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Lewis: In the new PBS documentary entitled African-American lives, his story in Dr. Henry Lewis Gates takes African-American celebrities back to Africa in search of their ancestral roots. One of the tools he uses to get there is DNA sampling. We will talk about genealogical research and the use of DNA to help you trace your roots next on Black Issues Forum.
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Voiceover: Funding for this program is made possible in part by UNC-TV members.
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Lewis: Hello everyone and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I am Mitchell Lewis. In a previous program we spoke to noted playwright and author Thulani Davis about her journey in researching her ancestral roots. Today we will meet a North Carolinian who has a journey of his own to share. We will also meet the historian who is helping him continue his genealogical research and a member of a local organization that helps all people trace their roots. I'd like to welcome Ricky L. Hart, a Durham native and a descendant of slaves who once lived on a plantation that was owned by the Cameron and Benehan families. In the mid-1800s this plantation stretched across Durham, Orange, Wake, and Granville Counties. Today the Benehan house and slave quarters at Horton Grove Plantation stand as a historic landmark and museum called Historic Stagville. We also have Jennifer Farley, a historian and the site manager at Historic Stagville. And Melanie Crain, a ten-year member of the Durham-Orange Genealogical Society. Melanie currently serves as their journal editor. And to the three of you welcome to Black Issues Forum.
All: Thank you.
Lewis: Melanie, I will start off with you because now we hear a lot about genomics. What really is genomics?
Crain: Genomics is applying the study of DNA to genealogy. And it gives us a chance to study sir names in a different way. It does not allow us, however, to fingerprint an identity through DNA, that is forensic DNA and we don't use that.
Lewis: Ricky of course you have been doing a lot of research on your own about your family. What got you interested in doing this?
Hart: It all started with a conversation I had with my father. He had bought me a pony and I remember one Saturday going out and he was telling me I needed to get up, we have some things we need to do, and I was asking, "Okay, what is it that we need to do?" And he would say, "Okay, we have to get this right so we are going to use the pony so you can learn how to work the field the old way." And I was like, "What do you mean?" And he had a plow there and I was like, "We have a tractor, we don't need a plow to turn the field over." He said, "Well you need to learn the old way." And he was telling me the way we used to do it. You need to learn. So from that point on he told me when he started talking about the old ways and I asked him if we had to go buy the halter and he said, "No, you make everything. You make everything from scratch."
We went downtown to the hardware store. Came back with some raw leather material; he had the brads and all of this other kind of stuff, and he made everything from the harness all the way from the front to the back and when he had me out in the field I had no idea, I was like, "This is torture." So basically after that-and I started plowing in the field and I came back and I sat and talked to him and I said, "What do you mean by the old ways?" And he started telling me about when he and his family were out there at the plantation in that area where they lived, how they had to do everything on their own. And that is what started my journey.
Lewis: Jennifer, you are the site manager of Historic Stagville, and I understand that there has been a compilation of the people who enslaved at that plantation, one of the largest compilations in the nation. How was that collected?
Farley: That was collected over many years by many different historians, historians such as Jean Anderson who is a local Durham County historian, different interns, and then when I came along there was a large amount of research. It just wasn't helpful to the family historian at that point.
Lewis: And Ricky, you found out that you are a descendant of some of those who were enslaved at Stagville Plantation. You went to visit the plantation-what was going through your mind and perhaps what were some of the things you discovered?
Hart: What was going through my mind is like I said when I was talking to my father about some of the things, the old ways, and he was talking about the plantation and I inquired-I was like, "There is a plantation here in Durham? I can't believe it." He said, "Yes, it is out at Stagville." So I went out there. The curator at the time-I can't recall his name-but there was a large green book, a very large green book that sat on a podium. When I told him I said I wanted to look around he said, "Look around; fine." I saw the book-I opened the book and the first page in the book was, it said "Hart." The first name across it was Efram and the date was 1812 and then it went down from their name and the children, his wife and the children in the book and I was enquiring-I looked and I saw some other names, the Lipscomb family. There were about five base families that were there and I was enquiring to him, "Where did this come from?" He said, "This came from some of the records that we have here," but they didn't have any more detailed records. So that is where I started from that point at the plantation.
Lewis: And of course there were a lot of pictures there. As you went through some of those pictures-
Hart: Well, I didn't go through the pictures until I got with Jennifer. This is a couple of years ago-90, I think what? Maybe 96, 2000-something, yeah. That is when the pictures came into play. But there-I mean going out and looking at some of the pictures she had, I didn't know a lot of the people and we started sharing information and my research and stuff with her and we started compiling and working on the family tree.
