Adrienne Abiodun: Part 1. Off the grid globetrotter. Enduring loss.

09/03/20 • 44 min

Adrienne discusses the need for greater suicide prevention support for military personnel after she endured losing her father, who served in the U.S. armed forces, to unaddressed mental trauma; losing her hearing at 16 years old from a car accident; how her off the grid exploration in Tajikistan’s Wahkan Valley in the Pamir mountains led to her interest in DNA testing for genealogy and a search for her heritage after having learned that her dad was not her biological father at 10 years old; beginning her career after studying video production at the Art Institute of Los Angeles; interspersing volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Romania, Ethiopia, and Kenya among jobs in mobile marketing including her walking from New York to California for Steps Across America; leaving the workforce to raise her children; enjoying playing capoeira, fitness, botanical gardens and learning Farsi in her free time; discovering the realities of using DNA tests to research genetic ancestry; becoming a professional genealogist; her family not knowing or talking about their past; how family history was lost by fleeing Mississippi for California and never returning; descending from Revolutionary War patriot Christopher Guice; and discovering lies on her grandfather's birth certificate. In the next episode, Part 2, hear about Adrienne’s findings and what happened when she contacted the leader of the Connecticut State Society Daughters of the American Revolution and told her that they descend from the same patriot ancestor and therefore her family has mixed race heritage. Read Adrienne’s biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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Previous Episode

Michelle Campbell: Part 2. John Hart’s acknowledged dual family.

In continuation from Part 1, Michelle shares the story of her ancestor’s acknowledged white city and black rural dual-family arrangement in Macon, Georgia. She talks about how she presented her lineage research findings of the prominent John Hart, grandson of Revolutionary War patriot Robert Hart, providing for her black ancestor Hettie Valentine and their children on his land in the countryside while also maintaining a white family in the city, at an impromptu gathering of 100 family members, which she coordinated; gathering the white and black Hart families together to formally present their lineage back to William the Conqueror; visiting the white and black Hart cemeteries together with the granddaughter of John Hart's second white wife; having her grandmother Beulah join the Daughters of the American Revolution at 99 years old during the COVID-19 pandemic after surviving the virus, a brain tumor from her earlier years and being shot in the head by white men during a racist attack; and her sons being members of the Children of the American Revolution. Read Michelle’s and her grandmother Beulah’s biographies at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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Next Episode

Adrienne Abiodun: Part 2. Overcoming generational shame.

Adrienne talks about how she discovered that the black man listed as the father on her grandfather's birth certificate was a lie but instead was a white man named James Moffett from 1924 segregated Mississippi; working through generational shame, anger and pain about her slave owning white ancestry; her grandfather's connection to Revolutionary War patriots; the story of how the family of George Leighton, son of her Revolutionary War ancestor Samuel Leighton, in Massachusetts, wrote him off because he married into a slave owning family in Mississippi; connecting with white relatives who shared stories of her Revolutionary War lineage; informing the leader of the Connecticut State Society Daughters of the American Revolution that they share ancestry with Revolutionary War patriot James Collins and subsequently being invited to be the keynote speaker at the state conference during which Adrienne presented their mixed race family connection; using DNA to help point toward more record sets; the variations in DNA connections versus genetic heritage versus traditional paper research; Commander James Collins's Revolutionary War service and his letter scolding the British; joining the DAR by a white Moffett cousin providing an affidavit of family relation for her application in support of his Y-DNA test results; amending her grandfather's death certificate to name his true father; giving herself permission to explore her own history; potentially caring for the gravesites of the family of her ancestor's enslavers; her brother joining The Society of the Cincinnati; taking leadership roles within the Children of the American Revolution and Daughters of the American Revolution; assisting members with DNA lineage research. Read Adrienne’s biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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