Genealogy Research and Accidents of Fate

Genealogy Research and Accidents of Fate

Anne G. McWilliams

May 5, 2010

Genealogy is something I thought I might get into when I retired, like most of the people I know who have kept the records in my family. It seemed to me that genealogy research required long hours in libraries searching microfiches of poorly scanned images of newspapers, government records, and ephemera donated from private libraries. One of my mother's cousins and I used to talk about driving to North Carolina to find the record of our Scottish ancestor's arrival in America. Such research must require time and boredom to become an obsession. Or does it?

I was dragged into genealogy recently, out of curiosity about my father’s family. The vacuum created by the void of stories became stronger in the past year in credit to forces beyond my control. I say “beyond my control” with a sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude, referring to my decision to overcome travel exhaustion and get myself up and out to church on an early Sunday morning, something later I would be tempted to call “a God thing”.

At church that morning, I met a Muslim Imam, our guest preacher, Mikal Saahir. It turns out he is a descendant of a person who was enslaved by my ancestor. I have written a good bit about that meeting. I’ll distill to this one droplet: Mikal and I met because of one simple reason – my church encourages members to wear name tags. This social-club practice is more or less common, gaining in popularity with churches seeking to attract and keep new members.

As a result of meeting Mikal, I have found many facets of reflection upon the human drama of race, politics, religion, manners, morals, and memory. Two facets emerged and merged during the same day. For one, some time ago, I applied to work with the 2010 Census. I didn't get the job, but I did run into a friend at the screening exam. We met for lunch yesterday. And, yesterday, I went to vote in the Indiana primary election. The convergence of these federal functions is the basis for my story today.

Going to the polls is a chore. Rachel says I am irrationally upset by this: our neighbor is an official with the poll workers, yet insists upon campaigning for the Republican Party far inside the 50 foot limit, inside the polling place. It's hard to deal with this, because he is a beloved retired teacher. Alas, this is not a battle I want to choose at the moment. I recognize a familiar transference reaction to my own father’s entrenched conservatism. Therefore, I won’t say anything. Maybe this is fodder for another essay. Besides, my intransigent Republican neighbor very kindly asked about my adventure in genealogy of late. Voting and the Census -- I'll bring it all together, I promise.

I joined Ancestry.com one night around 10:00 p.m. I paid the trial fee and began my search. I could not believe my eyes. I typed in the outline of my family tree, beginning with my father, and adding the few names I knew of his ancestors. From time to time, I would return to the tree to find little green leaves on some of the names, especially the males of the spousal pairs (most every one of those pairs appeared to have been officially married).

Clicking on the green leaves, I would find hints that held the possibility of confirming the vital statistics of that person, spouse, children, and other members of the household. Other genealogists had made links to my ancestors, and thanks to them, I could link documents containing details I would otherwise never find on my own. I could not believe it, finding out so much so quickly about my family. One ancestor, for example, had a record of slave ownership recorded by the federal slave census in 1850. He had at least 17 slaves. I am vague about the number because my eyes were crossing with sleep deprivation.

[Recently, I became equally obsessed with a game on my iPhone: Tap Out. I worked the free version incessantly until I reached the end. I stopped talking to my family, except to draw them into the game to help me. Now, they are all working on Tap Out, but they won’t finish it as fast as I did because they have job and school schedules, and they go to bed religiously at 9:00 p.m. Losers. Slackers.]

Never mind. My family slept peacefully in their beds upstairs; the dogs were asleep in their crates in my study. I heard them whimpering their chasing dreams in little dog-lip muffled barks. Meanwhile I sat on my round blue exercise ball, squinting at the MacBook screen, tracking down census reports, Social Security Death records, marriage licenses, and other confirming documents, linking confirmations to the people in my growing family tree. I kept up this click-and-shock game until 4:30 a.m. Good thing I do not have a job working for someone else. This could become a habit affecting my performance.

The next day, or, rather, later the same day, I had lunch with my friend who is working for the 2010 US Census. On the way to meet him, my unconscious, hard at work with all the preconscious details of my search, dredged up and delivered to me a little gem of insight.