Lewis: And Jennifer especially your part in this, how important is this for you to have all of this information?
Farley: This is incredibly important to me and for a number of reasons. One, historians, they are always frustrated by a lack of information and when I came to Stagville and found the vast amount of information left by the plantation owners and knew I had to do something with this. Also some of my descendants are Jewish and so on a personal level I faced some similar roadblocks that African-Americans doing their family histories do. You hit a certain date and it is harder to find information past that date.
Lewis: Now of course we have been talking about some of the research being done just going through the pictures and some of the notations in the book. But Melanie there is also DNA testing. How accessible is DNA testing?
Crain: It is pretty accessible. You have to probably go to the internet and put in DNA testing and Google and you'd probably come up with at least 12 companies. I am really familiar with just one of them because I am an administrator of a DNA project with one of those companies which happens to be the company that the National Geographic Society is using in that genomic project that they are doing.
Lewis: What is the procedure like?
Crain: You get a kit from the company and in the kit are two little brushes. Everybody says, "I am not going to give my blood." And they don't have to. You take one of those little brushes and you scratch the inside of your mouth and put the brush then into a sealed vial, put that back into an envelope that is provided, and send it off to the laboratory. Actually you send it off to the company, not the laboratory.
Lewis: How long does that process take?
Crain: All together before you know what your DNA is it takes maybe six weeks.
Lewis: And when you get that information back what does it tell you or what can it not tell you?
Crain: It tells you nothing. And it is because DNA used for genealogy is used by comparison. A group forms with a sir name, a common sir name, or one that they think that they may have a common sir name. For instance in Ricky's case he may have people contact him eventually or Jennifer may, too, and say, "I am sure that my family was on the plantation." And once they establish, had they done DNA for all of those families, that person could be tested and you could say "Yes" or "No," your family was on this plantation. So there is a lot to be learned by it, a lot of help from it.
Lewis: Ricky in your search how much family support did you get when you started this?
Hart: Well when I started it was just, it was just me. But when I started talking to my Aunt Easter who lives in Hillsborough, she passed but she was living in Hillsborough, she came and she would sit down with me and talk about some of the stuff in the family; she would pull out newspaper clippings, different articles and give me information as far as pertaining to the family. Talk about my grandfather and some of the uncles and things of that nature. She was one of the very, very few, or the only one that I could talk to at the time that would pass on information to me at that time. And the other one is my sister Angela. She helps me with, I would say administrative stuff, things that I can't follow-up and lead she would.
Lewis: Jennifer in your research-tell me about some of the interesting tidbits that you've found. I know there has to be some nugget in there in doing all of this research. What are some that really sort of pulled at your heartstrings?
Farley: There are so many, there are so many names. I think what gets me the most excited is when I find a new descendant; that is probably what-and when they, when I am able to help them find their family at Stagville, that is what really pulls on my heart strings the most. There are some interesting stories such-there was this one person enslaved at Stagville named Virgil and he has got such an interesting story. He was taught to read and write; he was trained to be a doctor on the plantation; he and his family were eventually freed and sent to Liberia. We have letters that Virgil wrote back to the plantation from Liberia. That is probably one of the most extraordinary stories that we have.
Lewis: And I understand that there was a discovery made before we actually started the show-talk about that.
Farley: We, I brought some pictures today of just various descendants and people born into slavery at Stagville and I was showing them to Ricky. There were a couple that had the Hart last name. And one of them was the daughter of-what a great grandmother?
Hart: Yes.
Farley: Is that what we decided? Ricky had never seen the picture. It is an un-we don't know the name of this girl though so we are going to have to do some research on that.
Lewis: More research. And especially Melanie when we are talking about research as it relates to DNA, we talked about it a little bit earlier. What are the limitations and what should someone look for, especially if they want to try and approach a company to perhaps have this test done? How do they go about doing that?
Crain: They need to find out probably by calling the company or looking at the company's web site, if there is already a sir name project established and they want to get into that sir name project. And if it is not established then they could consider establishing one themselves.
Lewis: What do you see as the promising aspects of DNA testing?
Crain: Oh I see two main ones. First is the obvious that DNA testing will continue to get refined by scientists and will tell us more now than it can tell us about our ancestors; right now it can only tell us that we had ancestors and they probably lived in a certain place in a certain era but not specific time. But it also has told me, and I am not a scientist, that we are-this is scientific-we are 99.9% alike, all four of us. So this is a humanity issue. We are all distant cousins if not close cousins.
