We had better luck with Dionne's grandmother.
We traced her ancestry back to a couple named Guy and Mary Ann Russ.
They're Dionne's great-great-grandparents, and they're listed in the 1870 census, living in Jackson County, Florida with their five children.
Have you ever been to this area of the country?
- Yes.
- Jackson County?
Did you know you had such deep roots there?
No, not at all.
I mean, some serious roots.
Yeah, I see.
Now, Dionne, think about this: this census was recorded five years after emancipation, and both Guy and Mary Ann were adults.
So you know what that means?
That your great-great-grandparents most likely - were born into slavery.
- Yeah.
Have you ever thought much about how slavery impacted your own ancestry?
You know, I felt there had to be some sort of relationship to slavery within my family.
I mean, there's no way that it could have been gotten around.
That's right.
We all descend from enslaved people.
Mm-hmm, exactly.
Nobody Black was on the Mayflower.
You're right about that.
We now set out to see if we could find any evidence of Dionne's ancestors before emancipation.
Since some formerly enslaved people took the surnames of their former owners, we searched for any white farmers in Jackson County with the same surname as Guy and Mary Ann: Russ.
It was a painstaking process, but in the 1860 census, we found a slave schedule for a white farmer named Joseph Russ.
It lists 31 enslaved people, not by name, only by age, gender, and color.
Now, what's it like to see that?
To think that one of your ancestors might be represented by one of those hash marks?
Yeah, well, it irks me to even think that people were owned.
Yeah.
How can you dare own me?
No, there's something you'll never do.
But there it was, you know?
Now, your great-great-grandfather Guy was born between 1814 and 1816.
So in 1860, the year that census was taken, Guy would've been between 44 and 46.
Do you see anyone listed there around that age on that record?
One Black male, 46 years old.
We believe that you're looking at your great-great-grandfather Guy.
Wow.
Dionne, what's it like to see that?
To see your ancestor listed namelessly?
It's ugly, you know?
And the only way that those that were purported to own a human being could exist was by transferring their name, and I think it's only because they couldn't pronounce ours.
Yeah, that's true.
That we had certain regality to our own.
The names we brought on the ships.
Names we brought with us, language that we brought with us.
They could not understand how could you dare have something that we don't have?
And they took it all away.
They tried to, 'cause fortunately, there were those of us that were able to kinda escape it.
- Yeah, some.
- Yeah.
- Not enough, no.
- Not enough, exactly.
When this census was recorded, the Civil War was still a year away, meaning that Dionne's ancestor had roughly five more years of bondage to endure on Joseph Russ's plantation.
Searching the records of that plantation, we were able to show Dionne a map of Russ' land, where Guy likely picked cotton during these years, and we were able to show her something else as well.
That's Joseph Russ.
Yuck.
Wow.
It puts a face on slavery, doesn't it?
Yeah, it does.
It's not a pretty face either.
= No, it's not.
- It's a very ugly face.
Yeah.
You're an ugly man.
Emancipation was proclaimed in Tallahassee, Florida on May 20th, 1865, and on December 6th, 1865, the 13th Amendment was ratified, which officially abolished slavery in the United States.
What do you think that moment was like for your great-great-grandfather, finally to taste freedom?
Oh, I think that was a jubilant day.
You know, I feel that he finally said, "Finally, I can be me."
Yeah.
"And all mine can be who they are, finally."
And Mr. Joseph Russ, I don't wanna say what I wanna, but, bye-bye!
Dionne's great-great-grandfather was roughly 50 years old when freedom came.
The world around him must have seemed like a dream, as African Americans began to exercise their new civil rights.
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