Researching family history means relying on ledgers, deeds, census records and government documents. You show these sources in the act of creation, pausing to investigate their flaws. What do you recommend to those facing the same gaps or silences in the historical record?
The Trouble of Color is a story about how we become families, as well the stories we tell about being a family. Each generation had its stories, and they changed over time. I came to see how family letters, interviews, legends and even photographs were more than facts; they were themselves stories. With this, I could see how others wrote down stories about us: on birth and death certificates, census returns, on deed ledgers, and even in history books. These, too, were more than facts.
What I’d say to other researchers is this: Don’t take what you discover at face value, even on an official-looking form. Instead, dig for what is underneath the words on a page: the who, where and why of how those words got written down. There you will find the rest of your story.
Silences nearly stopped me from writing in some moments. And then I learned how to let myself imagine what might have happened. How, for example, had my great-grandmother Mary Jane Holley Jones, nicknamed Jennie, come to think that she, though born enslaved, was the granddaughter of New York real estate magnate John Jacob Astor? She told that story about herself many times, and it was all I had to go on. I first filled the silence with my own imagination, working up a hypothesis or two. Then, I returned to the archives with an openness to finding clues that might let me connect the dots. When I finally wrote Jennie’s story, I let readers know that I was inviting them into my imagination and then shared what I’d found. You’ll have to decide for yourself about my retelling of Jennie’s life, one that doesn’t rely only on a paper trail.