Lewis: So we are talking the human race?
Crain: Yes we are, the whole human race.
Lewis: Anything you find frightening about this type of testing?
Crain: I don't. I am always so excited about what is going on that nothing really frightens me. There are people who have a concern about how safe it is to give their DNA sample and I can tell you that the company that I am associated with doesn't allow the lab to know who owns the sample that goes to the lab. That is just a first step in about a four- to five-step process that continues to keep names disassociated with DNA results if not specifically on site then certainly even from long distances because there is a great distance between the lab and the company.
Lewis: Ricky I am going to put you on the spot here a little bit. Would you consider DNA testing at any point?
Hart: Yes, yes I do.
Lewis: Do you think you would find anything-well what would be some of your reasons for perhaps trying DNA testing?
Hart: Well one is to set a marker as far as what we are all involved in here, to set a marker. At least for where we are at now as far as with Stagville, the ancestral part, and for those that are going to come afterwards that want to do it and for those-as a matter all of the country all over the world-at least mine will be there as a marker to help make it a center or draw and add to the line, cross the line, put them together, and put this big puzzle together.
Crain: And that really is important because the more people who have their DNA tested for good reason, for genealogy reason, the bigger the gene pool gets, the more the scientists will understand how the human race began and moved away from their original spot in Africa and became what we are today.
Lewis: Jennifer you talked about something earlier that I want to go back to. We were talking about your research and perhaps it sort of pulled at your heart strings as far as your ethnic background. Remind us again, why is that so important to you?
Farley: There are some descendants in my family that are Jewish and I personally am having a hard time getting past Ellis Island, just with the problems and changes of name and spellings at Ellis Island I can't even get us back to Europe so to be facing my own personal difficult genealogy and to be able to help other people with their difficult genealogy it really helps me, makes me feel good.
Lewis: Melanie, as someone who has been in genealogy for quite a while, if someone wants to get started tracing their family roots how do they go about doing that?
Crain: There is one rule in genealogy and that is start with yourself and go backwards. Trying to jump back to an ancestor that you would like to belong to, or be a descendant of, or you think you may be a descendant of, is a hard way to do it and usually not successful. So you begin with yourself and you collect information about your parents, about their parents, and so forth, and you begin to see a pattern and a history develop before your eyes.
Lewis: And how does the society help in that endeavor?
Crain: The society meets monthly and there is always a question and answer period at the beginning of the meetings, specifically to answer questions for people who are having problems. A lot of people have dealt with some of the very same problems so it is a joint group that is trying to help people along all the time.
Lewis: Ricky as you've gone through the pictures, have there been any photos that have been an inspiration to you or perhaps bring back some of the things that your Dad was trying to tell you?
Hart: I haven't come across that one yet. But I was talking to Jennifer earlier and I was telling her how my Aunt Bertha, Bertha Hart who lives on Stanley Road, maybe two miles down the road from the plantation area, she is now to me the patriarch of the family and I was telling her when my mother passed last year how I went there and she had I don't know how many photo albums there at the house and we were going through the photo albums and I was telling Jennifer, I said one of the things that I want to do and I am going to do is to get her on video before she passes away and to get her to talk about the family so we can have that on video. So to me that is a very important part of your family's history.
Lewis: And Jennifer if someone wants to come to Stagville Plantation to perhaps look at some of the documentation what do they need to do?
Farley: Just give me a call. I am there Monday through Friday all year long, 8:30 until 5:00; the phone number is 620-0120 and just make sure I will be there and you can stop by any time and we can go over what I've got. We also have-the research I've done so far is accessible from our web page.
Lewis: Ricky, what is next in your travels? I understand that ever since you discovered Stagville Plantation that you family has sort of made another connection to the plantation; talk about that.
Hart: Well it is a lot-I mean we were having our family reunions at the plantation. We were having them there and then the space with the constraints of the state and things like that we had to move to another location so last year we didn't have one there so we are hoping maybe we can be able to do it at our church and I found out that the Cameron Grove Baptist Church on Erwin Avenue was the church that was on the plantation near the cemetery and they had to move it and they moved it to where it is now. So we are in negotiations with the church to see if they will be able to accommodate the large family reunion that we have every year. The thing about it I like, before I took it over from my uncle, my Uncle Willis, it has been the same since I can remember-it has always been the fourth Sunday in August from the beginning. So but that is one of the things that we are continuously working on, working with Jennifer to keep up the database and different things of that nature, taking photos and digitizing them, putting them on disk, keeping stuff and keeping her aware and updated on information of that nature.
