Sharing My Stories

When I was planning this "roots trip", I didn't see it as a production - with themes, chapters, a finale. But looking back at my 13 days in NYS, it almost looks as if it followed a script.  Throughout, I visited  places of the past: my past, my father's past, my ancestors' past. I was able to see parts of Roscoe that jogged my memory of my visits there as a child.  Parts that my father captured with his Kodak box camera - that still remain; the high school and the athletic fields, an old bank, the Presbyterian Church. I look at his photos differently now.

Stewart Ave (Main St)
 Roscoe NY 1941
Photo by Charles Williams

Then my husband and I traveled north, along the Susquehanna River - a major route of the Underground Railroad, and saw the towns where Samuel & Elizabeth Jones and Loren & Mary Rogers had settled and raised their families - Unadilla and Sidney. We saw places that played significant roles in abolishing slavery such as the Empire House in Gilbertsville NY. We visited beautiful hilltop cemeteries, talked with helpful cemetery volunteers and local historians and visited my family's graves.

And then we, along with our two daughters who joined us, attended a 2-day conference held at Hartwick College in Oneonta NY given by the USCT Institute (US Colored Troops Institute for Local History and Family Research).  I gave a presentation sharing my photo collection and my family's story, listened and learned from other presenters and participants, and was one of 6 Freedmen Descendants to be awarded a "gold medal" for family research.  Quite a finale!

The conference was great. Met many nice people, learned a lot and felt very much "a part of the family".  Thank you Mr. Matthews!