Esau Family SC, Crooms NC, Smith VA

My wife Peggi and I had a wonderful time at the Esau Family Reunion in Freedom Park in Charlotte in May 2023. I showed how FamilySearch could be used by their group. My research added names going back to 1800 and set the stage for research and memorials for their enslaved ancestors.

Lisa Crooms is a genealogist for the group. The big surprise we found out on FamilySearch is that Peggi is her 9th cousin through a White man named John W Oakes and Black woman named Catherine Smith in Spotsylvania VA. They were born in 1847 and 1866. They were not allowed to marry legally so they got by otherwise. One of their children was named Joseph Smith (coincidentally the name of the founder of our church that provides FamilySearch).

Thanks to two young women serving missions here we put together hearts with family names, a rainbow 🌈 of crayons, and “5 cents and no thanks” history cards named for runaway slave ads where owners apparently wanted to free the enslaved and avoid stifling laws.

Also showed my Green Flake and Abraham coloring book with 24 illustrations by our granddaughter Destany Fritzler.

Then we found Nero Crooms in 1870 census listed as female rather than male. That helped us link to his mother Easter and to her parents, Samuel Croom and Cherry Latta! Perhaps Cherry Latta is related to people in the Latta Plantation not far away in Huntersville NC.