AfriGeneas: From Africa to the Americas

I stumbled upon an excellent resource recently for African American family history research: AfriGeneas (pronounced: A · fri · GEE · nee · as). Users submit information that they have on their family members into searchable databases, allowing African Americans to search Census records, death records and obituaries, marriage records, photos, and even some slave records for their ancestors. There are also discussion forums, places to list or search for family reunions, and a "Lunch Bunch"--an online chat group that meets Monday through Friday from noon to 1:30pm.

The best resource that I have found on AfriGeneas is the Surname Database. By typing in a surname, you can get a listing of all of the people who are also searching for that surname on AfriGeneas. I was able to make contact with a distant cousin who is related to me through my great-great-great-grandfather, Daniel Booker, by searching for Bookers in Alabama on AfriGeneas. What a miracle!

AfriGeneas is free to use, and you can also submit your own information for others to search. It is an excellent resource to help those of us with African ancestry "climb the 1870 'brick wall.'"

Check out AfriGeneas by clicking here.

The Tie That Binds

Today is a good day. After much research and many phone calls and no luck in getting Interlibrary Loan to send me genealogical materials, I finally found a copy of Casey W. Arnette's The Tie That Binds: A History of the Alpine Baptist Church for sale. It just came in the mail. The next closest copies of this book are in Macon, Georgia and Auburn, Alabama (over 500 miles away), and now I have the information at my fingertips! What a blessing.

So I would like to offer to do lookups for other people, because I realize how difficult it is to get a copy of this book. I am particularly interested in doing lookups for people who are doing research on African-American ancestors, but I will look up names in the index for anyone. My husband is also in the process of trying to contact the author/descendants to see if there is any way that this material can be digitized. (We would be happy to do it!)

So if you have stumbled on this blog in search of this book and would like a look-up, post a comment with your email address and I'll do what I can.