The census forms prior to the Civil War (1850, for example) were quite simple: names, ages, skin color, birthplace of father and mother, value of property. After the Civil War, Jim Crow showed up.

Limestone County, Alabama, and Giles County, Tennessee, were the main census forms I was finding, thanks to other, more serious genealogists who had followed their own links to my ancestors. The forms became quite complex after the Civil War. For example, forms after 1860 asked if inhabitants had attended school in the past year; could the inhabitants read and write; did the inhabitants rent or own property?

I recalled from my history lessons that persons with black skin color could not vote at the time. States and the federal government differed in policies. The “three-fifths human” policy in effect since the seventeenth century continued well into the 20^th century. In this policy, blacks were not considered to be fully human, and therefore lacked the full capacity to give consent to the government by voting. Women also shared this inability to give full consent for the same reason: they lacked the full powers of reason required to engage in the responsibility of electing those who would govern the state and the country.

Later, as full humanity became bestowed upon blacks (and women) in order to vote, blacks had to overcome an unofficial but life-threatening obstacle: to pass a reading test and a writing test. African Americans were lynched and shot for attempting to register to vote, even as in slavery they were murdered when discovered to be able to read and write. Fannie Lou Hamer, in the middle of the 20^th Century in Mississippi, was beaten almost to death, leaving her maimed for life with a limp, because of her effort to gain the franchise for black folks. The three Civil Rights workers murdered and buried in the earthen dam in Neshoba County, Mississippi, were, according to the local politicians, “Yankee agitators”, out to register black people to vote for the Democrats in the national elections.

Now, a zealous convert to my own personal genealogy, I am dying to get my hands on these actual documents. I need my own proof of these names, these records of census takers who visited my ancestors and interviewed them.

Those long-ago census workers walked across the creek, up the path, and across the plank porch of a cabin I now own on 80 acres in Limestone County, Alabama. Those census workers exchanged air in a room with my ancestors. Their oxygenated blood empowered muscles that moved an old-fashioned dip pen across the page of an official government document, recording names and vital statistics. (The writer, Shelby Foote, kept that close to the page, writing the first drafts of all of his manuscripts with dip pens, with Esterbrook Probate 313 nibs.) 

As my own fingers strike these keys on this peripheral keyboard, and the print-like image of letters appears across the page-like image on the screen, my fingers stop and flex and imagine the scritch across the dry leaf as the census enumerator recorded those names and details. They also demonstrated varying ways of spelling the names. And, in transcribing the names in the Ancestry.com database, some scribes made some curious errors. For example, my mother’s ancestors, Bowers, became Boviera in the electronic documentation that accompanies the facsimile of the form. Fortunately or unfortunately, paying members of Ancestry.com can correct these errors.

The census is important, we know, for calculating public service needs and taxation to support healthcare, safety, and education. However, it is easy to see how census taking might be viewed with suspicion and reluctance today. As the census worker recorded details of property, literacy, and relationship, they were also drawing back tightly upon a bow-string that would release its killing energy upon its target for another ten years ahead.

My new friend and possible relation, Mikal Saahir is descended from people who could not vote, whose lives depended upon their ongoing servitude to my white ancestors for decades after the Civil War. Their chattel status continued long after the law of the land affirmed their humanity, their capacity for reason, their right to vote and participate in their own governance.

In a census year, 2010, I am mindful of the ease with which I completed and mailed my household census form, even though my marriage status continues to be denied by the state and diminished by its record as “domestic partner”. Facebook, Twitter, Ancestry.com, are all new since the last census. The online facsimiles of the old records of past decades and centuries provide stunning reminders of the unknowing ways in which we accumulate a record of our humanity, our moral decisions, our exercise of justice.

