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Descendants of Slaveholders and Descendants of Slaves - Collaborate on Lowcountry African American Heritage


Did your family own plantations and hold slaves in SC, GA or FL? Would you like to share documents which name the enslaved or free families who worked on your family's plantations? Please do join this research and share documents and information, photos...

Are you a descendant of enslaved or free African Americans in the Lowcountry? Please join the research effort and share your family history, photos, life experiences...

With Lowcountry Africana's new Lowcountry Genealogy and Culture forum on GenealogyWise, we would like to encourage collaborative research between descendants of all Lowcountry slaveholding families and all Lowcountry African American families.

The new GenealogyWise social network for genealogy gives us an enormous opportunity to use the reach of the Internet for a large-scale collaborative research project to rediscover family heritage in the Lowcountry. We hope you will join this research effort!

LCA

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The Ancestors are really something else...

About 14 years ago I flew in to Charleston on my way to visit friends in Conway, SC.

When we started to travel through Mt. Pleasant, I was so taken by the Gullah Sisters on the side of the road weaving Sweetgrass baskets! I ADORE them!

I made my friend stop {several times} & was entertained by the fact that when the women didn't want me to understand them, I couldn't!

They would move in & out of Geechee dialect, which only made me want to pull up a chair & stay with them!

I was in awe.

Who knew that 14 years later, I'd find myself right back in the heart of Gullah culture with LowCountry Africana?

Hmmm... I guess the Ancestors did!:-)

Luckie.
Coordinator of Georgia Records - LowCountry Africana










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Some Lowcountry Research Resources:

Freedmen's Bureau Record Guides/Abstracts: South Carolina:

Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of South Caroli... (NARA Micropublication M869)

Records of the Field Offices for the State of South Carolina, Burea... (NARA Micropublication M1910)

Freedmen's Bureau Record Guides/Abstracts: Georgia

Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Georgia Bure... (NARA Micropublication M798)

Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Re...2 (NARA Micropublication M1903)

Freedmen's Bureau Record Guides/Abstracts: Florida

Records of the Field Offices for the State of Florida, Bureau of Re... (NARA Micropublication M1869)

--- toni
Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage - What Makes it Unique?

The Lowcountry Southeast is comprised of the coastal areas of South Carolina, Georgia and extreme northeast Florida where tidal marshes made rice cultivation possible.

Many of the enslaved Africans who were brought to these areas brought with them the rice-growing skills necessary to build and maintain the massive rice plantations of the Colonial and Antebellum Lowcountry.

Those enslaved Africans also brought with them a resistance to malaria which was endemic to tidal marsh areas of the Southeast. Because planting families did not have this resistance to malaria, they spent the largest portion of the year living inland, leaving enslaved Africans with minimal oversight and thus, minimal acculturation.

It was through this isolation, and the continuing infusion of more people from the homeland, that enslaved Africans were able to retain their language, culture, beliefs and traditions. Today, those traditions survive as part of the rich Gullah-Geechee culture.

Here is a forum for exploring the traditions, foodways and history that make the Gullah-Geechee culture special and unique! Explore the many ways in which West African culture has remained very much a part of the Lowcountry way of life.

What Makes Gullah - well, Gullah? What traditions do you treasure? What are the customs, foodways, folklore and culture which permeate Lowcountry life?

We invite to share and explore Gullah-Geechee heritage in this forum!

Lowcountry Africana crew
THERE IS ALSO A HUGE NATIVE AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON THIS GULLAH GEECHEE CULTURE, so WHY DO WE LEAVE THIS ASPECT OUT?
I'd love to hear more on this aspect.
Check Out Tony Burroughs' blog entry at CNN'c ac360 blog, concerning the difficulties encountered in African American family research:

http://tinyurl.com/nbfrzb
New Article by Aaron L. Day: DNA to Africa

A new article by author Aaron L. Day has been posted on the Africana Heritage website. Aaron explains DNA testing and shares his personal experience of tracing his family's African roots.

DNA to Africa by Aaron L. Day

Hope you enjoy!

Best,
Toni
why as black americans are we only trying to trace back to Africa. Most of us carry DNA from other places : native american and european. do these ties NOT MATTER? As a black American I find it very offensive that everyone wants to tie us or stress our AFrican side. But from what I have learned our black ancestors (who many were mulatto/ multi racial) wanted desperately to be accepted as AMERICAN. There was a BACK TO AFRICA movement after reconstruction and most blacks in America wanted NO PART OF IT. We are americans but we have no NATIONAL tie to Africa. I am so tired of this.
Fair comment, Melanie! You're right. All the best, Bill Drayton.
Looking for a Garison or Jamison Durham born 1827 in South Carolina
Look at the 1880 Census for Cherokee County in Georgia - Bells Township for Jamison Durham & family.

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