Another’s roots lead to revelation
Writing about Colonial America’s first enslaved Africans, reporter discovers her own ancestors
LUANDA, Angola – It was well past midnight, but I was still wound up.
That day, I’d stood in the doorway of a slave trader’s house where, centuries ago, Angolans were forced onto ships that never returned. It felt like a boulder was stuck in my chest.
Still, I had work to do. I scribbled details in my reporter’s notebook – visitors wiping tears, shackles displayed behind glass cases, fish sizzling on glowing coals, children skipping along the sand.
At one point, I got caught up, swinging my hips and shuffling my feet in the dirt, dancing to local music with Angolans who swore I was one of them.
“Maybe I am,” I thought, then kept on dancing.
But later, in the quiet of my hotel room, I sought the answer. I knew my ancestors were from Africa, but where? Was I at home in Angola?
A few weeks earlier, I had taken a DNA test. That night in my hotel, I searched for an email with the results. It popped up. My heart jumped.
My search was sparked by an assignment from USA TODAY to write about a family in Hampton, Virginia, that believes it descended from the first Africans brought to the English colonies in 1619. If their claim is true, they are connected to a founding American family, heirs of a legacy history has ignored.
I was in Angola to chronicle Wanda Tucker’s journey to the country where she believes her ancestors lived. For many African Americans the search for family roots can seem out of reach. Oral history was – and still is – a major link to our past, but the paper trail can go cold.
I was brought into the story late in the process, but things happen for a reason.
This spring, I joined a conference call with editors and colleagues. When the editors mentioned the name of the family we were featuring, I thought, hmm. My late grandmother’s name is Ernestine Tucker. Then they mentioned the Tuckers were from Hampton. My grandmother’s people were from a place near Hampton.
I mentioned these coincidences to my colleagues. Maybe you should take the DNA test, an editor suggested.
What if I was related to the family I was writing about?
Family story untold
On a drizzling June afternoon, I walked with Wanda Tucker and her cousin Walter Jones under huge oak trees in the Tucker family cemetery in Hampton. They pointed to headstones that dated to the 1800s. They explained how the cemetery had become a symbol of their family legacy.
For Wanda and Walter, believing they are descendants of the first Africans here meant reclaiming a piece of stolen history. It afforded them some celebrity and tremendous pride.
So as I interviewed the Tuckers and pored over their photo albums, I quieted the part of myself that wondered about my own origins.
But that night, in a hotel room not far from the cemetery, I called my oldest cousin on my Tucker side. Selidia Juniis-Johnson is 76 and lives in New York.
I asked her about her grandfather – my great-grandfather.
She told me his name was Edward Thomas Tucker. He owned a farm, was a shoemaker and helped build a school for “colored” children.
He was also a Baptist preacher, and a strict one. He and his wife had 10 children, including my grandmother, who was a twin.
I learned more from that two-hour conversation than I probably would have at any family reunion. Unlike my mother’s side of the family, I don’t remember the Tuckers hosting reunions.
Finding more felt like a daunting task. Records weren’t always kept for African Americans. Some were lost or destroyed. For years, the census didn’t even name them.
Despite challenges, more African Americans have launched searches, turning to DNA tests, musty court records and libraries, hungry for information.
“People want to be connected to their origins,” Mary Elliott, curator of American slavery at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, told me.
Until a month ago, I didn’t know the names of some of my forefathers right here in America, nor where my ancestors came from in Africa. I wasn’t sure I could trace much of my family history.
I was wrong.
The local search
In a brightly lit room at the Library of Virginia in Richmond, my sister Selina and I opened metal cabinets and took out cartridges with information about births, marriages, deaths and deeds.
One by one, we carefully loaded the microfiche. On reel No. 40 of the Virginia marriage records, we confirmed Edward Thomas Tucker, my great-grandfather, married Lucy Stokes on Dec. 30, 1903.
On reel No. 13 of the old birth index, we learned that Edward, who was listed as colored, was born to Jack and Mary Ellen Tucker in Nottoway County.
Other records showed that Edward had filled out a WWI draft registration card in 1917-18.
We cheered when we found the maiden name of great-grandmother Lucy’s mother, Martha Marrick.
There were moments when we just sighed. Some records from 1863-64, just after the Emancipation Proclamation, flashed “Missing.”
In an earlier search of the 1880 census, I found Lucinda Hardy, who was born about 1790, listed in the household of my great-great-grandfather. We’re guessing she was enslaved. I stared at the screen and almost cried. What would her life have been like?
The next day, at the Prince George County Courthouse, we squinted through pages of huge ledgers with fancy cursive writing.
In one transaction on Oct. 26, 1914, Edward and Lucy sold “one (1) acre, more or less’’ for $75.
The year before they sold land to the Norfolk & Western Railway Co. for $200.
We marveled at how, with little education, they were wheeling and dealing.
Cousin Selidia said the Tuckers had once worshipped at the Lebanon Baptist Church, and greatgrandfather Edward may have been a preacher there.