Historians and literary critics urge us to avoid the fallacy of anachronism. Pointing to the uses of census taking in the past must not be interpreted as a sign of future continued abuses, they say. Did a government of a state, say, Alabama, in a decade, say, 1880s, in an era, say, of Reconstruction misuse the cold facts of a census form as a weapon against darker-skinned human beings? If those dark-skinned ones were not fully human in 1880, should we fault the State for treating them like animals?

Other critics say we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the benighted white leaders of a benighted era made a categorical mistake that they could not help but make, should we discount also the good they tried to do? The cold light of observation cannot but filter through the accumulations of those people who actually were fully human all along, people living out actual realities across the generations, and accumulating a record of having been sinned against by those who made “a big mistake”. 

Not discounting my own personal and private pains and sufferings interspersed throughout a life of blessedness, I have known such small suffering, and immeasurable benefits from my own accidents of fate. I ended up on the winning side of history, thus far, because my ancestry treated fellow humans like animals. Somehow, “sorry” just doesn’t measure up.

All of this reflection came about during the lunch hour between lunch with the census enumerator and exercising my right at the voting booth, prompted by investigating my family of the past online. Maybe after dinner, I can work on world peace.

School Days: Class of '75

In the spring of 1975, I graduated from Athens High School, Athens, AL. I think our class must be due for a reunion this year, a multiple of 5 -- or do they go to 10 year increments after thirty years? Anyway, wow, 35 years ago!

I have five or six classmates on Facebook, some of whom I knew since elementary school. The benefit/burden of living in a small town is that everyone knows everyone -- sort of.

It's not so small anymore, and, even back then, we always seemed to have newcomers.

Athens would not like to see itself as a bedroom community to any other city, but, in my memory, that was one of the interesting things about the town. The Huntsville industries brought a lot of "new kids" to town, children of people who worked in the science industries. In my mind, the most notable industry was the Space and Rocket industry, led by Werner von Braun, who led the development of the Saturn rocket, that made possible JFK's vision to land earthlings on the moon. Our 10-year-old is fixin' to go to Space Camp with her school this month, at the Space and Rocket Center.

Huntsville was the place to go as a teenager, if you wanted a nice date to a movie and a restaurant (The Fog Cutter, Red Lobster, -- you know, the fancy places). Athens had no movie theater at the time, at least not with new releases. I did work in the then-new Athens Cinema in my senior year, I opened the building, turned on the big projector, and started the popcorn machine -- all processes that took a long time.

I have been thinking about Athens High School lately because of the recent acquaintance with "the other McWilliamses" of Limestone County. How much I do not know of my own heritage ... Talking with Mikal Saahir and telling others about the story of our meeting (see earlier posts) have peeled back layers of memory and associations -- and the lack of them.

In 1975, our class graduated with a history of (not sure about this) five years of desegregation. I recall that we attended the old Athens High School when the Middle School was created around the same time, and I was in the 8th grade. Those who had attended 6th grade at Athens Elementary School spent 7th grade in another school for one year, while arrangements were made for the creation of the Middle School. [Memory is notoriously unreliable without documentation, so I'm not really sure about this chronology.]

By the time 8th grade opened up at the Middle School, desegregation had happened. I remember being led into the hallway on the first day of school, each class with its white students, lined up to greet our new black classmates. The air was charged with anxiety on both sides of the hall.

How did that desegregation work that year, from a system perspective? Only later in life did I begin to think about what my new classmates lost in desegregation. Trinity School was a beloved place for a lot of people, yet it was closed down and left to deteriorate. I recall driving through "the black section of town" and seeing the weeds and vines crawling up the walls and roof. Or do I? I think I remember that.

Instead of integrating both Trinity and Athens High, Trinity was closed, and, eventually, a new high school was built on the north side of town. This new school was located on Highway 31, not far south of the junction with I-65.

As I moved on through school, in those high school years, there were incidents of violence, especially at football games, it seems to me. I was in the band, and as far as I knew, or was concerned then, the band was a place of discipline and order. Mr. Bacon and Mr. Havely ran a tight ship, and music kept us all focused. Band was my joy in high school, along with my church youth group, the UMYF at the First United Methodist Church, and, of course, my horses.

