ve been introduced to some new aspects of history, too.

Every advance leads to another challenge.  But each advance also supplies the tools for the next challenge.

My advance was in discovering George Guion as the father of my great-grandfather, Richard Gines.  Some of the information that I see across the divide includes the following:

• A very well-known Louisiana family was headed by one George Seth Guion (1806-1861).   He was a native of Natchez, Mississippi, and a descendant of the French Huguenot founders of New Rochelle, New York.   A prominent sugar planter, he had about 90 slaves in 1860 at Bayou Lafourche, near Thibadoux, Louisiana.
• George Seth Guion was a lawyer, and later, a judge.  He was the son of a judge.  One of his sons went on to become governor of Mississippi, and another became a U.S. Senator.
• The Guions were part of the Adams County, Miss.-Eastern Louisiana planter community.
• The Guion family included males named George, Isaac, and Elijah, which names later turn up among the Gines/Guion families.

So was there a connection between the slave-owner Guions and the black Guion/Gines family?  Questions like this come up once a barrier breached.  Fortunately, I’ve now been exposed to much new (to me) research in Southern libraries and elsewhere that will help answer that specific question.

I  had hypothesized that my Gines people were associated with English-speaking people named Gines who came from the West Midlands area.  They came to Virginia and North Carolina and from there moved on to South Carolina and other states of the Deep South, eventually winding up in Louisiana and Texas.   That hypothesis was based on several key facts and assumptions:

• That Gines was more an English name than anything else;
• That the “variations” were “mistakes” of spelling or transcription;
• That there was in fact a migration pattern such as I thought which has been documented;
• That my Gines people in Louisiana had seemed to have a close relationship with families we know to have come from the Carolinas, such as the Brayboys and LeJays.

All of this made logical sense.  As it turns out, the reality may be much more complex.

I coupled my hypothesized migration pattern with an analysis of surnames for “legitimacy.”  Assuming there’s some validity to the notion, I recognized that the World Names Profiler is not necessarily the state pf the art tool for performing such analysis.  But it works well enough for present purposes here.  In any event, I note that neither “Gines” nor any other of the presumed variants appears in the New Dictionary of American Family Names, an authoritative source.

Without going through all of the analysis again (like all decent science, it’s replicable–try it yourself), here are some conclusions that I drew from the surname analysis:

• The surname spelled “Gines” is probably overwhelming Spanish, occurring in Spain at a rate five times that of any other country.  (And here is one of the potential issues with the Profiler–it does not give us historical data.  But for established European names not displaced very much, we can probably draw some rough but valid inferences).
• The name Gines is more likely French than it is English, occurring in France at an average rate more than five times that of the United Kingdom.
• In the United States, the frequency of the name Gines is 95% of it frequency in France.  The U.S. statistics may be skewed by the large family sizes of LDS members with the name Gines.
• The rough distribution of Gines-surnamed people seems to follow the five-family group model I have described previously.

So what about the “variations”?  Of course, to use the term “variation,” in some sense suggests that the names are isonyms. The whole issue is whether Gines is a creolization of , let’ say, Guion; or whether Guion is the pidginization of Gines.   The other possibility is that they are completely different names as Green is to Gray.

This is a complicated issue and there are few accessible  rigorous studies on the matter. I will tell what I know from my research. Understand that many of these are broad conclusions with a high degree of ambiguity.

I think that it is clear that “Gines” and “Gynes” as they appear from 1870 on in the United States are the same name–that “Gynes” is a phonetic attempt at “Gines.”  There is no evidence that “Gynes’ occurs anywhere in the U.S. except where “Gines” does or historically has, appeared.

The matter of “Guynes” is rather interesting.  Just looking at it and supposing the English pronunciation, it would appear also to be a phonetic rendering of “Gines.”   Curiously, the name “Guynes” occurs most frequently in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. historically almost always among white people.  In counties where there are whites named Guynes, there are likely to be blacks named “Gines.”  The other curiosity is that as I looked at census records for the states I’ve mentio0ned, I found among the white people named Guynes a high occurence of first names like Edward, Henry, Lewis, and Oscar–all of which occur frequently in the black Gines family! One source says that “Guynes” is not pronounced like “Gines,” but is a variant of the Gowen name.

Now to the name Guion, which is the name  under which we found our subject, the father of Richard Gines.  Guion is clearly a French name.  It is probably not a variation of “Gines.”  I’ve come to the conclusion that the original name of this branch of the family tree was likely “Guion”  (“Guyon” a likely variation).  That of course leaves a couple of big questions.  What makes me conclude that? How did George Guion get his name? And why did his son think the name was “Gines”?  The answers to these questions are all tied up in thee geography and history of Louisiana and Mississippi.  It will take some time to completely unravel that, but I will lay it out as I can over time.  It is fascinating.