With great sorrow I am sharing the unfortunate news that Kalonji’s grandmother passed away yesterday, August 6, 2014. Lovingly called “Mama Frances,” she was nothing but the kindest and sweetest person you’d ever want to know. We named our daughter Kaleya after her, giving her the middle name of Frances, so whenever we’d go to […]
Rest in Peace Mama Frances Read More »
In my ongoing mission to seek the paternal lineage of Kalonji’s great-grandfather, Champ McClellan, I am another step closer tonight. My suspicion is that Champ is descended from a white slaveholder of his family – William Blount McClellan (1798-1881) – I like to call him “WB.” Thanks to the generosity of one of WB’s direct-male descendants,
McClellan DNA Mystery Step 1 Read More »
I have a goal to do a DNA comparison test this month. There are two individuals I want to test so that I can find out if they descend from the same male ancestor – one is black (Person A) and one is white (Person B). My primary genealogical research leads me to believe there
Which Test Do I Use? Read More »
Continuing my posts on our 23andMe testing, I continue with a brief description of Kalonji’s Ancestry Painting and what we’ve learned from it. The Ancestry Painting is a feature of 23andMe that shows an analysis of the 22 non-sex chromosomes we inherit from our parents. The result is a beautifully colored image that illustrates DNA
23andMe Results: Kalonji’s Ancestry Painting Read More »
Researching my husband’s potential McClellan slaveholding family has been an ongoing research process for me. This week, I have an exciting potential lead for our wish to do DNA comparisons. On Wednesday I was contacted by a white McClellan descendant – turns out that she is a 2nd great-granddaughter of General William Blount McClellan
McClellan Connections Read More »
This post continues my posts describing our family vacation from August 1- 7, 2009. On our last day in Talladega during our family vacation back in August, we also took some time to visit the church of Kalonji’s great-grandfather, Champ McClellan. Champ was a minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church and his daughter, Kalonji’s grandmother, is
Great Ebenezer Baptist Church Read More »
This post continues my posts describing our family vacation from August 1- 7, 2009. Wednesday, August 5th was supposed to be our last day in Talladega for our family vacation last month. But, we decided on Tuesday that we’d stay another day. Well, instead of leaving on Thursday, we didn’t leave until Friday. Why? Because
This blog post continues the recounting of events from our family vacation of August 1-7, 2009. In my last post, I described visiting the home of General William Blount McClellan, the residence of my husband’s ancestors down in Talladega, Alabama. The next day, after our trip to Birmingham to the Civil Rights Institute and the
Another Antebellum House Read More »
I’ve had some difficulty posting to my blog, but it looks like I’ll have success tonight. In my last post, I talked about my research at the Talladega Public Library. After leaving the library on the Monday afternoon of our family vacation, we went back to our hotel, had pizza and relaxed for awhile. After
Visiting the Plantation Read More »
Earlier last week I posted about Day 1 of our family vacation at the beginning of the month and what we did on Day 1. Day 2 we spent on the road all day as we drove from Indiana to Alabama. Day 3 was much more interesting in terms of genealogy. We went to Talladega,
Research in Talladega Read More »