In Black and White: Cross-Cultural Genealogy

Collateral reading. . . Have you ever noticed how one book flows into the next? I mean if you're serious about research, you're checking all the references and end notes and traveling along a path covered with titles and authors, which in turn could end up in an InterLibrary loan list a mile long! The trick is to know when to stop searching & start writing. Before starting this part of the project, I outlined what information I already had and made a list of objectives. That list is growing smaller. . . but there still  is room to grow. . . . Today I returned two ILLs and requested one more: David Henry Bradley's A History of the A. M. E. Zion Church . Amy Muse's The Story of the Methodists in the Port of Beaufort   (1941) didn't offer much to help with details of the churches in Township 5; but I did pick up a bit of information on travel and living conditions of that era, as well as a sampling of insights about conditions in the church circuit. Update o...

When our White brethren, the Ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church, found that we were determined upon becoming a separate body, or society, they appointed the Rev. John McClaskey, at their General Conference, who was one of the stationed Elders for the Methodist Episcopal Church in the City of New York, to make arrangements . . . in order that the spiritual part of the government might be under the direction of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church from time to time, and so keep the two Churches or Societies in union with each other. . .  (Rush, p. 13) . In studying the two black offshoots of the Methodist Episcopal Church, one must remember that the  mother church in Philadelphia is referred to as Bethel, and those in New York City are referred to as Zionites. It was Rev. John McClaskey who negotiated for both groups with the parent Methodist Episcopal Church; but, the negotiations for Zion proved more amicable. . . perhaps because Methodism had...

Image Courtesy Wilton.com The mind is like an attic full of memories. In my attic lies a section devoted to my childhood memories of Christmas . . .  and one spot is devoted to . . . The Gingerbread Man. When I was a little girl, I remember going to the bakery at Center Square in Easton, Pennsylvania, with my mother and grandmother. Opening the door, sleigh bells jingled, and the warmth of the shop rushed through the open door and filled our nostrils with the smells of sweet delights. Above the long, glass display case filled with cookies, pastries and cakes, a string of large gingerbread men teased children in awe of the Christmas treats. I don't ever recall asking for nor receiving one of those gingerbread men, but I believe it was the start of a treasured memory . . . . I say the start of a memory because it was continued later in my childhood when my parents would take me to visit my dad's brother, my Uncle David Newton, and his family in rural Sanitaria Springs, ...

When I locate a book related to my research, I start out by checking the Index for keywords. Following that I go to the Contents and check chapter titles, focusing on those chapters containing the most keywords. If the book sufficiently interests me I read the entire book; but even then, I may skip over some chapters and go back to them at a later date. Here I have skipped over Chapter IV: Methodism and Slavery , and continue on to Chapter V: The Beginnings of Separation . While the former chapter may deal with some aspects of collateral families who migrated to North Harlowe following Emancipation, at this point I am most interested in the community's worship before that time. . . when  my husband's great grandfather Isaac Carter and his three younger siblings resided as apprentices in the William Temple household (1853), following the death of their parents. from Colton's New Topographical Map of the Eastern Portion of the State of North Carolina (1861) According...