Genealogy site helps find enslaved ancestors
Montgomery County project helps area Black families research past
Growing up in Montgomery County and throughout his adult life, Waymon Anderson often wondered about his ancestors.
He began to research his family line after retiring and discovered he was connected to Robert “Lil Bob” Culpepper and Eliza Culpepper, who were enslaved at Greenwood Plantation in Danville, a now vanished community in northern Montgomery County.
His maternal great-greatgreat grandparents were listed in a slave log kept by the owner’s son, Green M. Wood.
“Some of the things the slave log contained gave me a new-found respect for all my ancestors had to endure,” said Anderson, 63, of Conroe. “Lil Bob and Eliza and some of their children traveled by foot and wagon train from Alabama to New Orleans and then on to Galveston. From Galveston they traveled by foot and wagon train to Danville where they arrived at their new home the Green Wood plantation.”
A new project from the Montgomery County History Task Force is now trying to help other families link to their ancestors who were enslaved in the area.
“Linking African American Families in Montgomery County, Texas” was presented for the first time March 4 at the TexasConnect@rootstech genealogical conference in Salt Lake City.
The database will be the model used nationwide by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its genealogy website, FamilySearch.org, to help other Black families connect to their ancestors.
The project started during the pandemic when task force president Ann Meador was at home researching records to see if there was a database for slaves at each plantation in Montgomery County.
She knew it would be an enormous effort and that’s where the network of LDS volunteers came into play.
A task force member with ties to the church arranged for help from volunteers across the state.
Volunteers started with the Greenwood Plantation because Wood kept such detailed notes to report back to his father in Montgomery, Ala.
“This was exceptional and very rare that it survived,” Meador said.
“He talked about his slaves, named them, what he paid for them, when their children
were born, when they died and what of.”
How LDS helped
For the project, 30 to 50 LDS volunteers began to trace the family line of the 123 enslaved persons listed at Greenwood Plantation. It is the task force member’s hope to link the plantation owner to the slaves on the property.
The goal for the researchers is to work through family lines from before the Emancipation Proclamation to the 1950 census.
Cindy Cheney, who is on the task force and affiliated with LDS, estimates Montgomery County had roughly 75 plantations before emancipation.
She said the three largest plantations — which included Greenwood — were in northern Montgomery County centered around the now vanished Danville community. Nothing remains of Greenwood today.
The research paints a picture of the Black community during this time frame and explains how the group of slaves from Greenwood are now linked to Thomas Chapel United Methodist Church and Rest Haven Cemetery in Willis.
Cheney said the 1870 census offered very little for Black families doing research. This was the first year freed Blacks were counted in the census.
“You might find an ancestor, but you don’t know where they were or where they came from because there were no records of births and deaths. It just wasn’t done,” she said.
That information was only recorded by the slave owner, if it was recorded at all, and it was rare for the records to survive through the years.
Searching got harder after emancipation since many of those freed from slavery chose a new last name, Meador said.
Tracing his roots
Anderson traced his roots through documents and records and the family search site Ancestry.com.
He took an Ancestry DNA test and also researched the work of the late genealogist Elsa Vorwerk.
On her site, he found the Greenwood ledger and read it closely, discovering interesting stories about his ancestors.
He was able to trace Robert Culpepper’s origins back to the state of Georgia and Eliza’s to Virginia.
Culpepper was a driver on the plantation, making deliveries to towns like Galveston, Sour Lake and Huntsville.
He also discovered the slaves at Greenwood did not leave the plantation until late December 1865.
He believes news of the Emancipation Proclamation did not reach them for another six months after word came to Galveston.
Culpepper’s oldest son, Alexander or Aleck, fled the plantation in October 1865.
“I do feel like I have closure, but not much,” said Anderson, who retired in 1998 from the Navy after a 20-year career.
Anderson hopes to compile his research into a book.
“My advice to young people is to ask those questions and talk to the older folks,” he said. “The research continues for me. I’m telling and passing down my family history and I’m glad others in my family are taking an interest also.”