For reasons I came to understand much later in my life, high school was not a happy time for me. I felt that I did not fit in. I was a tomboy; I was not particularly popular; I didn't date much, but had a series of boyfriends. When I was a senior, I was rushed into the sorority that I thought would make my social life complete. But, I quit because it interfered too much with my horse time. [Kids are so cruel to each other. Rumors and lies drifted back to me much later, but I was too far gone to care.] Life at home was fractious. Interracial dis-harmony, Vietnam, Watergate all created a -- here comes the cliché: turbulent time in which to be a teenager. I could hardly wait to get away and go to college.

When I did go away, I kept on going. Now, I'm here in Indianapolis, with my partner, a woman, her 10 year old daughter, our three dogs, and one cat, and surrounded by inlaws/outlaws I dearly love -- and, here, it's mutual and I feel so very normal. My family of origin, however, is painfully broken. My dear dad, full of bitterness and grief, still lives in Athens. My remaining brother is in Nashville, frequently homeless (see earlier poem). Robert's wife and kids live in Florida, and his teenage daughter is doing her best to find him in herself and her friends.

I had to move to Indianapolis to meet up with some wonderful people from Limestone County, with whom I share a history that is older than Athens High School. They mention names to me of their relatives, classmates and schoolmates with whom I shared nothing in common back then. I wish I could hear some stories of both the Trinity and Athens Middle and High kids who gained something and lost something back then.

Reflections at One Year

Take a look at this photo from my great-aunt's scrapbook. If you click on it, it will open larger in another window. The "Uncle George" of the caption is George McWilliams, freed from slavery at the age of 9, in 1863. Some members of his family are on the porch of the slave cabin where I suppose George lived most of his life. How often would this family have had such a portrait taken? Look closely. A young white male has one arm around a younger man, possibly George II, and with his other hand he has his fist full of George's coat. I suppose this little white boy, a rascal for sure, is my grandfather, Bob Lee (Robert Lee) McWilliams, who disappeared from my father's life -- and my life -- when my father was 8 years old. As we say Down South, Bob Lee 'turned up dead' in the late 1970s in Salt Lake City. Word was, he was an alcoholic, and an abusive husband, who brought a lot of pain and misery to a lot of people. The Hebrew Bible says that the sins of the ancestors are visited upon the descendants from generation to generation. I consider the stories, told and untold, in my family and I believe this is true. And, yet, the drunkard womanizer, King David is the ancestor of the Christian Messiah. Irony makes such good storytelling. This story is about so much more than race and slavery; it includes layers and nuances of human misery. At one year, I ask myself, "What's the point?"

Tonight, I had a conversation with reporter Brandon Perry of the Indianapolis Recorder, the weekly paper of the African American community of Indianapolis (and beyond). Mr. Perry's article will be the fourth publication*, within two months, of the story of the meeting between Imam Mikal Saahir and me, one year ago, March 8, 2009.

One year later, I still find myself shaking my head over the unlikelihood of that meeting a year ago. Mr. Perry asked me what I would like for people to take away from our story. After a lot of rambling on, with some of my academic thoughts and personal reflections, I settled on this thought:

So much has happened since 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in North Alabama and Southern Tennessee, when my great-great-grandfather, James LaFayette McWilliams freed from slavery the nine-year-old George McWilliams. Let me break that down, in case it isn't clear. In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced for Jim Fate McWilliams and other slave owners in the Tennessee Valley region. I do not for one moment think George McWilliams would have been freed from slavery any other way. There was no magnanimity in the action of Jim Fate McWilliams.

Now, on the one year mark, I have a lot more questions than I did on that day Mikal and I met for the first time. Firstly, why or how did his family come to know and hold and cherish this story of emancipation? I had no idea of this story, and could have lived out my remaining days without knowing it, had events not conspired (a G-d thing?) to bring us together in Indianapolis, IN, far away from Elkmont and Athens, in Limestone County, Alabama.

