SNGF -My Ancestral Birth Chart

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver.   The challenge is to create a five or six generation ancestor chart that shows your ancestor’s birthplaces .

As I was looking at the ancestral birth charts on Randy’s Genea Mussings  blog, I was struck by the participants ability to identify 5 generations.  I took note of the various countries labeled; and the flow from one generation to the next.  It appeared with each generation born, the families would settle in a different state.

Knowing my ancestors basically remained in one country or one state.  I had second thoughts about developing and sharing a birth chart.  Simply put, my ancestors’ birth place is either the US Virgin Islands or Savannah Georgia.  Shaking the family trees has not yet produced five generations.  Still, I decided to join the fun and create my ancestral birth chart.

The five generations chart of my maternal lineage begins with an ancestor that was born in Barbados, who settled in the Danish West Indies; to the descendants of my generation, who were born in New York.

The five generations chart of my paternal lineage begins with ancestors born Georgia or  in the low country of South Carolina, settling in Savannah Georgia; to the descendants of my generation, who were born in New York.

The 1917 transfer of the Danish West Indies to the Virgin Islands of the United States played a significant role in the migration of Virgin Islanders to the city of New York. Change was in the air; our people saw the same opportunities in the North as southern blacks, who were leaving states below the Mason-Dixon Line en mass.  In creating the chart I recognized, both paternal along with maternal ancestors all had a common goal: making their lives and the lives of their families better in an environment that promoted freedom and possibility.