In Black and White: Cross-Cultural Genealogy

I don't know about you, but I get just a bit peeved each time I see one of Ancestry.com's television commercials. This one from 2009 is not as simplistic as many of the current TV ads, but it is still misleading. Believe me, it's not that simple! I have been using Ancestry.com since 2002, and while it has made my research so much easier than it was for my Grand Aunt Helen (Newton) Beers in the 1940s, one person's error can be replicated in a dozen other family trees as quickly as select , review , and save . While it is possible occasionally to find a well-sourced tree with photos and stories, I have only had that happen perhaps twice for the hundreds of surnames I have researched. Advertisements appealing to specific ethnicities The   "Born A Slave...Died a Businessman"  ad (2011) geared for the African American community spawned a host a negative reactions, from discussions on racism to extreme parodies. One man asked a great question... "I...

I've been a follower of my good friend and distant cousin-in-law's gen blog for several years now;  but yesterday, Yvette Porter Moore posted to her newly formatted blog, The Ancestors Have Spoken because of a challenge she had received while attending the first Mid-Western African American Genealogy Institute in St. Louis, Missouri. As I read of how she connected with a piece of her adopted father's past, my mood shifted to melancholy and I began thinking about my platform....and my Daddy. My dad died of metastatic optic melanoma in 2004. During his four-year battle, we enjoyed many times when we could just talk about the things on our hearts. We covered everything from writing, photography & painting to the Bible. After his death, I inherited his photograph studies of trees, sky, water, rocks and the like. Some are prints, but there were also volumes and volumes of 35 mm slides. So yesterday I pulled that tote from my family archive, which is now housed within an...