Secondly, what happened to little 9-year-old George on that day in 1863? He had a brother, bought by the McWilliams family at the same time, some time in their young childhoods. A third brother was bought by the Yarbrough family. What happened to him? Where did little George and his brother live? Who took care of these children? Were there other slaves in the McWilliams estate at the time? I know, from the photos gathered by MIkal's family, that George McWilliams continued to live on the McWilliams property, living in the cabin that was the slave quarters, at least according to tradition. Were there others? Did any adults, taking the McWilliams name, leave the estate and venture away from the others?

Finally, for today, how did Jim Fate McWilliams take the news of the enforcement of the E. P. back in 1863? He would have been a man in his 30s. What changed in his household, if anything did, because of the legal end to slavery?

I have none of these stories. The cloudy past of my father's "people," including the black McWilliamses, will most likely obscure this story for me for a long time. Now I have some questions for me.

What will I do with this information?
Why was my initial reaction to Mikal's introduction into my past a response from a place of guilt and shame? What is in this story that affects my ego to such an extent? Sure, it's all in the past and I can't influence it in any way. Seana said, on our vacation with friends in México last week, that I could work out my reparations with her. That was funny, a little twist on the question about, when will we ever be finished paying for the sins of the past? When will the learning be complete? Dear g-ds: if racism is over, then what kind of misery are we, in the majority, willing to continue to support in our cities? If racism is over, I need someone to explain to me what to do about this stain upon my name? If racism is over, what happened to the revolution? I missed it entirely.

What is the point of this story?

I told Brandon Perry that this story brings my situation as a white Southerner -- who witnessed the dismantling of Jim Crow and the growth of Civil Rights and my experiences in consciousness-raising efforts -- out to a place of new scrutiny, to be sure. I have my response, and it is my response. I do not speak for anyone else as I live through this awakening.

One of the main points I take away from this encounter and its ongoing revelations is a repetition of something I learned from Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, and Henry Louis Gates. Human beings are 99.99% exactly the same on the chromosomal/genetic level. Without the statistically insignificant differences contained in the 1/100th of one percent amount of difference that might emerge as skin color, hair, eyes, etc., we are all the same. What violence and evil we have made of that 1/100th.

Another point is the closeness we share, unknowingly, with others around us. How amazing: Mikal Saahir and I, two McWilliamses with roots from the same county, met on a Sunday in Indianapolis, IN. Indianapolis: his home town for life, my new home since three years ago.

I gave up a while ago my firm grip on the personal G-d. Too much bad stuff happened all in a row, and my faith was not much help. Still, I am drawn to community, to people who gather in G-d's name. I am so glad that there was a place that Sunday morning, where people gathered to reflect upon the Spiritual DNA of the children of Sarah and Abraham.

What to make, then, of the meeting, that it happened at all? What's the point? Where will this journey take us from here? It is a small world -- we are all interconnected -- what happens to one affects all -- a rising tide lifts all boats -- I am sorry -- I forgive you -- these phrases are so common because theses kinds of little miracles happen so often.

What now? I am left with a feeling of Mystery, with a capital M, trembling before a grace that is beyond me, that blesses me in a particular way that feels very personal. Shall I take the Mystery personally?

*other publications:
Indianapolis Star
My corrections to the Star article are below on February 20, 2010
Focolare's Living City Magazine
Muslim Journal (article not posted online/essentially the same as Focolare's version)

Spiritual DNA, or, The Day the Imam met the Southern Belle

Spiritual DNA, or, The Day the Imam met the Southern Belle
Anne G. McWilliams and Michael “Mikal” Saahir
Sunday, March 8, 2009
First Congregational United Church of Christ
Indianapolis, Indiana

Today was an extraordinary day. True to the promise of the first covenant, G-d made Abraham a blessing in this place.

As I drove into the church parking lot, I saw a very tall, physically large man of dark complexion walking away from his car toward the back door of the church. He was wearing a handsome brown business suit and on his head was a cap that I thought was typical of Muslim men. A petite woman, also of dark complexion, followed soon after from the same car. She wore dark slacks and a pretty blouse, and she was drawing a colorful scarf around her hair and her shoulders.