Lewis: I will ask you one of the same questions, well that I asked Melanie. What advice would you give to people wanting to find their roots, especially with all of the things that you have gone through? Have there been any challenges?
Hart: There have been challenges. The challenge that I have is verifying information. Verifying information I would say is just like to make it quick on Efram Hart 1812 I went to UNC-Jennifer told me UNC-Wilson library-they have information that the Cameron papers they kept and I went in there and looked at some of those and came across a Efram Hart that was born in approximately 1800-1801, which throws off the verification of the original Efram Hart 1812 who was supposedly bought by Mr. Cameron in Richmond at a slave auction and brought back here. So the part of verifying and crossing and making sure your information is correct, that is one of the things I would tell people. When you get information verify it somehow to make sure that is the correct information. But there is information out there for you; it is just where you go to look for it.
Lewis: Jennifer any challenges you face?
Farley: It is all challenges. I have an unusual-I am doing the genealogy in an unusual way. In this type of genealogy it is usually easier to do from modern times back to 1870 and more difficult past the Civil War. But because of where I work and the resources I have at hand, I am actually doing the genealogy from the Civil War back and my challenge is actually getting descendants to come to me with their family histories, with photos, with more information so I can come up to modern times. When I do have descendants come to me I give them all of the information I have and we usually trade information. So I will give them everything past the Civil War and they will give me everything after the-or before the Civil War and they will give me everything after the Civil War.
Lewis: Melanie how important has the internet been in trying to get your genealogical backgrounds found or discovered?
Crain: It is a mixed bag because what verification Ricky was talking about is extremely important. And it has to be verification you can count on. That means primary documentation in genealogy terms, which is things like birth certificates or census records, things that were probably taken down and recorded at the time they happened. And so the internet can only have so much of that and much of what is primary on the internet is by subscription. The rest of it is put out by good-meaning people who want to get their family information on the internet and you don't know whether it has been documented or not. So you have to be careful.
Lewis: Now what do you mean exactly by documented?
Crain: By supported by documents that would mean it was actually fact; that would be the primary type of document.
Lewis: We have about two minutes left in the show and I wanted to ask the three of you, and I will start off with you Jennifer. Why is it so important that you are doing what you are doing?
Farley: From my perspective as a manger of a historic site, this is important because it humanizes the story I am telling. When people come to the site this isn't just history, this is personal. These are real people we are talking about who were enslaved on this plantation with real lives.
Lewis: Melanie how important is it for you to maintain genealogy?
Crain: Very important; much for the same reasons as Jennifer. The ancestors in the past for all of us lived for a short period of time and to know them is exciting and so that is what I try to do is to get to know my ancestors. They are a part of me.
Lewis: And Ricky you've gotten the chance to find out about your ancestors. How important has this been to you and has your ancestry reached say beyond North Carolina?
Hart: It has. I know there are different states and Jennifer and I have talked about it; we have some walls, low walls, that we have to deal with. There was a plantation that Mr. Cameron owned in Greenville, Alabama. There is one in Mississippi. I looked at the census records and my family members that we have are on record down there in those two states. So it is very, very broad and as I was saying earlier that my wife's family, she can trace her family back to 1600s because they are from Louisiana and France but she-on her father's side she can trace it back to the 1600s. But one of the things that I look at and one of the things that I hold is for my children to always be able to say, have an idea of what they came from, some of the things they did, how they relate to things that are going on now. I was talking to a person a couple of weeks ago and when we were talking we got on the conversation of reparations and I was like, "If it ever comes to fruition-if it happens which I doubt but-the thing about it is what are you going to do when they say prove it? How are you going to prove it?" So it is important on a lot of different spectrums, just for me personally, on a personal level that is just it for me.
Lewis: And we have to stop it here. Thank you so much for sharing your information and continued success to all of you. If you would like to learn more about genealogical studies, the PBS documentary African-American Lives, or obtain a transcript of today's program visit us online at www.unctv.org/bif. When you visit be sure to give us your comments and your program suggestions. You can also call us on the BIF line at 919-549-7167. Please continue to watch as we present to you more stimulating discussions that impact the African-American community and beyond. For Black Issues Forum I am Mitchell Lewis. Thanks for joining us.
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