Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak’s Roots World

Several years ago, I conducted extensive genealogical research into the heritage of Michelle Obama.  A few of my discoveries – particularly those pertaining to the Shields branch of her family tree – made news a couple of years ago, but there’s much that I’ve never shared, so I’ve decided to blow the dust off of a video I made back in August 2009.

This is a simple, homemade video – a narrated PowerPoint – and subsequent research has revealed more than what’s included here (for more insight, please read this recent, seven-part series and/or the “Finding Melvina” and “Road to a First Lady’s Roots” chapters of my book, Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing), but I hope you’ll enjoy this overview of the remarkable family history of our First Lady.

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)

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: Purnell Shields (part 7)

     

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)

This is the fifth 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)

It’s providential for Michelle’s sake that LaVaughn ever met Fraser C. Robinson, Jr. because he would have much preferred to never leave the South.  “Bird of passage” is a term used to refer to an immigrant who never intended to remain in America.  Rather, these were typically men who came here planning to earn enough money to go home and be the richest man in the village.  While that might have an opportunistic tinge to it, underlying these intentions was simply a strong attachment to home.  These were individuals who loved the place of their birth and the extended families that nurtured them there.  Consequently, round trips were a key element of their lives.  Though he was a migrant rather than an immigrant, this term applies to Fraser.

Georgetown, South Carolina was the center of his universe.  Little wonder, given that the Robinsons had been living there for generations.  Although it’s doubtful he would have chosen to do so, he could have wandered down the road to see the slave cabins (still standing today) on the land where his grandfather Jim Robinson once toiled.  But his father, Fraser Sr., a one-armed kiln operator, had taught himself to read and succeeded in carving out a decent living for his family.

The oldest of ten children born to Fraser and Rosella, Fraser Jr. was the proverbial big fish in a small pond where he came from.  Widely regarded as a gifted student and speaker, he might have had greater opportunities in life had he not reached the brink of adulthood just as the Great Depression hit.  He tried his best to make it in Georgetown working for a local lumber plant, but when it closed in 1932, his prospects diminished considerably.  For Fraser, the Great Depression would become the reason for his participation in the Great Migration.

Though many from the Carolinas found themselves drawn up the East coast to New York or Philadelphia, Fraser opted for Chicago for the company of fellow Georgetowners who made it their second home.  He was particularly close with the Funnye family, headed by a widow who also hailed from Georgetown.  Her four children joined the same Ben Billiken branch as the oldest sons Fraser had upon marrying LaVaughn, and perhaps because the link to home meant so much to him, he helped ensure that the Funnyes actually became family when he introduced his kid sister Vernelle to the widow’s youngest son, Capers.  They married and had a son, Capers C. Funnye, Jr., who probably surprised his South Carolina elders when he grew up to become a well-known rabbi.  But then again, Georgetown is home to the second oldest community of Jews in South Carolina with a presence extending back to at least the 1760s, and Fraser’s own mother was born a Cohen with rumors of a Jewish ancestor or owner in her past.

For employment, Fraser worked for the WPA during the Depression and later enlisted for a three-year stint with the Army.  After this, he settled into a job with the U.S. postal service, where he would remain for 30 years until his retirement in 1974.

At that point, after roughly four decades in Chicago, he finally returned to Georgetown to live out the remainder of his years.  This longed-for homecoming for Fraser triggered the visits to South Carolina that Michelle would later recall punctuating her youth.  

(to be continued)

This is the third 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)

 

Among the half million African Americans who moved to Chicago during the Great Migration were a number of Michelle’s relatives, and they hailed from Alabama, Mississippi,  Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and the southern part of Illinois.  In fact, of all the southern states, only Florida, Arkansas and Texas did not hold a piece of her family’s past.

In a sense, the Great Migration could also be considered a “great mixing,” and Michelle’s ancestry includes as much diversity as anyone’s.  With the exception of individuals of recent African or Caribbean origin, most African Americans have deep roots in America extending back several centuries.  Enslaved Africans were brought to America as early as the 1620s and almost all were here by 1825, so family trees typically reach back 200-400 years on this continent.  In spite of this, by the time the Great Migration began, there were still pockets of what might be termed African homogeneity in the South. 

It’s a harsh reality that some slave traders and owners had regional preferences.  For instance, many in South Carolina and Georgia preferred slaves from the rice-growing region of West Africa (roughly the coastal area stretching from Senegal down to Liberia) because they were regarded as being better suited to the climate and work, as well as more resistant to malaria.  As a result, it was possible for the majority of slaves associated with a particular plantation or locality to have roots that would, if we had the means to follow the trail, trace mostly back to present-day Sierre Leone, for example (DNA testing now provides at least some prospects in this regard.).  When the descendants of these somewhat insular communities joined the steady stream of traffic heading north, it was inevitable that they would meet, mingle and marry people from other states who sported different backgrounds – and that’s before factoring in the white and Native ancestry many also carried.  Consequently, the Great Migration produced a considerable mixing of everything from traditions to gene pools.

Michelle is very much a legacy of both the Great Migration and the inherent mixing that accompanied it.  In fact, it’s almost as if an unseen force reached down with impressive regularity – at the rate of a branch of her family tree per decade – to scoop up another eventual ancestor from the South to bring to Chicago.  It also happened to be a ladies-first situation with her future grandmothers’ families leading the way. 

The parents and half dozen older siblings of LaVaughn Delores Johnson, Michelle’s paternal grandmother, were the Chicago pioneers, arriving in the first decade of the twentieth century and bringing with them a mélange of Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee roots.  Her mother’s family had resided in Illinois (though not Chicago) since the 1860s, while her father spent his early days in Louisiana and Mississippi.  Second on the scene was her maternal grandmother, Rebecca Jumper.  Virginia-born, but taken to North Carolina as an infant, Rebecca was sent North in the 1910s to be raised by an aunt and uncle.  Next up was maternal grandfather Purnell Shields who came from Birmingham, Alabama with his mother, sister and step-father in the 1920s.  His mother Annie was the only great-grandparent Michelle would actually know, and Michelle and her family would eventually live in the second floor apartment of the home owned by Robbie Lee, Purnell’s sister.  Though this family came from Alabama, their heritage extended back through Georgia and ultimately to South Carolina and Virginia.  Bringing up the rear of this decade-by-decade migration was Fraser Robinson, the grandfather whose surname would become Michelle’s maiden name.  Born and raised in South Carolina, Fraser made his appearance in Chicago in the early 1930s.  Last to arrive, he was also the only one to return to the place of his birth, retiring to his hometown after 40 years of cold winters.

The merging of these assorted branches came about through the marriages of LaVaughn to Fraser and Rebecca to Purnell – and of their children, Fraser III and Marian, some decades later – but each limb of Michelle’s family tree arrived in Chicago with its own past and created a bit of history there before Michelle was born.  What follows is a brief introduction to the cast of ancestors who would unknowingly bequeath not only their DNA, but also a combination of their habits, beliefs, aptitudes and hopes to a future First Lady. 

 (to be continued)