Mattie Russell my maternal great-grandmother

They never mentioned him.   

Never uttered his name, except to tell me his name.  Once.   And only after I had grown up and was apparently ready to hear at least that much.

If I uttered the name, silence fell.

“Oh…he…died a long time ago,” someone would say, after a long, pensive pause.

They wouldn’t tell me what of or how or where he was buried or…anything else.   And I would see from the hardness—and deep sadness--of their gaze that no matter what I said or how much I begged, there would be no more information forthcoming.  So not wanting to hurt them, I would just let it go. 

These were strong people—you didn’t see sadness like that in their eyes often.  Not like that. 

Angry…bewildered…terrified sadness.  And my love for them stopped me from picking at that wound.   But I knew from those stricken stares that it was a terrible wound.  Whatever had killed him had killed a part of them, too.

Last week, suddenly and inexplicably determined to discover the secret behind that sadness, I started the search anew.  I almost immediately found his name in the Illinois death records, but the process for receiving the certificate was circuitous and expensive.  I couldn't bring myself to go through that process.  I knew from earlier searches for family records that much of this information could be had for free and without having to be home to sign for the package.  But I also knew it could take a very long time searching NARAS (The National Archives online databases) and such, without being very, very meticulous about it.

Every record you find must be crosschecked, the names, places and dates lined up to make sense and then checked against other records to make sure that you have not unwittingly climbed into the wrong family tree.   So every document is only tentatively useful, and it can take weeks, months, years…decades to get those ducks in that row.

There was only one place that did this effortlessly--for a fee.  And I had avoided signing on for years.   But now, I had no choice.  I gave in and joined Ancestry.com.  

They’ve cornered the genealogy market.  You type in the names and other particulars…they search every database known to man, it seems.   And they can link you to the original documents--at the click of a mouse, the image of that census roll, military, birth, death, baptismal record can be saved or bought.

The investment paid off instantly.

Within ten minutes I was staring at the reason why my family had disowned this “mysterious” uncle of mine.   In black and white on my screen, in stark, spare language on his death certificate, the story ended.  Horribly:

“Shock.   Severance of the brachial artery.   Stabbed by unknown assailant during altercation.  Manslaughter.”

In my father’s family, a little “detail” like this would have been buried with the man.   For strivers, as they called them back when, not long up from slavery and working hard to leave the violence and poverty of their Southern past behind, this…was an embarrassment.   This was the kind of thing black men were “expected” to do, die in knife fights.   And they were struggling to prove themselves, to show the world that black men could also be expected to live good, clean, middle class lives. 

All of the girl children on my father's side went to college and became teachers, secretaries, accountants or the wives of very eligible men--no housekeepers or cooks on that side after Emancipation.   They were very proud of this.

And all of the other male children got good jobs, married beautiful, doting, God fearing women and raised bright, obedient and pampered children—like me.

So they mourned the man.  Lamented the fight that took his life.   Cooperated with the police, of course--"good” Black people did that back then to show how "good" they were.   But then, they put it all behind them.   These were the things they had left the South to avoid.  To be “better than.”

I took the certificate, and put it in my family “memory shrine.”  I am not ashamed.  I understand.  Black men, even now, are expected to die like that in too many places.  Chicago, for one, where they lived after they left the South.  Something has gone terribly wrong there, over the past few years.   It is not the Chicago they were hoping it would be--that it even became, briefly and while some of his siblings were still alive.

Like many young men during this New Millenium he did not live to see, Erskine (Erskine, Erskine, Erskine—there, I’ve said it LOTS of times), husband of Cora, brother of my father, Ernest…died fighting for his life.   

And for all the striving, things haven’t changed all that much.  Good men, good young men, far too often, die that way every day there, still.  He deserves to be one of us.  We cannot turn our backs on facts like these.  As much as we might wish.  Because they keep rising up and returning.  New faces, old story.

There were more secrets uncovered as I searched on, determined to complete the final chapters of my paternal line.  These had not been hidden deliberately.   There had been hints.  But the trails ran cold.  There were no digital databases back in the day.  So I decided to use the clues and see where they took me, one little bit at a time.

I began with a statement my father made, back when I was still a reporter for the Chicago Sun Times and had been asked, during the Roots ruckus, to trace my roots back as far as I could.   At that time they had not begun the DNA testing that would find my maternal African roots much later in life (Bubí Tribe, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon).  But my father told me the most important thing I would ever need to know about his family in a pensive voice—almost a whisper, with a wistful smile.

“The firstborn sons in our family have all been named Sam,” he said.  And then he shrugged.  That was all he could tell me, he said.

All he could tell me!

The professional genealogist the Sun Times sent my way had grinned and clasped her hands together in ecstasy when I repeated it to her.  

“Most people would kill to have a clue like that!  Follow the Sams!” she cried.

And follow them, I did.   It was quite a journey, to be sure.   It began in St. Helens, Lancashire, England when a very young man named Samuell Dagnell ran off to Liverpool in 1698 and boarded the ship Barbadoes.  He was indentured to a Cuthbert Sharples of Virginia for 7 years, and later married…Margret (sic), and had a daughter, Sarah, July 2, 1715.  She was baptized the very next day and the record of it, according to some chicken scratch scribbling in a big church book that has now been digitized, is now on my hard disk, external and PC, and in my folder “in the sky” where I’m keeping everything I find now, along with the Ancestry.com site.

There is a Confederate Samuel Dagnel in the Civil War records the site is offering up for free to the public until this coming Wednesday.  He fought in a South Carolina regiment.   And, tellingly, by 1880…there is a mulatto Samuel Dagnal (sic), with a son named Sam, Jr.--my grandfather--in his household.  So…that Confederate Samuel may have fought for slavery, but…some Samuel kinda liked slaves a little bit if you…catch my drift…

Ah, America the beautiful, indeed…

I have found no Indians, though we are reputed to be “Black Creek” on my mother’s side.  Had they said Cherokee, I would not still be looking.   It sometimes seems that every person of Southern heritage, white or black, claims to be the descendant of a “Cherokee princess.”   I have learned to ignore that, as my “enrolled in the tribe” Cherokee friends usually do. 

But when an elderly aunt said, “We’re Black Creeks,” stoutly and proudly, I knew we were on to something.  You don’t hear that every day.  In fact, most people have never heard of Black Creeks.   Which has made it difficult for documented Black Creeks to receive the tribal recognition they’ve sought for decades, over in OK, as well.  But they do exist.  There are Black Creek towns there, with rich histories.

This does not mean we have Indian Blood.  In fact, it probably means we were either held as slaves by the Creek/Muscogee—Indians had slaves, yes—or lived with them as many runaway and freed slaves did for a time.   Many were removed to Oklahoma with the tribe, when that awful time came.  Others stayed behind, became Seminoles and fought with Osceola.

I don’t know which way we went.   But I am sure I will discover this soon.

What I do know is that the thrill of discovery, even when those discoveries are grim and bring tears to my eyes—and they all do—has been addictive.  I want to tie up all of the loose ends now, and to celebrate the “secrets” and listen to the whispers between the lines of those fading, brittle pages of family history.

I will be ashamed of nothing.  Because it is part of who we are.  For better or worse.  And the “worse” was overcome and/or paid for long ago.   We are a beautiful, exciting, exceptionally rich and compelling—and contradictorily…typical--chapter in the story of this country.

And oh, Erskine, Erskine, Erskine, my missing link…my mysterious uncle...my inspiration...welcome home.