Betcha didn't know I'm part Irish...
Yup, on my great granddaddy's side. #facts
For St. Patrick’s Day ☘️, I told everybody on LinkedIn about how I found out that my dad’s mom was biracial. Can you imagine being born bi-racial in 1927? Sounds, well, kinda effed up to me. But maybe I’m projecting…
After all, I’ve lived my life thinking I was as close to Blackity Black Black as the imperfect union of America has to offer. That’s because my grandmother NEVER told me about her dad until literally 3 years ago. What a plot twist!
In 2020, just months before she died, my grandmother told me that her father was Irish and, although she never grew up with him, she knew his last name and roughly where she was born in the Tripoint (where Alabama, Florida, and Georgia meet). I started an online search that lasted for months and led me to find my great-grandmother’s grave site and a few people with similar last names as my estranged great-grandpa. I’m a research scholar, but I have to say genealogy is a whole ‘nother level of excruciating. After about 6 months, I stopped searching for one Irishman in a 1900s Jim Crow haystack. But, I think I’m ready to take another crack at it…
In 2020, I wrote “A Fly in the Buttermilk” for Rogue.ie and I think I’m ready to revisit this story — my story — again. Wish me luck! I think I’m going to need it.
If anybody has ever done their own family history or genealogy work, please let me know your lessons learned, best practices, and suggestions. I’m going to need my modern-day, tech-savvy village as I try to uncover secrets about my ancestors…
Here goes nothing!