I gathered my permanent name-tag from the rack in the foyer and moved downstairs to the big room where we have the early service. I walked past the Imam who was speaking with the pastor, Dick Clough. I went to my seat to review the new list of monthly events on the calendar that had been handed to me when I arrived in the room.

On the calendar was a little blurb about the Imam. When Dick introduced him, I learned that he was the Imam at Nur-Allah Mosque for many years, and he was involved in a variety of service works in the community. Dick said he was a bridge-builder, not a wall-builder. My curiosity grew. I wondered if he would be from another country or if he would be an American? I considered how many Muslims I actually know; known well, none; acquaintances, a few; what's my point of reference? Mostly Middle Eastern and African, maybe African American. What kinds of hints are bringing these associations to mind? A name? A culture? An ethnicity?

The service, true to its non-traditional order and style, proceeded in its typical multi-sensory fashion. A YouTube film told the story in cartoon drawings of Jesus in the wilderness. We sang songs of a mixture of genres, accompanied by an electric piano and a trap set. A woman and a man presented a skit that was prepared for this day.

The skit presented the spiritual DNA of the three major Abrahamic faiths, using comedy, relying on the prop of a laptop computer; delivering factual content that could have been derived from Google and Wikipedia. The skit drew an ever-widening circle from the smaller derivative Christian denominations, to the historic mainline churches, to the globally recognized predecessors of Judaism and Islam, arriving at the one that linked them all: Father Abraham -- our common source of spiritual DNA.

All of the symbolisms of DNA, family trees, and genetics captured the generous spirit of inclusion that would hold our thoughts throughout the day. In my church, it's practically a requirement to be willing to stand side by side with people of very strong Trinitarian commitment, with those who hold a moderate Christology, and with those who are frankly Universalist. This wideness is one of the inclusions of our community, and one of the things I was looking for when I ended my search for a church home here.

Once the Imam, Mikal Saahir, began to speak, I recognized that he was fully an American, an African American, who came to Islam as a young man through the influence of the American movement of the Nation of Islam. His voice was quiet. I must have been expecting a booming voice to emerge from a tall and big man. His demeanor projected a calm, humor-streaked, gentle, self-effacing authority.

Mikal’s presentation in the first service was brief, promising to go into more detail with questions and discussions during the Sunday School hour after the early service. Following this promise, the early service followed its patterns of songs, conversational and casual comforts, prayers, and exhortations. We formed a large circle around the room for the benediction, then broke for coffee and pastries and fruit.

Several people approached the Imam, but I approached his wife, Carolyn, to introduce myself to her. We began to exchange names. Mikal turned to me, shook my hand, and read my name-tag. In the murmurs of conversation swirling around us, I thought I heard him say something about knowing another McWilliams. (There is another Ann McWilliams, no e, in Indianapolis, a great R&B singer-songwriter.)

After completing a couple more sentences with Carolyn and others who had joined us, I turned back to Mikal and said, “What did you say about someone else ‘McWilliams’?”

He repeated, “I have a relative named Anne McWilliams.”

“Here in Indianapolis?” I asked.

“No, not here, in Alabama. She passed away some years ago,” he replied.

“Alabama? I’m from Alabama.” I am aware this is not always obvious or audible to people, because I tend to adapt my accent to my location.

“What part of Alabama are you from?”

“Athens. It’s about a hundred miles …” I began to locate the town of 18,000 souls almost equally between Nashville and Birmingham, on I-65. But, there was no need.

“I know exactly where Athens is. My parents are from Athens.”

Combining all of the places I have lived and visited, I could count on three fingers the number of people I have met from Athens. I did the cartoon double-take: Athens? Are you saying, Athens? Meanwhile, Mikal, who knows my home town, is clarifying his statement:

“Actually, my mother is from Elkmont.”

When my brain, not yet recovered from Athens tries then to take in the name, Elkmont, I am off balance and unprepared.

