How Memorial Day Sparked My Love of Genealogy

Every Memorial Day, for many years, a group of relatives from my maternal family gathered to decorate the graves of our loved ones. This tradition began long before I was born. My mother remembers decorating graves as a child in the 1950s. 

We would wake up early, eat breakfast quickly, and head to my Aunt Leona and Uncle Clayton's house, where everyone gathered before forming a caravan of cars to visit cemetery after cemetery. We placed flowers on dozens of graves throughout the Kansas City area, always beginning in Missouri and ending in Kansas. By late afternoon, we would head home tired, dusty, and ready for barbecue.

As a little girl, I didn't pay much attention to who rested beneath those headstones. I only knew that cemeteries were places where we showed respect. We weren't allowed to step on or lean against the headstones, and most of us children simply wanted the honor of placing flowers on our relatives' graves, even those who had died many years before we were born.

Every year, the adults shared stories about our relatives as we decorated their graves. At first, I barely listened. Until one year, around the age of 12.

It was at Blue Ridge Cemetery (or Blue Ridge Lawn Memorial Gardens) in Kansas City, Missouri, where I remember listening to my Aunt Helen a.k.a. "Sister" telling us about Rosie Williams:

We were at Blue Ridge Cemetery (now known as Blue Ridge Lawn Memorial Gardens) in Kansas City, Missouri, when my Aunt Helen, whom everyone called "Sister", pointed toward me, my sisters, and my cousins and told us about Rosie Williams.

"She was your great-great-great-great-grandmother," Aunt Sister said. "And she lived to be 104 years old!"

Our eyes widened when we heard four "greats" before grandmother, and even wider when she told us Rosie's age.

My grandmother Honey, Aunt Johnetta, and Aunt Leona all confirmed what Aunt Sister had said. Then they shared something that stayed with me forever.

Rosie had been enslaved.

They remembered that when they were young, Rosie would sometimes experience flashbacks of her enslaver beating her.

As I grew older and began researching my family history, I learned even more about her life. Rosie was born around 1830 in Baltimore, Maryland, and was likely born into slavery. By 1870, she was living in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, with four of her seven children. She later moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where she lived until her death in 1934.

Rosie Williams (seated in the center), photographed with her son, Andy Holder (right); granddaughter, Anna Holder (far right); and two unidentified women. Rosie was born around 1830 and lived to be approximately 104 years old. This photograph is one of my family's most treasured pieces of history.

The following Memorial Day, I brought a notebook with me.

I wrote down every name from every grave we visited, along with birth dates, death dates, and any notes I thought might be important. I believe my list eventually included around 50 names from eight different cemeteries.

Not long afterward, my mother and I visited a library in Independence, Missouri, that had a genealogy section. Together, we discovered records about several of our relatives. It was exciting, but we quickly realized we had only scratched the surface.

When I was in 8th grade, one of my assignments was to create a family tree and write about my ethnic background. I couldn't wait to show off mine. At the time, the longest branch on my mother's side began with Rosie, although I knew there were many more branches waiting to be uncovered. As for my ethnicity, all I knew was that I was Black (African American) and that my family on my maternal side had roots in Louisiana. I wondered if I had French Creole ancestry and was told by some relatives that there might be Native American ancestry somewhere in our family tree.

It would be many years before DNA testing through Ancestry and 23andMe helped answer some of those questions.

Over the years, our Memorial Day tradition continued, even as our family changed.

The list of graves we decorated grew longer while the number of relatives able to participate slowly grew smaller.

After I became an adult, we no longer had my PawPaw's and Uncle Clayton's strong hands and tools. They were the ones who lifted headstones that had slowly sunk into the ground, sometimes placing bricks beneath them to keep them level. My grandmother and great-aunts knew exactly where every grave was located and carried the bundles of flowers from one resting place to the next. As they grew older, those responsibilities passed to my mother and her first cousins, and eventually to my generation.

Eventually, the list became so long that we divided the work. Family members living on the Missouri side of Kansas City decorated the Missouri cemeteries, while those living on the Kansas side cared for the Kansas graves.

Several years later, my family moved out of state, far from the place I had always called home. I could no longer participate in the tradition that had sparked my love of genealogy.

It's one of the things I miss most about home.

Still, I remain grateful for those Memorial Days spent alongside my family and for everything my elders taught me. Not just about the people buried beneath those headstones, but about the importance of remembering them.

Genealogy has taken me on an incredible journey over the years. I don't consider myself an expert; there is still so much left to discover.

I have no idea where this blog will take me, but I'm excited to share the stories I uncover, the lessons I learn, and the remarkable people whose lives helped shape my own.

My niece walking between the headstones at Leavenworth National Cemetery in Leavenworth, Kansas. (May 2013)