Ealy Family Heritage, Documenting Our Legacy - Volume 1
BOOK DETAILS
ISBN-13
ISBN-10
|
978-1523460311
1523460318
|
Copyright
|
BobEalyFamily.Org
|
Edition
|
Volume
1
|
Published
|
February 1,
2016
|
Language
|
English
|
Pages
|
554
|
Dimension
|
8.5
x 11
|
Binding
Price |
Perfect-bound
Paperback
$29.99 |
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Ealy Family Heritage, Documenting Our Legacy is a fascinating body
of work that not only documents the Ealy Family’s history back to the 1700s,
but it also captures the history of the Leake County, Mississippi communities
where the family’s presence dates back to circa 1835. That was the time frame
when the family patriarch, Robert “Big
Bob” Ealy, was transported to central Mississippi from Nash County, North
Carolina as a young man. His enslaver, William “Billy” Eley, used him as a
breeder. With his wife Jane Parrott, Big Bob Ealy had 12 children. An
additional three children have been found. Because of his forced task of slave
breeding, more will likely be unearthed in the future, since DNA technology has
entered the genealogy scene. This first volume documents over 3,500
descendants. The family ancestral homes are the Lena and Tuscola communities of
Leake County, Mississippi, but many descendants also resided and still live in
Scott, Rankin, Hinds, and Madison County, Mississippi. During the 20th Century Great
Migration, scores of Ealys migrated to Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis,
Milwaukee, Las Vegas, and other points North and West.
Ealy Family Heritage, Documenting Our Legacy highlights four key
areas – family, community, church, and school. These topics help to provide a
comprehensive history of the Ealy Family. A family history is more than just
names, places, and dates. That’s boring. However, this book is like no other family publication because it’s filled with a
chockfull of stories and memories from family elders and others about the
family, the Lena and Tuscola communities, the churches, and the early schools
for African Americans in southern Leake County. Oral history is a major part of
family history research, as it gives life to the deceased ancestors. It helps
the reader to form mental pictures of their lives, the good and the
not-so-good. This book also contains a myriad of pictures that came from the
dusty storages, old photo albums, basements, and closets of many family
members, thus providing faces to many of the names from the past.
Ealy Family Heritage, Documenting Our Legacy was
authored by Melvin J. Collier, a renowned genealogy researcher and author of
two genealogical books, Mississippi to Africa, A Journey of Discovery and 150 Years Later, Broken Ties Mended. Collier is a great great grandson of Big
Bob & Jane Ealy. He first heard his paternal grandmother, Willie Ealy
Collier, utter Big Bob’s name from her lips when he was a young teenager.
Consequently, he began his genealogy research of the Ealy Family in 1993,
nearly three years after his grandmother’s passing, recalling much of the
information she relayed to him. His research of the family continues today. He
has currently traced the Ealy Family’s history back to Big Bob’s mother, Annie,
who was born circa 1795. Her name was given to numerous descendants. Collier
discovered an unfortunate saga that involved the “ownership” of Annie and three
of her children. They were the subject of an 1832 North Carolina court case,
William Hunt vs. Edwin Bass et al, 17 N.C. 292, which went all the way to the
N.C. Supreme Court. Collier’s research has also taken Jane Parrott’s family
history back to the 1700s to Lunenburg and Brunswick County, Virginia. He has also uncovered autosomal DNA evidence
of the family’s African roots.
For more info, contact us at BobEalyFamily@gmail.com.