“Did you say Elkmont?” I ask, again with the double-take. “My father was born in Elkmont.”

“My ancestor, George McWilliams, was freed from slavery at the age of nine by his owner, a McWilliams, in Elkmont. The owner’s name was LaFayette McWilliams, but they called him ‘Fate’.” Mikal is delivering this information thoughtfully, slowly, perhaps also trying to get his balance about this unfolding story, this very unlikely encounter, this revelation.

“Jim Fate McWilliams,” I interrupted him. I know this name from a genealogy I received long ago. James LaFayette McWilliams (LaFAY-t, Fate) But, I can’t place him in his generation, I just know the name.

“Fate McWilliams freed my great grandfather when he was nine years old. And, he had a son, and a daughter, Mary McWilliams …” he continued.

“…Gilbert. Mary McWilliams Gilbert. My father’s aunt. I met her when I was in college. Her brother was my grandfather, but I never knew him.”

I feel weak in the knees as I realize, Fate McWilliams, my great grandfather, was a slave-owner. This is news to me. I began to perspire, I feared I would faint. How Southern Belle, to faint – Anne, don’t faint.

Somehow, I stayed on my feet. This news devastated my white liberal sensibilities, my struggle with internalized racism. Mikal delivered my history to me in a tone that matched mine, of amazement, of unfolding realization of our connection, our ties to place and home, our shared history. Has it been just four generations since the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction? But, the conversation is running on ahead of me, and my mind shifts to a closer past as I think about my father’s aunt.

My father took us to meet his Aunt Mary in 1979, when she called to tell us that my father’s father had died and had left him a small bequest. I was anticipating graduation from college and going to Bolivia for six weeks before entering seminary.

Mary McWilliams Gilbert’s husband was Van Buren Gilbert, whom I never met. He was the county sheriff, and eventually was appointed to head the Alabama State Patrol. He worked for the likes of Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor and George C. Wallace, governors during the Johnson administration and into the 70s and desegregation of our state’s public schools and colleges, among other upheavals of the Civil Rights Era.

I said, “Mary McWilliams and Van Buren Gilbert had two sons. One passed away when I was a child, but one still lives in Athens, Thomas Martin Gilbert.”

Mikal agreed that he knew this, and added, “I have a photograph of my great grandfather George McWilliams holding Thomas Martin Gilbert when he was just a baby.”

Thinking of my father, I said, “I would love to see that picture. I’m sure my father would love to see it, too.”

“I have it at home, a digital copy, I can send it to you.”

“I would love that,” I replied, thinking about Thomas Martin Gilbert, my father’s first cousin, a man I met thirty years ago, yet only had seen once since, at my mother’s funeral in 2001. I think of him as my coach into a life of travel and adventure. I suddenly feel that I want to visit him, talk with him. I suddenly realize what a distantly orbiting satellite I have been to my family in Athens.

Mikal very tenderly reported, “Mary Gilbert named my mother.” To my ears, this was both a beautiful gesture and a troubling one. I heard this news with tears forming behind my eyes.
Later, Mikal continued to explain this legacy to me:

“From what I understand, Mamie McWilliams lived in the house of her father George. George’s house was very close (just north) to where Mary Gilbert last lived in Elkmont. Mamie married William Edward Brown and from this union 15 children were born, one of whom was my mother Gloria, born in 1933. My mother married my father Oliver Flanagan who lived in Athens. They moved to Indianapolis in the early 1950s as part of the great migration of many African Americans who left the south seeking employment and education in the north. Nonetheless, apparently my grandmother Mamie (McWilliams) Brown and your great aunt Mary (McWilliams) Gilbert were close associates – close enough to suggest and have fulfilled naming my mother the beautiful name of Gloria.”

The name Gloria continues in Mikal’s family. His brother Thomas named his daughter Gloria who in turn also named her daughter Gloria. In our ongoing conversation, Mikal clarifies the meaning of this naming: “Thanks to your great aunt, the name Gloria (which means Glory – praise, honor, thanksgiving) continues to be a part of my family.”