So Selina and I headed for Disputanta, a rural community south of Richmond. We spotted the red and white church marquee: “Lord keep our children safe.”
We knocked. No answer. We searched the church cemetery for Tuckers. Nothing.
Tapping the elders
Interviewing elders is key to capturing family history “so it’s not stuck in some attic somewhere,’’ Lisa Elzey, senior family history researcher at Ancestry, told me.
For many African Americans, oral history has been the strongest link to the past.
Today, more African Americans are also taking DNA tests, but experts agree chromosomes tell only part of the story.
Runaway slave ads can provide names and descriptions. Church records often list members. Experts also point to ship manifests and wills of slave owners.
“You have to be like ‘CSI,’ ” said Elliott. “You have to be this investigative person to really start putting together the pieces of the puzzle.”
Putting my DNA to the test
I didn’t know I’d have to fill a vial with my spit for Ancestry.
Later, I rolled six swabs across the inside of my cheeks for AfricanAncestry.com.
Weeks later, in that hotel in Angola, I stared at my Ancestry results via email.
❚ Benin/Togo: 32%
❚ Cameroon, Congo and Southern Bantu: 25%
❚ England, Wales and Northwestern Europe: 14%
❚ Mali: 12%
❚ The rest was a mix of Ivory Coast/Ghana, Ireland, Native American.
After I returned to Washington, I opened a package from AfricanAncestry.com, showing I shared maternal genetic ancestry with Tikar and Hausa people in Cameroon.
My results matched my DNA with samples from people in present-day African countries. Cameroon and Angola are not far from each other.
I’d traveled 7,000 miles to chronicle Wanda’s search for her roots, and the whole time, mine was somewhere in the same global neighborhood.
The road north
I only knew my cousin as Sonny, but his given name is Edward Tucker, after his father and grandfather.
At 74, Sonny is the oldest male Tucker. He and Selidia are the only living grandchildren of Edward and Lucy. My father, William Barfield, their first grandchild, died in 2009.
The way Sonny tells it, his father – nicknamed Eddie – got fed up with farm life in Disputanta and his strict preacher father and fled to New York.
By the 1930 census, Eddie was living in an apartment in Brooklyn, where he worked as a porter. His sister, Dorothy, had joined him.
The Tuckers were part of the migration of millions of African Americans who left a harsh life in the South, particularly after the Civil War and during the Jim Crow era, for enticing promises in the North.
The Tucker siblings also ended up in New York City. They owned beauty salons and corner grocery stores. They drove taxis. My grandmother cleaned houses, saving enough to buy a five-story brownstone.
My great-grandmother, Lucy, eventually followed her children to New York and lived with my grandmother.
Edward Tucker had stayed behind in Virginia. I went to look for him.
Search for Edward
The rows of gray headstones seemed to fade into the woods. At the Evergreen Cemetery in Richmond, Kelly Pratt armed me with gloves and a mask so we could search for Edward Tucker’s headstone.
I had searched for days for a death certificate, but my only lead was found online, and I wasn’t sure this Edward Tucker was the right one.
This Edward Tucker was senile when he died in 1956. He was a preacher. He was also born around 1878. He was buried at Evergreen for $25.
The 60-acre cemetery is the resting place for thousands of African Americans and is dotted with yucca plants old folks believe keep spirits at rest.
For hours, Kelly and I swiped cobwebs, skirted poison ivy and watched for snakes.
No Edward Thomas Tucker.
But I wasn’t discouraged.
Nearly two months after launching my search, I’ve learned the names of my great-great-grandparents. I understand how my family ended up in New York. I know where my ancestors came from in Africa. I visited the town of my grandmother’s people. I reconnected with elders in my family.
Cousin Selidia wants a family gathering. “This is the time for coming home.”
The long wait
We waited for weeks for DNA results from AfricanAncestry.com that would tell whether my Tucker family was related to Wanda’s.
The testing required a male from each Tucker line. My cousin Sonny and Wanda’s brother, Vincent, agreed to take the test.
The call came last week while I waited for a session at the black genealogy conference.
“It’s a match,” Simone Jones, director of data analytics, told me.
I didn’t react. I had to be sure Jones understood what I was asking and that I understood exactly what she was saying. I repeated the question, read back her response.
Somewhere along the line, she said, Edward and Vincent share a male relative. We might never know where that connection happened because the results cover 500 to 2,000 years.
I hung up, took a minute, then cried. There was so much to absorb.
The story I stumbled into by luck or divine intervention wasn’t just another story, it connected to my own. That means I spent 10 days on the road in Angola with a woman I didn’t know I was related to. By the end of that life-changing adventure, we had bonded like family.
That means when Wanda landed in Angola, feeling alone, longing for family and asking for a hug, her prayer was answered. I had hugged her in the airport.
That means my cousin Selidia was spot on when she had texted “actually Wanda looks a lot like you.”
I didn’t know whom to call first. My editors, who had pushed back publication of this story to wait for the results. My cousin, who took the DNA test. My sister, who joined the search. Or my newfound relative. I called Wanda.
“Hello, cousin,” I said.