get these nets
Veteran
https://www.goerie.com/entertainmentlife/20190331/genealogist-finds-family-old-fashioned-way#
Armed with research from DNA submission to ancestry.com and good old-fashioned research, an Erie woman traced her family’s roots.
The aroma of stewed apples and sausage quiche greets me as I step inside the Glenwood kitchen of Gwendolyn White, a civic leader known for her work with the United Way of Erie County, the Greater Erie Community Action Committee and the Erie County Convention Center Authority.
For more than three decades in her adopted hometown of Erie, White, 65, a native of Lexington, Kentucky, has helped to lift people out of poverty, encourage diversity and inclusion, foster a love of learning, and bring people together around Erie’s most pressing problems. Her commitment to service stems from her deeply held belief: we are our brother’s keeper.
She’s also the keeper of her family history, a role she was born to accept. “We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and there will be those who stand on our shoulders,” said White. “There is joy to be found in knowing who you are, where you came from, and what that means to future generations.”
Today, serving spoon in hand, she’s watching an episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots” in which Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates presents former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan with some surprising news: based on his DNA and records from Ellis Island, he’s a descendant of Ashkenazi Jews and penniless immigrants from Germany and Bavaria. Ryan, who always thought of himself as Irish, just about fell over.
White’s genealogy journey includes a DNA submission to ancestry.com and good old-fashioned research to trace her family’s roots. It has led to some surprising discoveries, too.
Her grandfather, Cleve Singleton, was a mechanic with the Red Devils, the famed Tuskegee Airmen stationed in Italy during World War II.
Clues to a 1906 murder, an abandoned baby found near a Lexington slave auction, and the whereabouts of a long-lost cousin are stories waiting to unfold through careful detective work.
Listen: This day in history
White’s quest has taken her across the ocean to West Africa and back, to cemeteries, church basements, historical societies, courthouses, online databases, and family reunions where she records interviews with family elders and shares her latest finds in an exhibit she calls a “walking museum.”
Master memory maker
In West Africa, the name given to traveling storytellers who preserve ancestral voices, experiences, and traditions is “griot” (gree-oh). I can picture White in a kaftan woven with threads spun from her colorful past.
“It’s been my mission all along. Even as a 10-year-old I would take notes on scraps of paper and tuck them inside my diary,” said White, over steaming mugs of her favorite tea. “I was always interviewing family, friends, and neighbors looking for the human side of history. As the years went on, I found myself the holder of information that people in my family gave to me.”
In order to validate stories with facts, White devotes many evenings, weekends and vacations to what has become a second career. By day she works fulltime at Erie Insurance as an underwriting manager.
Given that her genealogy research fills dozens of binders and boxes and populates a formidable family tree on ancestry.com, I’m not sure when she finds time to sleep, let alone volunteer in the community. Still, she laments at the many missed opportunities to interview family members who’ve passed on.
Though White is exploring 11 different family lines, she’s narrowed her focus to her mother’s side of the family, the Gatewoods, for which she has a wealth of archival material and personal experience. The family will celebrate its 73rd reunion this summer.
(full article is continued at the link at top of post)
Armed with research from DNA submission to ancestry.com and good old-fashioned research, an Erie woman traced her family’s roots.
The aroma of stewed apples and sausage quiche greets me as I step inside the Glenwood kitchen of Gwendolyn White, a civic leader known for her work with the United Way of Erie County, the Greater Erie Community Action Committee and the Erie County Convention Center Authority.
For more than three decades in her adopted hometown of Erie, White, 65, a native of Lexington, Kentucky, has helped to lift people out of poverty, encourage diversity and inclusion, foster a love of learning, and bring people together around Erie’s most pressing problems. Her commitment to service stems from her deeply held belief: we are our brother’s keeper.
She’s also the keeper of her family history, a role she was born to accept. “We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and there will be those who stand on our shoulders,” said White. “There is joy to be found in knowing who you are, where you came from, and what that means to future generations.”
Today, serving spoon in hand, she’s watching an episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots” in which Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates presents former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan with some surprising news: based on his DNA and records from Ellis Island, he’s a descendant of Ashkenazi Jews and penniless immigrants from Germany and Bavaria. Ryan, who always thought of himself as Irish, just about fell over.
White’s genealogy journey includes a DNA submission to ancestry.com and good old-fashioned research to trace her family’s roots. It has led to some surprising discoveries, too.
Her grandfather, Cleve Singleton, was a mechanic with the Red Devils, the famed Tuskegee Airmen stationed in Italy during World War II.
Clues to a 1906 murder, an abandoned baby found near a Lexington slave auction, and the whereabouts of a long-lost cousin are stories waiting to unfold through careful detective work.
Listen: This day in history
White’s quest has taken her across the ocean to West Africa and back, to cemeteries, church basements, historical societies, courthouses, online databases, and family reunions where she records interviews with family elders and shares her latest finds in an exhibit she calls a “walking museum.”
Master memory maker
In West Africa, the name given to traveling storytellers who preserve ancestral voices, experiences, and traditions is “griot” (gree-oh). I can picture White in a kaftan woven with threads spun from her colorful past.
“It’s been my mission all along. Even as a 10-year-old I would take notes on scraps of paper and tuck them inside my diary,” said White, over steaming mugs of her favorite tea. “I was always interviewing family, friends, and neighbors looking for the human side of history. As the years went on, I found myself the holder of information that people in my family gave to me.”
In order to validate stories with facts, White devotes many evenings, weekends and vacations to what has become a second career. By day she works fulltime at Erie Insurance as an underwriting manager.
Given that her genealogy research fills dozens of binders and boxes and populates a formidable family tree on ancestry.com, I’m not sure when she finds time to sleep, let alone volunteer in the community. Still, she laments at the many missed opportunities to interview family members who’ve passed on.
Though White is exploring 11 different family lines, she’s narrowed her focus to her mother’s side of the family, the Gatewoods, for which she has a wealth of archival material and personal experience. The family will celebrate its 73rd reunion this summer.
(full article is continued at the link at top of post)
just now, doing what you said but I can't find his wife's history/record even though I know her maiden name
. I noticed I've ran across 4 difference spellings on my maternal grandma's, mother's, first name
Now, I need to check into her parents
), and stumbled across 3 ancestors who were Civil War vets. Also the grandpa I was talking about in this post/thread
......I haven't got too far back yet in his branches but so far, his roots are still mainly South Carolina and some from Maryland that I never knew about.