Dick Clough provided a pen and paper and Mikal and I sketched out the generations of our two families, side by side:

• his great-grandfather, George McWilliams, freed from slavery at age nine by

• James LaFayette “Jim Fate” or “Fate” McWilliams, my great grandfather;

• his grandmother Mamie McWilliams Brown, and her contemporaries,

• my grandfather, Robert Lee (“Bob Lee”) McWilliams and his sister, Mary (McWilliams) Gilbert;

• his mother, Gloria Brown Flanagan, named as an infant by Mary Gilbert, and her contemporary,

• my father, Robert Lee (“Bob Jr.”) McWilliams;

• finally, for this day’s telling, our generation, Michael Flanagan (52) who became Michael “Mikal” Saahir, and

• my brothers’ and me (51). Robert Lee McWilliams, III (born 1960, died at age 44 in 2005); Patrick Butler McWilliams, born in 1963; and me, Anne Grace McWilliams, born in 1957.

We continued on to the Q&A upstairs in the library. I arrived in the room to find Mikal and Dick relating this story to the group gathered there. I sat down, continuing to feel quite stunned by this discovery of connection. When I left my house that morning, I was groggy from the time change and still re-entering from a vacation to Mexico. Now, I was buzzing with excitement, but also thrown for an existential and theological loop.

Long ago, I moved away from my evangelical certainties and developed a very stubborn non-interventionist streak when it comes to G-d’s work on the personal level. I have not had a very good history with the personal G-d of the ICU or of the parking space. But, I do know that something or someone holds me within some kind of orbit around the G-d of my environment and my people. Let’s just leave it at that.

Now, however, I feel that I am being visited by Providence. Or Something. I said to Carolyn Saahir, “This feels like a divine appointment.”

As we continued on through the morning, into the 11:00 service, Dick called Mikal and me up to the front of the church during the children’s moments. He had been talking with the kids about this G-d of Abraham, and this Abraham of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims. Same G-d, same spiritual DNA.


Dick invited Mikal and me to recreate our conversation down in the coffee time earlier in the morning. I was near tears. People in the congregation were transfixed. We closed our testimony addressing each other, “Cousin,” and a handshake that became a hearty hug.

After the second service, we continued to gather scraps of information. Among many other details, Mikal told me that he felt impressed to go and visit with my father’s Aunt Mary in 1984, just 5 years after I met her for the first time. He had a long conversation with my great-aunt, the person who named his mother Gloria. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall!

Yes, today was a most extraordinary day. Today, the Imam came to our church. The G-d of Abraham was present in our wide circle of inclusion. I found a wider love and a deeper grace. Into my constantly expanding sense of family, I found a cousin, most likely not of flesh and blood, nor only of geography and place, but a DNA of Spirit that extends back as far as Father Abraham.

Assalamu alaikum ~~~ Shalom ~~~ Peace

Photo Details: George McWilliams (b. February 1854 – d. June 30, 1938) holding Thomas Martin Gilbert (b. 192?), Elkmont, Alabama. Contributed by Mikal Saahir from family archives.

The Emancipation Proclamation was extended to the Tennessee Valley of northern Alabama on January 1, 1863.
In what year was this photo taken? 192?
In what year was Thomas Martin Gilbert born?
George McWilliams (b. February 1854 – d. June 30, 1938). Born into the Yarbrough family, along with two brothers. George and one of his brothers were purchased by James LaFayette McWilliams. George was freed from slavery (along with his brother?) in 1863 at the age of nine.
If : Thomas Martin Gilbert was born in 1923 (estimating: he is older than my Dad who was born on October 9, 1929, in Elkmont; TM looks to be about 18 mos.); and,
If : George McWilliams was nine years old in 1863, when Jim Fate McWilliams was required to give him his freedom (he was!); and,
If : this photo was taken in 1925;
Then : In this photo, if it was taken in 1925, George McWilliams might be around the age of 69, Thomas Martin about 18 months.