Tag: General

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Life has settled….

….a little. Life changes constantly whether you want it to or not. Since my last post, I have moved, maintaining our family database, started working on scanning pictures, maintaining the family website and generally keeping busy.

The life changing event is the move. Don’t really want to elaborate but, I believe everything happens for a reason.

Now that I seem to have a little more time on my hands, and the projects are well on their way, I can get back into my research. I took a few months off because I was feverishly trying to get our first family newsletter out (Cousin Connections) by the first of December. Mission accomplished! With the help of family members on input and editing, the newsletter went out and the feedback has been great! The next issue is scheduled for March 2009.

We also have an ISSN. For those of you who don’t know, an ISSN is a unique 8-digit number used to identify print or electronic periodical publications. The benefit of having this is, our newsletter will be available for generations to come.

I may have created enough buzz with the family that they have started looking for the cemetery off of Mill Pond road. Heard it thru the grapevine, that some family members have actually taken pictures of some headstones at other cemeteries. I’m excited and hope to see those soon.

Thanks to Wendy who tagged me. I didn’t get a chance to complete it, but I appreciate being tagged and that I was still thought of during my hiatus!!

I plan on taking a research trip in February (depending on the weather) to Elizabeth City. This will be my first one and I’m excited about doing hands on research. Maybe I can find the court records that put my 2nd great grandmother, Cora Spence, in jail.

I don’t want you to think that I disappeared. I’m still here and will be in genealogy mode full force come the beginning of the year.

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Contacting the Living

Since my family reunion, I haven’t done much genealogy research. With economic stresses in my life, my mind hadn’t been too focused on genealogy. However, it has been focused on family.

I started a family newsletter. The first one will be sent out in December 2008. I’ve requested an ISSN for the newsletter so the Library of Congress will keep each issue on record. I figure future generations will have something to look back on.

I have also been contacting the living. We have a large family but we barely know each other. More importantly, we barely see each other. There are cousins that I have never seen. Well, these past few weeks, I have been calling those family members. Of course, every phone call begins with “Hi, this is A. Spence, I’m the great granddaughter of Bessie” just so they know who I am.

I’m so glad that I have done this. In the beginning I truly thought that I was going to have resistance to the phone calls and questions. But, everyone that I called has been forthcoming with information. Not only that, they have been so giving with other ‘living’ family members #’s and addresses. Everyone seems to love the idea of uniting the family and hopefully in the coming years, well the most distant of cousins coming to the reunions.

But, I believe the happiest thing was finding out that I have a cousin in FL. All these years, thinking that my family and my uncle’s family were the only ones in FL, I learned that I have a 3rd cousin living about 4 hours from me. She doesn’t know me and I don’t know her but we talked for a while last night.

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I’m still here!

Hello,

I haven’t blogged in a while but I wanted to let you know that I’m still here. I’ve been a little stressed about my job lately due to the current market. My company was bought by another and I won’t know the status of my position until December 1st.

So, with that, I haven’t had the push to do research although I feel my ancestors invading my daily thoughts about it.

Anywho, just wanted to say HELLO and I’m still here.

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Changing my Surname

I have been debating with this issue for some time. My fiancé and I intend on getting married in the near future. However, I haven’t decided whether or not to take his last name.

I have lived with mine for 30 years. Why change it because of marriage? Granted I do like the nostalgia of it, however, I don’t want my path lost. I am a Spence and do I really want to change my name to someone else’s surname? What about mine? Is my surname so unimportant that I have to get rid of it? I don’t belong to him. Marriage is such a partnership but most of the time, women is expecting to take on his last name. Let me stop before I get on my feminist soap box.

I didn’t have the foresight of giving my children my surname when they were born. I wish I had. However, they do have an Ethiopian middle name that will be my families naming tradition.

Back to the subject.

What do you think? Should a woman change her name to her husbands upon marriage?

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I heart you too!

YAH!!!!! I love being linked on blogs but to top that off, Msteri at Heritage Happens nominated me for the “I heart your blog”! Thank you Thank you Thank you. When I started this a few months ago, my goal was to saturate the internet with Spence-Lowry information. I’m glad to make some GF’s (Genealogy Friends) along the way.

