Group helps in search for African American ancestry

By MICHAEL NUNES
Staff Writer

RED BANK – For most people, tracing a family lineage is often a challenge.

For African Americans, it can be a challenge to trace their family lines back to slavery and before.

“I am able to trace back to my greatgreat grandparents who were slaves in Virginia,” said Charles Lawson, a genealogist, who founded the African American Genealogy Group, which meets in Red Bank.

Lawson, a Red Bank resident and former Fort Monmouth procurement specialist, has spent the past five years tracing back his family lineage.

“It made it even more difficult because there was not oral history going on in my family,” Lawson said.

Because slave owners often sold their slaves across state lines, he said it is difficult to zero in on where to look for information on one’s family.

One of the resources Lawson used to rediscover his ancestry was the Freedmen’s Bureau, a depository of documents for freed slaves.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was a federal agency established in 1865 to help slaves freed during the Civil War locate family members.

Lawson was also able to access Census information and tax records as well as bonds for manumission to aid in his search.

The genealogy group met on July 11 at Cavalry Baptist Church in Red Bank to talk about the special challenges African Americans face when they look into the past.

“By helping each other anyone who knows more than you will help you climb over the “brick walls,” he said, which are dead ends or challenges encountered.

At the meeting, Casey Zahn, a former trustee of the Genealogical Society of New Jersey, gave a special presentation on how to read documents, focusing on the sale of slaves from one master to another. These documents are called “slave schedules.’

Lawson said he faced challenges when he tried to trace back his own family lineage.

After tracing his family back to his great-great grandparents he found it difficult to go any further as his family members who were slaves were split between two states.

Lawson was able to trace his lineage almost as far back as author Alex Haley was able to for the book “Roots: The Saga of an American Family.”

In 1977 Haley’s book was adapted into the popular ABC mini-series of the same name.

“I’m just one generation away from being as far as he is in his book,” said Lawson.

Although it is difficult, Lawson said there are two members of the group who have been able to trace their lineage back before their ancestors were slaves.

The African American Genealogy group meets every second Saturday of the month and is held in conjunction with the Monmouth County Genealogy Society, which also has several other special-interest groups.

Other groups hosted by the society are the German Special Interest Group and the Monmouth Roots Group.

The MCGS also hosts a new Irish Special Interest Group that is scheduled to have its inaugural meeting on July 25.

For more information on the African American Genealogy Group, visit www.rootsweb.ancestry.com.