Show The Herald Journal Logan Utah Thursday November 28 2002 — D W© air© ffamOy: Pieeimg dom Many settled in Kansas Mis-souriand Oklahoma and — partly due to fear illiteracy and a lack of money — didn’t leave much of a paper trail But Burroughs who is now a professor at Chicago State University and a leading authority on genealogy was not about to let these challenges stop him “People lookat the problems rather than the beauty and richness of it” he says “I looked at Alex Haley and thought ‘If he can do it anybody can do it’ “ Burroughs began his research in 1975 after reading a newspaper article about giving thanks to your ancestors and tracing your family tree He read the piece appropriately on Thanksgiving Day The story mentioned a book on genealogy pub- By Elizabeth Armatrong The Christian Science Monitor Tony Burroughs was a sophomore at Southern Illinois University when he first heard Alex Haley then best known as the author of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” talk about tracing his family history back to Africa He's been fascinated by genealogy ever since : But when Burroughs began t researching his own family in 1975 about a year before Haley’s “Roots” garnered international acclaim he had no idea how much detective work would be involved Genealogy is always painstaking but it can be much more difficult when one’s ancestors were slaves For one thing slaves did not have surnames so the only way to identify them was by who the owner was Later segregated records inexplica- ble surnames and a deficit of written or signed contracts became obstacles most genealogists must now contend with when researching African-Americ' ancestry Before the abolition of slavery in 1860 for example almost 250000 of the 4 million slaves in Southern states had actually been granted free ' lished by the Boy Scouts which he purchased the next week A few weeks later he interviewed his mother father and grandmother “and I just got hooked on hearing those stories they were telling” It was like piecing together a puzzle he says trying to figure out what had happened and who was who The Boy Scout book suggested getting birth certificates death cer- - an togeftta' tiline face unique challenges when they try to trace their ancestral roots as Tony Burroughs learned But new tools may help African-America- ns tificates and census records which Burroughs did Another recommendation was to visit the family cemetery: There he found valuable information as well as some new mysteries “What shocked me was that there were people buried in our family lot and I didn’t know any of the names And Dad said ‘I don’t have a clue go ask ygur grandmother’ So I went to her and she only knew who one of them was” Burroughs began scrutinizing death certificates in public records and eventually learned that his and her sister were buried there along with his and “It amazes me to this day” he says “because these are my family ancestors buried where they were supposed to be and still no one knew they were there” great-grandfath- er er Burroughs interviewed his father again and learned that his greatgrandfather was from the Carolinas although he couldn’t remember if it was North or South Carolina The answer became a bit clearer when Burroughs began reading a lit- tie red notebook that his grandfather had kept The book contained notes about his grandfather's parents and children including where and when each person had been born That told Burroughs that his had been bom in Spartanburg SC After consulting a geographical dictionary he found that Spartanburg was both a city and a county But it took him 15 years to learn whether : had lived in the his city or the county er er Digging deep into the past psisft family 27 years after he began He has been able to trace his roots back to 1773 and he has discovered family members in 16 states and four countries He hopes to search even ' further back in time but documentation grows scarce in the early 1700s and very rarely crossed the Atlantic Still Burroughs who has written the book “Black Roots: A Beginner’s-Guidto Tracing the African-America- n Family Tree” (Fireside $16) insists that the most difficult part of researching African-Americ- e ances an ' try is not related to slavery It is he the 75 in that followed says years Interracial marriage was not permitted in many states until the 1950s for instance — and not until 2000 in so that there were no Alabama coumarriage licenses of mixed-rac- e few and African American of ples couplesi Similarly newspaper obituaries rarely mentioned the deaths of African-America(Lynchings on the other hand were commonly - ns reported) “The first obstacle African-Americarun into is that sometimes their ancestors don’t want to talk about the past” Burroughs says referring to ns Burroughs is still researching his See FAMILY on D6 Age 36: When can we retire? 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