TRACING MY ROOTS
USING GENEALOGY TO FIND MY MATERNAL GREAT GRANDMOTHER
NARCISSA P. (BROWN) REESE
CHARLOTTE (MILLER) BACKEY
The Beginning of my search for family through Genealogy began with my first meeting of the Washtenaw African American Genealogy Society (WAAGS). My sister Pearl and my brother William had both shown some interest in the past in genealogy but didn’t really have the time or the resources to pursue it. A family picnic that ended up with us connecting with our only living Aunt on my father’s side of the family is what was the catalyst for my decision to try and connect our family with its roots.
Jean Winborn, a Ypsilanti Library Board member and a founding member of WAAGS, invited me to attend a genealogy meeting. I invited my sister and brother to come from Pontiac. The meeting was held in the Ypsilanti library. At our first meeting we received a thick packet of forms and information that allowed me to dive right into my family history research.
My brother and I both decided to take a DNA test with Ancestry which gave us a free 6-month subscription to the Ancestry website. This helped me connect with four new additional members of my extended family who helped me begin to build my family tree. This culminated in finding out brand new information about my maternal great-grandmother, Narcissa Reese Brown and her parents.
Black Americans have a much harder time tracing their genealogy because of the lack of official records before slavery ended. There are few complete records before the census of 1870 that identifies our ancestors with any consistency or accuracy. When I got back that far I hit what is commonly known as the ‘brick wall’. Using the tools and resources I received at the WAAGS meetings and things I learned in Jean’s WCC class on African-American Genealogy, I was able to make a significant break through.
PEARL (REESE) RIVERS
JUANITA
RIVERS
EARLINE
MILLER
CHARLOTTE
MILLER
WILLIAM DAVID
MILLER JR
PEARLINE
MILLER
WILLIAM DAVID
MILLER
NARCISSA (BROWN) REESE
FOUR GENERATIONS OF FAMILY - MILLER, RIVERS, REESE, BROWN
Juanita (Rivers) Miller� (Mother)� 7/6/1922 – 6/27/1993
Juanita Rivers, my Mother, was born and grew up in Franklin, Tennessee. She was the youngest of four children of Pearl and Thomas Rivers.
She moved to Pontiac Michigan at 19, to get a job in the car industry at Pontiac Motors. That is where she met and married my father, William David Miller from Virginia, in October 1947. They had 4 children which included my brother, two sisters and me. She worked for Pontiac Motors for 33 years until she retired in 1975.
Juanita Rivers Miller
BIRTH 19 Jul 1922
DEATH 27 Jun 1993 (aged 70)
BURIAL
Oak Hill Cemetery
Pontiac, Oakland County, Michigan
MEMORIAL ID 88630274
Pearl (Reese) Rivers�(Grandmother)�11/11/1878 – 12/09/1982
Pearl Reese, my Grandmother, was one of four children of Narcissa and Daniel Brown. She was born in Franklin, Tennessee. She met and married Thomas Rivers on December 30 of 1902. Pearl was married at least twice and had four children, Katie Jane, Charles Floyd, Mary E. and my mother Juanita Reese Rivers.
Pearl lived a long life and moved to Nashville, with all the rest of her family, after her husband Thomas died in 1958 and that is where she passed away.
Marriage License
Thos Rivers
to
Pearl Reese
I solemnized the
Rite of Matrimony
between the within
named parties on the
30th Day of December 1902
Signed: Linzia Winstead
Williamson, Tennessee
Pearl Reese Rivers� December 9, 1982
This obituary was listed in�“The Tennessean” the�local newspaper in Nashville, Tennessee that has been in publication since 1909, almost 114 years. Daily circulation is almost 95,000 and on Sunday it prints over 213,000 copies.
Birth: | Nov 11 1878 |
Death: | Dec 1982 |
Last residence: | Nashville, Tennessee 37208, USA |
SSN issuing state: | Tennessee |
Source: U.S. Social Security Death Index (SSDI)
Pearl Rivers (Grandmother)
�
Pearl Rivers was the mother of Juanita Rivers Miller.
She was born in Tennessee and lived to be 104 years old.
Narcissa (Brown) Reese � 10/20/1862 – 12/23/1947 � (Great Grandmother)
Narcissa Brown was born a slave on October 20, 1862 on the Enoch Brown Plantation in Franklin, Tennessee, where her family worked picking cotton. She was one of six children. When slavery ended in Tennessee in 1864, her family moved out of the slave quarters, but according to the 1870 census they didn’t move far. That census shows that members of the family continued living close by and continued to work the land. She met and married Daniel Reese, from the same plantation, on October 26,1876.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
Marriage Certificate of Narcissa Brown and Daniel Reese - 1876
USING CENSUS RECORDS
NARCISSA (BROWN) REESE, MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER
In the 1880 Census records of Narcissa Reese:
In the 1900 Census Pearl Reese is listed with her parents and is 19 years old.
In the 1910 Census Pearl (Reese) Rivers has married and is listed with her husband
Tom Rivers.
In the 1930 Census Pearl Rivers’ daughter, Juanita Rivers (my mother) is 8 years old.
Although there was an estimated twelve to thirteen million Africans transported to the Americas as slaves, only about 6% were actually sent directly to British North America. (About 12 -15% were lost in transit.)
