Tracing ancestry can be easier than you think

Rowe and Woods, who with Jane Taylor Thomas of Fort Washington authored ‘‘Black America Series: Prince George’s County, Maryland” in 2003, said they researched their own families as far back as their great-great-grandfathers despite starting from scratch.

‘‘I went five generations on the paternal side,” Woods said. ‘‘I started with nothing but my great-grandfather’s name. All the other stuff I got was through research.”

Woods said when she started researching her family history in 1973, she first went to the National Archives.

‘‘The first place I went to was the census records,” she said. ‘‘Census records are crucial because they give details where people lived, how old they were, what they did for work. In the 1870 census records, I found my paternal great-grandfather, Walter H. Williams, then a 23-year-old schoolteacher from Canada. His parents, Reason and Marinda Williams, fled slavery in Virginia and settled in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada.”

The next stop, she said, was searching the Freedman’s Records archived under the Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees established with a March 1, 1865 act of Congress.

‘‘That’s where pension, hospital, military and banking records of black soldiers can be found,” she said.

Many options are available when researching family members who were slaves, Rowe said, including court minutes, the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules, cohabitation records, manumission records or deed of freedom, plantation records and pension records.

Family Bibles, church records, oral family stories, land records, tax records, census records, court records and family trunks and attics also can help unravel the genealogy mystery, Woods said.

Old family photographs also can be extremely helpful. But Rowe said for photographs to have any meaning they must have names and when they were taken written in the margins.

Just talking to friends and neighbors are excellent sources of finding information, Rowe said.

‘‘If you have a secret, they have no qualms about telling it to others,” she said.

Newspapers also can shed light on long lost information, Rowe said. She said during her interviews she came across a person who discovered an ancestor mentioned only once in a newspaper.

‘‘He had raised the biggest pig,” Rowe said.

Referring to the wealth of information on www.ancestry.com, Rowe said the Internet has revolutionized the study of genealogy.

DNA testing also can be useful when trying to find long lost relatives.

‘‘But the downside of the Internet is that it can lead to isolation, the information is not always accurate and names can be terribly misspelled,” she said.

John Patterson, chairman of the Accokeek Development Review District Commission, lauded the work being done by Rowe and Woods for the community. The two women, along with Thomas, Nathania Branch Miles and other local genealogists, have worked hard to keep people interested in their backgrounds by lecturing and making presentations at workshops.

‘‘The state of Maryland should recognize them because they are providing a valuable service to the community,” he said.

Joan Smuck, a community activist in Accokeek, said the presentation provided her with a basic knowledge of research in genealogy.

‘‘They use examples of their own lives and personal anecdotes,” Smuck said.

Frank Kahan, a member of the Greater Accokeek Civic Association who lives in Simmons Acres, found the lectures interesting.

‘‘Some people think their histories may not be easy to find, but if you do a little research you can get it,” said Kahan. ‘‘Nobody dropped out from the sky. Everybody has been documented in some fashion or form.”

Family history

The following are some tips given by local historians about researching family history:

Dig into family attics, trunks

Interview elderly members

Retain family bible

Check Freedman’s Act records at National Archives

Locate land as well as tax, census and court records

Join genealogy groups