Now for the rules.

The rules associated with this tag are as follows:

1. Can put the logo on his/her blog
2. Must link to the person who gave the award
3. Must nominate 7 other blogs and link to them
4. Must leave a comment on each of the nominated blogs

And the 7 blogs are:

Our Georgia Roots by Mechie
George Geder
Sasha’s Roots by Sasha

Geneablogie by Craig
All My Branches by Wendy
AnceStories by Miriam
Thanks for this nomination, I will wear it proudly on my blog chest!!!!
Now, I’m off to let the others know I heart them too.

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Final Project Completed!


I just finished the poster that I’m doing for my family reunion. I almost felt like it was a school project that I better get an ‘A’ on!!

Hopefully my family will appreciate this and enjoy it. Better yet, they’ll open up and hand over some stories and photos.

One question though..Should I add something like ‘Completed by A. Spence’?

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DONATE TO AFRIGENEAS!

All I have to say is this: You have a Ancestry, Footnote, etc.com account that you’re paying $XX.XX per month for. However, if you are African American/black and have used the Afrigeneas website, you should donate. It is the most valuable place on cyberspace that black people have. To keep it going and keep connected with other researchers, we need to donate.

You can even have them link you on the sponsor’s page so that I will help promote your website/blog.

Afrigeneas will keep you connected with everything from Adoption to Writing. With the amount of visitors the site has, it doesn’t have nearly enough people donating. I just wanted to encourage anyone that was ‘thinking’ of doing so, to go ahead and do it.

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You could help….

Now, I’m not asking for much. Just a little cooperation on your part. *smile*

  • Your voice mail must say “You have reached the descendants of Aaron Spence, please leave a message”
  • Your e-mail signature should read “Our ancestors are African American”
  • You’re required to have a 3 generation family tree on hand at all times.
  • Know where your precious photos are and who they were given too.
  • Scan them (at 600 dpi) before you hand them over to anyone.
  • Do not put tape on the front of the photo…PLEASE.
  • Stop claiming fake cousins – it’s nice and all…but..very confusing.
  • Attend the family reunion.
  • Give out your #. We are not telemarketers..we’re family.
  • Everything is important, even that lil note you had from auntie such-n-such on the proper method of baking a pie.
  • When I say send all pictures, I really do mean all.
  • Tell me the whole story at once. No need to revisit with you 4 times and get 4 different versions.

That is all….for now….

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American Legacy

One day, in a search for ‘African American Magazine’, I came across American Legacy. I had never heard of this magazine before and loved that it was for us. Not about Lil Wayne or Puffy. But about the little known black people in history that made a difference. I loved it.

After going thru the site, they have a family reunion page for you to list your family reunion. Of course, I listed mine. However, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, there is a link for ‘Family Reunion Sample’.

What they do is offer a discount subscription for the attendees. I thought that was awesome. So, I sent an e-mail to the person. This was about 2 months ago.

Today, when I came home I had 6 boxes at my front door. In each of the 5 boxes contained 40 copies of their magazine.
In the last box, contained about 250 or so copies of an actual family tree with our names printed on it and 250 copies of family group sheets.

I am so happy about this!! Do you know how much printing this saved me?!?!?!?!

Thank you American Legacy.

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Word of the day: Griot

I have never heard this word before today. Thanks Mechie for the new word.

I love to Google things I don’t know and of course when I read her comment on my other blog, I googled this word.

Griots are West African Story Tellers of family histories of a tribe. Now, when I read that, I thought “I’m mostly East African since my mom is from Ethiopia” But as I read further, the first person on the list of griots on Wikipedia is an Ethiopian man by the name of Ayalew Mesfin. And he seems to be the only Ethiopian listed.

Then I searched for him, and came across Ethiopiques. I’ll be ordering this CD for my mom when I get home.

My search also took me to this website, African American Griots. I never knew this existed. But, I quickly submitted my blog and surname info so I can be listed. As George Geder always says, “Guided by the Ancestors”. This is a definite case of that.