The Starting Point of My Ancestral Journey

Every Memorial Day, for many years, a group of relatives from my maternal family gathered to decorate the gravesites of our relatives. This tradition began long before I was born. My mother said she remembers decorating graves when she was a child in the 1950s. We would wake up early, eat breakfast quickly, and then head to my Aunt Leona and Uncle Clayton's house where everyone else gathered and they would lead the car caravan to the cemeteries. We placed flowers on DOZENS of resting places around the Kansas City area. Always starting with the cemeteries in Missouri, ending with the cemeteries in Kansas, and by late afternoon we would all head home to eat barbecue.

As a little girl, I didn't pay much attention to who occupied those gravesites. I knew to be respectful of the cemeteries. Not stepping or leaning on the headstones. Most of us children just wanted the honor of placing the flowers on our relatives' graves, many had died years before we were even thought of. Every year, stories were told about these relatives as we decorated their graves. Like I said, I hadn't paid attention at first... until one year at about the age of 12, I did.

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

"She was your great-great-great-great-grandmother," Aunt Sister said while pointing to me, my sister, and cousins. "And lived to be 104 years old!"

Our eyes widened upon hearing four "greats" and even wider when she mentioned her age. 

My grandmother Honey, Aunt Johnetta, and Aunt Leona confirmed what Aunt Sister told us. Then they told us that Rosie had been an enslaved person. When they were young, they remembered Rosie having flashbacks of her master beating her. She had several children and lived to be 104 years old. From that moment, I wanted to learn more about my family tree. 

The following Memorial Day, I wrote down all the names who's gravesites we visited. I believe the list ended up having between 40-50 names and 8 cemeteries. Sometime later, my mother and I went to a library in Independence, MO that had a genealogy section and she found quite a few records about some of our relatives. It was exciting, but we had a long journey ahead of us. When I was in 8th grade, one of my assignments was to create a family tree and write about our ethnic background. I couldn't wait to show off mine! The longest branch on my mother's side started with Rosie, yet there were still many branches to discover. As for my ethnicity, all I knew was that I was Black (or African-American) and that I had relatives from Louisiana, so I possibly had French-Creole ancestry and likely had Native American ancestry. It would be many years before I was able to confirm by DNA Ethnicity breakdown through Ancestry and 23andMe.

Over the years, that list of decorated gravesites grew and the turnout for our Memorial Day tradition slowly declined. After I became an adult, we no longer had my PawPaw's and Uncle Clayton's helping hands and tools. They were the ones who raised the headstones after they had sunk too low into the ground. Sometimes placing bricks under the stones. My grandmother and great-aunts knew the location of each grave and took turns handling the bundles of flowers to be placed. As they aged, those duties passed on to my mother and her first cousins, then eventually to their children and grandchildren. One year, because the number of graves had grown so long, we split the duties of decorating graves. Those of us who lived in the KCMO area decorated the Missouri gravesites, while those of us in the KCK area took care of the Kansas gravesites. Several years later, my family and I moved out of state, far from our hometown. No longer able to participate in the family tradition. It's one of the things I miss most about Home. However, I am grateful for the time spent with my family and everything I learned from my elders, not just on Memorial Day.

My genealogical research has been quite interesting over the years. I don't consider myself an expert, as I still have so much to explore. I have no idea where this blog is going to take me but I plan on sharing as much as I can while learning along the way!

My niece walking between the headstones at Leavenworth National Cemetery. (2013)