November 2023 – My Maryland-Louisiana Roots

Another Great Research Find!!

I continue to be amazed by the tools available for African American genealogy researchers to find information on their ancestors prior to 1870. I had visited the Maryland State Archive site many times to obtain death records. But it wasn’t until recently that I found this Legacy of Slavery in Maryland database. Included in the database are records of manumitted slaves, freedmen who served in the Civil War, slaves listed in inventories on probates, ads for sales of slaves as well as accommodations made for run-away slaves via the ‘Underground Railway’. Users can search by county, by the names of the slave or the enslaver.

So happy to have once again stumbled upon another great find!

Best,

‘Lost Friends’ – An Amazing New Find

I began my genealogy research in 2000 at a time when very little content was available digitally or online. Microfilm and microfiche readers were the staple tool for viewing birth, death, immigration, probate and deed records. As genealogy research has become more widespread, so has the access to and transcription of important records. Freedmen Bureau letters, complaints and work contracts once available only as images that you had to scroll through to find names and places of interest are now widely accessible on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org via keyword searches.

People and organizations have been very busy providing information to help unlock the ancestral roots of once enslaved Black peoples. I recently attended a panel discussion at Prairie View A&M University’s Ruth J Simmons, Center for Race and Justice. Rice University Professor Domingues gave a presentation on the SlaveVoyages.org database. A database that has been around for quite a while that was available initially via CD-ROM access only but is now a robust digital tool. SlaveVoyages ‘explores the origins and forced relocations of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic world.’

Today, I stumbled upon a true treasure-chest–the ‘Lost Friends’ database. Included in this database are over 2,500 letters or ads in which Black families separated by slavery or separated after emancipation attempted to locate family members. The ads ran in the New Orleans Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper November 1879 – December 1900. Content was provided by Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Libraries (1879–1896) and the Bridwell Library, Southern Methodist University.

I have already found ads for families that lived in Jeanerette and Franklin, Louisiana as well as those in Double Bayou, Matagorda and Bremond, Texas.

It is hard to keep my focus when such great research tools keep popping up. You can search by lastname, year or location. I have found that wide searches on parish names or county names is not as successful as searching specifically by city names. So a search for Jeanerette may produce records while a search on Iberia Parish, may not.

So, check out ‘Lost Friends’ and see what you can uncover.

Best,

Digging Deeper in Monroe County, Alabama

My mother’s initial 2015 DNA matches in Ancestry.com included high matches among people whose ancestors lived in Monroe County, Alabama immediately following the end of slavery. She also had 4 or more matching profiles whose enslaved ancestors lived in Drew County, Arkansas. These profiles also matched those Monroe County, Alabama profiles. These Alabama and Arkansas profiles in turn matched her Calvert County, Maryland and Iberia Parish profiles. This led me to prematurely jump to the conclusion that the Maryland women at the top of the family trees of both the Alabama and Arkansas profiels were the connection among all of these people. Those women were Flora Matilda Tucker Stallworth born about 1846 in Maryland, who lived in Monroe County, Alabama and Rosetta Fleming Goodwin born about 1830 in Maryland who lived in Drew County, Arkansas.

I have since discovered that while Flora Matilda Tucker may indeed be a connection to our Calvert County ancestors, she is but part of the explanation for the connection. In 2022 and 2023, I found an additional 6 profiles with Monroe County, Alabama ancestors and 8 more profiles with Drew County, Arkansas ancestors that match my Calvert County, Maryland direct lineage. Among these new Monroe County profiles, 3 or more profiles have no currently known descendancy from Flora Matilda. These 3 profiles have Jeff Malden and his wife Ella Salter as direct ancestors. Jeff Malden’s mother was Mary Tucker who was born about 1825 in Alabama. These DNA profiles: Longmire, Carpenter and Gant, also match the Drew County, Arkansas and Calvert County, Maryland DNA profiles as well as my mother’s.

Flora Matilda’s maiden name was noted to have been ‘Tucker’ by several people who include her on their family tree. I have not been able to find any definitive document to validate this as her maiden name. I have been told that she was shipped out of Maryland and initially lived in New Orleans before she was sold and brought to Alabama. Her descendants recount how Anderson Stallworth met Flora Matilda, who had lived on a different plantation, once they both were freed. The exact name of the plantation on which she lived does not seem to have been passed down in the telling of her story.

So, I am taking a deeper dive into Monroe County, Alabama to unravel what seems to be a more complicated DNA connection. A connection that may include a Maryland component as well as a South Carolina and maybe Kentucky component. Salter, Longmire, Malden and Tucker are names on which I will be focusing.

Best,