Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak’s Roots World

This is the seventh in a series about the ancestry of the First Lady. The previous segments can be found here:

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: Chicago Beginnings (part 1)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: The Great Migration (part 2)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: The Great Mixing (part 3)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: LaVaughn Johnson (part 4)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: Fraser Robinson (part 5)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: Rebecca Jumper (aka Coleman) (part 6)

Like his future wife, Michelle’s maternal grandfather, Purnell Nathaniel Shields, arrived in Chicago as a youngster.  He was the second of three children born in Birmingham, Alabama to Robert Lee and Annie Shields, but before his tenth birthday, both his father and younger sister would be out of his life.  In the early 1920s, his mother Annie married a man named Frank Coleman and joined the northward trek, bringing her children with her. 

Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Purnell was a carpenter, but finding difficulty securing construction jobs, he spent much of his life churning through an impressive array of positions including laborer in a syrup factory, turntable engineer for the Northwestern Railroad (that is, one of the fellows who changed the directions of trains to make return journeys), relief worker for the city, garment worker, and building decorator.

Even though Purnell’s father, Robert, was a bit of a mystery man, more is known about the Shields branch of Michelle’s family tree than any other.  Robert’s father, Dolphus Theodore (or D.T. as he preferred to be called), was married four times (partly because he outlived several wives).  Robert was D.T.’s third child from his first marriage to Alice Easley.  He would also be the last one born in Georgia before the family moved to Birmingham.

D.T.’s mother, in turn, had begun her life in Spartanburg, South Carolina.  Born into slavery, Melvina was sent south to Georgia upon the death of her first owner, David Patterson (read more about this in the “Finding Melvina” chapter of Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing).  Shocking as it sounds to us today, his estate assigned her a price tag of $475 and doled her out to David’s daughter, Christianna Shields, to help ensure that all of his children would receive an inheritance of roughly equal value.  It was in Georgia that she encountered the white man who would father at least four of her children, including Dolphus. 

In spite of his white father, Dolphus was also born into slavery.  Like his mother who lived nearly a century, he enjoyed a generous life span of 91 years – long enough to witness the initial stages of desegregation and just 14 years shy of Michelle’s birth.  Known to be an optimist in matters of race, D.T. lived in hopeful expectation, but even today, it’s stunning to think that the life of this one-time slave overlapped with that of his great-granddaughter, Marian, who now resides in the White House.

(to be continued)

This is the sixth in a series about the ancestry of the First Lady. The previous segments can be found here:

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: Chicago Beginnings (part 1)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: The Great Migration (part 2)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: The Great Mixing (part 3)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: LaVaughn Johnson (part 4)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: Fraser Robinson (part 5)

Michelle’s maternal grandmother, Rebecca Jumper, did an admirable job of keeping her past a secret, but that’s probably because she didn’t know much about it herself.  That’s unfortunate, because hers is an intriguing history, some of which can be traced back the 1700s.  Like LaVaughn, Rebecca was the baby of her family, the youngest of Jim and Eliza Jumper’s children.  She was born in Virginia, and whether she knew it or not, had a solid wall of Southern Virginia ancestry.  

Many don’t realize that approximately ten percent of African Americans were free before Emancipation, and Rebecca’s Jumper ancestors were among them (read more about this in “The Road to the First Lady’s Roots” chapter of Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing).  Because of that, it’s possible to march back through the generations to her great-grandparents, Peter and Dolly, and their children, Peter, Syrena, Nicy, Richard, Puss, Molly, John and Kitty. 

The name Jumper itself is interesting because the family is believed to descend from a woman named Hagar Jumper who managed to obtain her freedom around 1800 on the basis of her Indian heritage.  In fact, the earliest known mention of the name pertains to a Tuscarora Indian named Tom, and dates to 1707, though the connection between Hagar and Tom is uncertain.

All of this would have been news to Rebecca, though, as her family moved to North Carolina by the time she reached her first birthday.  But that was minor compared to what happened next.  Before long, she was sent to live in Chicago to be raised by a childless aunt and uncle.  While this might strike us as odd today, child-shipping was a pronounced feature of the Great Migration.  As members of an extended family spread out to different locations, all were expected to pitch in and help each other, and child care was frequently a component.  If young parents ventured to a northern city, they often left their children behind with Grandma until they got settled, and the reverse was also true.  If a portion of the family that stayed in the South was struggling – if someone died, lost a job, was widowed or otherwise struck with bad luck – a shuffling of children would often ensue.  Of course, in some cases, it was simply a matter that the family concluded that life in the North offered better prospects (such as a good education) for a child.

Rebecca was parceled off to her maternal aunt Carrie and her husband John Coleman while she was still very young.  As a result, although she had been born into a family of at least eight children, she was raised as an only child, and it’s clear that she regarded the Colemans as her parents.  She not only assumed their surname, but also dutifully wrote their names when requested to list her parents in official paperwork.

Rebecca’s uncle/father proved injury-prone with medical woes ranging from a bullet in the wrist to a fall that occurred while working for the WPA and left him using a cane. Perhaps it was tending to him that led Rebecca to become a practical nurse, but not before she married Purnell Shields.  Among the children she and Purnell had was a daughter named Marian who would one day become known as the “First Grandma.”

(to be continued)