In 1790 there were almost 700 thousand slaves in the US. That was equivalent to approximately 18% of the total population, or roughly one in every six people. By 1850 most slaves in the U.S. were third, fourth, or fifth generation Americans because the U.S. passed a law that prohibited the importation of slaves from abroad in 1807.
By 1860, the final census taken before the American Civil War, there were four million slaves mostly in the South, compared with less than 0.5 million free African Americans in all of the US and they lived mostly in the North. This meant that before the end of the war, there was an 89% chance for an African American to be held in slavery.
The American Slave Market
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 collected more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery from former slaves. These narratives were collected as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration (WPA). This project was timely because most of the African Americans that had been held in slavery were in their 80s and slowly dying off. A set of edited transcripts was assembled and microfilmed in 1941. This online collection can be found in the Library of Congress.
I was able to break through one of my ‘brick walls’ when I went back over the 1940 Census records of my Great-Grandmother Narcissa. That record indicated that she, also known as ‘Naisy’, was a part of the Slave Narratives Project and I was able to find her actual interview.
Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narratives (Batson-Young)
Interviewer: Della Yoe Subject: Naisy Brown
SLAVE NARRATIVES PROJECT
U.S. INTERVIEWS WITH FORMER SLAVES 1936-1938
CITATION: Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the U.S. from
Interviews with Former Slaves; Vol XV; State: TN; Page 64
The Slave Narrative gave me lots of new clues in my pursuit of the history of my Great Grandmother Narcissa (Naisy) Brown. It listed not only her parents, Randall and Polly Brown, but just as important, her Slave owners, Enoch and Mary Brown.
Enoch Brown’s census records indicated:
In 1830 he owned 1 slave and in 1840 he only had 2.
In 1849 Brown purchased Randal and Polly Perkins-Brown
(Narcissa’s parents) with 3 others from William O. Perkins.
In the 1850 U.S. Census Slave Schedule Brown had 21 slaves.
Narcissa Brown, the fifth child, was born in 1859.
In the 1860 U.S. Census Slave Schedule Brown had 31 slaves.
Slavery ended in Tennessee in October 1864.
Enoch Brown amassed a fortune over the years based on land he purchased and slave labor. He paid taxes on 1,436 Acres in 1866.
.
The 1880 Census led me to the former plantation, known as the Glen Echo Estate, where Enoch Brown, slave owner, and my ancestors lived. The Slave quarters were located in the back of the land and were eventually destroyed and cleared out when slavery ended.
The Main house, that remains, was built in 1828 and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. In 1996 the estate was sold to the Battle Ground Academy, a prestigious private College Preparatory School, and is used as an Administration Building. Classrooms and dorms were built behind the main structure where slave housing once stood.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA
Glen Echo Homestead (former home of Enoch Brown & Family)
located in Franklin, Tennessee in Williamson County.
African American: Bills of Sale
Record of Randal Brown
Source: Williamson County Deed Book T. , page 225 on January 30. 1849
In 1849, Randal, 22, and his wife Polly were two of 5 slaves purchased by Enoch Brown from W. O. N. Perkins for two thousand dollars. They were sold with their daughter, one year old Molly. The other two slaves in this group were two young girls, Matilda and Mildridge.
Slaves often took on the surname of their slaveowners and Polly is listed on several different documents as Polly Bradley, Polly Perkins and then Polly Brown. All three of these surnames belonged to known slaveowners in the Williamson area. After her sale to Enoch Brown, she remained on that property with her husband Randal until emancipation and they retained the name Brown.
African American: Census
1880 Census record of Randal Brown, District # 110-110-6
Randal’s mother was born in VA. The others on this census record were born in TN. Randal’s daughter Narcissa lived next door with her husband Daniel Reese. Another daughter, Melvina, married Thomas Southall and also lived close by. This information was gathered from Molly Kinnard Burns, grand daughter of Melvina and Thomas.
Molly Burns also participated in a special exhibit of African American Photography that was put together for the Williamson County Public Library in 1998 by local historian Thelma Battle. Molly contributed photos of her parents and other information on the Brown family.
��African American: Photo Index��This is a photo of Melvina Southall, sister of Narcissa Brown. This laser copy was made from a tin-type photograph in the late 1800s.��
Local (Williamson) grass-roots historian and genealogist Thelma Battle spent many years compiling photos and information on local African-American families. This information is catalogued and available for research in the Special Collections Department in the library’s database.
�
Melvina Brown Southall�(1852 – 1934)���
This is another, clearer photo of Narcissa’s sister Melvina that I found on a family member’s site. I have yet to find an actual photo of Narcissa.
African American Photo Index:��From the Thelma Battle African American Photo Collection - 1998
This photo of Tom Southall, husband of Melvina Brown, (who is the sister of Narcissa Brown) was taken circa 1890. His family gave this photo for a special exhibit that was held at the Williamson County Public Library.
OCTOBER 20, 1862 – DECEMBR 23, 1947 ( Narcissa was at least 85 years old.)
Narcissa� Reese��This obituary was listed in the local paper�“The Tennessean” � in Nashville, Tennessee.
December 25, 1947
RESEARCH SOURCES
BILL OF SALES, THELMA BATTLE PHOTOS
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