San Diego Field Trip: The Whaley House!

Imagine this: You’re all the way across the country on a work trip, it’s your last day away from home, and you have a good few hours to pass until you have to head back to the airport. So you pop onto the website of the local historic district to see if there’s anything of interest, and, holy crap, there is! There’s a historic house with your name on it. Literally.

 

Sounds far-fetched, right? But that’s exactly what happened to me this past Friday, the last day of a work trip to San Diego. You see, that city’s Old Town - known as the birthplace of the state of California - is the site of a building called The Whaley House.

A Washington Weekend: Family, Photos, and Old Family Homes

In my last post, I mentioned that I needed to plan a trip back down to Washington, DC to return some family history materials that had been loaned to me for digitization. Well, last weekend, we made it happen!

And who do I mean by “we?” Well, it wasn’t just me and the cousins I’d hung out with on my last visit (Barney, Shelia, and LaVerne) – it turned into a bit of a family affair. Not only did my mom come down with me, but my Aunt Sandra joined us, driving down from NY to Philly and then completing the ride with us. 

My mom and my aunt, on a bench in a park by their old stomping grounds in DC.

 

A Treasure Trove of Family and Community History

Family, I‘ve been in genealogy heaven for a little over a month now, and I have to tell you why! (Or, at least those of you who haven’t already been cornered by me. Sorry/Thanks!)

 

ONE stack of funeral programs from the Willie Mae Davis Allen Genealogical Collection, generously shared by Cousin Barney Allen.

Back in February, I had to head down to DC for a work event. Now, I love visiting DC for so many reasons – the museums, the libraries and archives, the architecture, the history, and just strolling through some of the fun and funky neighborhoods. But one of the best things about visiting the city is that I have family there, and a lot of it. You see, my mom was born in DC, and through her mother, father, and step-mother, there are cousins upon cousins upon first- and second- and half- and step- and twice- and thrice-removed cousins there. So, when I head down, I’ll often make an effort to hang with family.

Semi-Successful at Arlington National Cemetery

Memorial Ampitheater and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery. Photo Credit Below.

Last April, I had the opportunity to visit Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, VA to attend an event connected to one of my favorite aspects of my job: meeting members of Black descendant groups tied to the early history of our nation. In this case, I was heading down to attend a public ceremony at Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, commemorating the ongoing reconciliation work being done between descendants of the Lee family and descendants of the enslaved Black men, women, and children who labored for them at Arlington House. They have titled themselves the Arlington House Family Circle, and it is absolutely worth looking up what they have been up to.

Working Wednesday: When Our Ancestors Show Up in Unexpected Ways

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, Jr. was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. What does this have to do with the blog theme I’m posting under today, Working Wednesday? 

A memorial to President Kennedy in the 1963-64 Yearbook of Fairmont H.S., Griffin, Georgia. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project.

Well, across the nation, millions of students sat in their school classes, oblivious to what had happened until someone broke the news to them. And in a classroom at Fairmont High School in Griffin, Spalding County, Georgia, the person who broke the news was my maternal 2x Great-Grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper's niece, Beuna Nell Crew.

Beuna Nell Crew in the 1963-64 Yearbook of Fairmont H.S., Griffin Georgia. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project

How do we know that? Because in 2017, the Griffin African American Oral History Project interviewed siblings Cheryl Head Rashied and Raymond Head III. A recording of this interview and its transcript were placed online as part of a larger set of Oral History Collections held by the University of Georgia University Libraries.

Here’s what Ms. Rashied recalled:

“I think everything was all well in my world until maybe 1963, and that was the year that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And I can remember my biology teacher making that announcement to the class. And she came into the biology lab and said, "The President has been shot," and I thought this is the most terrible thing, how could the president of the United States be shot? And she was quite disturbed by this fact. And so I can remember quite distinctly walking home that day thinking that if this can happen, anything can happen, anything terrible. My world seemed to be changed in a sense. And maybe right about that time in 1963, we started to have this upheaval all across the country in terms of civil rights. But up until that time, my mother and my father -- I would say we were maybe sheltered from most of the woes of the world, and we had a happy childhood” [Time markers 00:04:00-00:09:00].

When the interviewer asked who the biology teacher was that Ms. Rashied had mentioned, she replied, “Ms. Crew…. Ms. Beula[sic] Crew, C-R-E-W. Yeah, she was the biology teacher.”

 *     *     *

What a powerful - and terrible and moving - memory to have. And how amazing that it 1) is connected to our ancestor, 2) was recorded and transcribed, and 3) has been made accessible to the public? I feel incredibly lucky to have come across it.

Photo Friday: Miss Crew, Master of Her Domain

Beuna Nell Crew, 1964-65 Fairmont H.S. Yearbook, Griffin, GA. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin Spalding African American History Project.

Earlier this week I posted about my maternal relative Beuna Nell Crew, who taught at Fairmont High School in Griffin, Georgia for almost twenty years. Thanks to the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project Facebook page, its founder Mike Kendall, and his work digitizing Fairmont’s yearbooks and other school material from 1948-49 through at least 1970, I have access to (and permission to use, within reason) a treasure trove of pictures illustrating Beuna’s time at the school.*

Working Wednesday: Beuna Nell Crew at Fairmont High School

(This looks like a long one, but there are lots of photos!)

Beuna Nell Crew was the daughter of my 2x Great-Grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper’s younger sister, Lula (Scott) Crew. She was a graduate of Spelman College, with a degree in Biology, and, like her mother – also a Spelman grad – she’d taken her education and decided to pour in back into her local communities as a teacher.

1959-60 Yearbook of Fairmont H.S., Griffin, GA. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project Facebook page. (See Note Below.)