OPRAH AIN'T GOT NUTHIN ON ME!

Except for wealth, fame, fortune, power...

But, I digress.

Last year - or, was it the year before? I became engrossed in a program where Oprah and a few other black folks put their family trees together, along with providing some DNA samples in order to get blood quantums. Riveting stuff eh? At least i thought it was.

Well, even before that program aired, I've been heavily involved in reconstructing my own family history. Its a labour of love, and i've run into many a brick wall. However, there's nothing as satisfying as scaling that wall and getting the information you really need. As its black history month, i figured I'd share a little piece of my history with yall.

My great-great-great grandparents

These are my great-great-great grandparents. Aaron and Laura Ragin. (Nee' Martin.) He was born in 1831, she entered the world in 1864. Yes, she was quite a bit younger. lol In fact, Laura's father was born the year prior to Laura's husband. Her husband and father were the same age! Why her daddy let that old man marry his daughter is beyond me. Why she would agree to marry someone that much older is equally unfathomable. Perhaps there were extenuating circumstances. Or, maybe my great-great-great granddaddy was a smooth operator. A Sean Connery type.

The photograph was taken about 1905.

Laura was Aaron's third and final wife.(hm..maybe there is something to the smooth operator thing after all.) All together he had about 22 children. Laura being the mother of 10 of them. Aaron was Mulatto, his mother half white and half native, his father half white, and half black. Laura was Native American.

Though he was born before slavery ended, he was never a slave. Don't ask me why - it just was.( I also have record of his father, his father's father and his father's father's father).

My Grandmother actually remembers Laura - which is awesome. Unfortunately Laura died when my grandmom was only about 8, so the memories she has are those of a child. According to my grandmom, Laura was a "mean Indian woman", with a stoic personality.

The original of this portrait is in my grandmom's care - i have only a lowly copy - and it hangs in a place of honor in her great room. She's already told the family that when she passes *MY* mom gets the picture. Yay!

I guess i was a weird kid, because all through my growing up years, whenever i'd get around my elders I'd drill them for information about the family. Who was whom? And how are we related to them? Where did they come from? Stuff like that. I'm sure it was annoying at times - and maybe even appeared fresh on my part - but, to my recollection, no one seemed to mind. Of course - i was a kid, so i may have been oblivious to their irritation.

They patiently would sit and tell me things; stories, anecdotes, whatever - and i'd soak it all in like a sponge. My mom told me she did the same.(Inherit the weird?) Now that i'm an adult, i'm glad i was a pest. As the older ones die off, there is less of a direct connect to the near past. And the stories, if not told, are lost, and the people in the photos are just that, people in photos. The stories are what make them real.

I'm fortunate to know, and - to have known - my grandmother, great grandmother and great-great grandmother. My great great was born in 1892 and died in 1988. There's a picture of the five generations -me, my mom, grandmother, great grand, and great-great grand - that was taken when i was a baby. Its dope. That, too, belongs to my grandmom. But yeah...All of them were victims of my relentless interrogations lol.

My grandmom has tons of other pictures, many on tintype and other forms of early photographic medium, that she's accumulated from her mother and grandmother, and whenever i go down south to visit her, its the same thing:

"grandmom, can i look @ the pictures?"

She dutifully pulls them out, and we pore over them for hours. Once again, i'm asking who this that and the other is, and more recently my question is "are they still living?" More often than not, the answer is no.

I'm hoping that she'll leave those precious photographs to me, but i don't know. She has five other children, excluding my mother, that would probably fight me to the death over them. lol

My great grandmom(she died 1n 1994) has a cousin who was born in 1914 and is still living. My grandmom is making arrangements for me to talk to her!

Family history is a thing of beauty. If you have access to family elders, i suggest you talk to them. Pump them for info. Be they direct ancestors or aunts, uncles and cousins. All of them can provide vital pieces to the puzzle.