ONEONTA _ A book written by an Oneonta man has been selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' permanent collection.
The 2007 edition of "African American Genealogical Research: How to Trace Your Family History" by Harry Bradshaw Matthews is now enshrined in the world's largest library.
Matthews, an associate dean at Hartwick College, is the director of the college's U.S. Pluralism Programs and first published the book in 1992.
"It's a tremendous honor to be recognized by an institution like the Library of Congress," Matthews said.
Using his family as an example, Matthews' book provides step-by-step guidelines on how to research the genealogy of families who had enslaved ancestors.
"The book is the whole process," Matthews said. The key for African-Americans is to be able to directly trace their ancestors to 1870, he said.
That was when the first census was performed after the Civil War and emancipation, Matthews said.
See BOOK on Page 2
"Once you get back to 1870, the probability is your ancestors would have been residing in that area 10 years earlier," Matthews said. "They had a tendency not to the leave that area."
One of the next steps would be to determine which white families in that geographic area would have been wealthy enough to own slaves, Matthews said.
"Most white families in the South did not own slaves," he added.
From there, other documents including slave censuses done in 1850 and 1860 can be used to trace ancestry, but often the only thing to go by are the slave owners' names and the ages of slaves.
"What I have been able to do is narrow down the specific families my ancestors would have been attached to," Matthews said.
Matthews said he was influenced by Alex Haley's 1976 book "Roots." A year after the book was published, Matthews, then a 24-year-old assistant dean at the State University College at Oneonta, was interviewed by The New York Times and set a goal to learn about his ancestors.
For 30 years, Matthews has worked on genealogy, but only recently has it become more accepted as a discipline for scholarly research, he said.
"It's beginning to become part of academia," Matthews said.
Copies of the book are held at the Hartwick College library, the State University College at Oneonta library and the research library at the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown.
Matthews said his published studies have become resources for many people doing genealogical research.
His latest work, "The African American Freedom Journey to New York and Related Sites, 1823-1870," is being published by Africana Homestead Legacy Publishers. The tentative release date is early 2008.
Print this story
E-mail this story
