DAY III: EMILY IN YOUNGSTOWN

On May 24th we arrived in Youngstown, Ohio the next day at 4 am, and after resting at my uncles house for four hours, we began to explore the neighborhood. In the daylight, Youngstown looked even worst than the poorest pockets of Detroit. Over morning coffee, my family discussed the history of Youngstown and how the globalization of local steel mills and other manufacturing plants left the people of the town to become unemployed. I was very glad that I would have the opportunity to speak with both my aunt and uncle because I knew that each one of them would give me unique information that would be crucial to attempting to figure out the story of Emily King. In the time that my Uncle spent visiting my grandfather he remembers sitting down with him and helping trace our lineage. When I asked my Uncle to tell me what he knew about Emily King, he began by telling me about Emily Kings early history. Emily King was our last traced relative, but what makes her problematic in relation to furthering the study of our family tree is simply the fact that as a house slave she never had any key identifiers attributed with her. For a slave the only form of Identification she would probably have would be her name, but even that is mercurial. My uncle told me that grandad’s biggest struggle was trying to figure out among slaves which Emily King was truly the one related to us. My uncle began to elaborate by starting with the fact that when looking at census records, my grandfather found that amongst those born in Virginia as slaves there were two Emily Kings. The two Emily Kings are born about three years apart and both seem to be fair skinned slaves. The seemingly simple solution, which would be too look at each ones marriage and figure out which one produced my great great great grandfather Chester Wilson would be the simple solution, but this is where my grandfather began to get very frustrated. Each Emily King began as  Emily King, but when checking records further in time one Emily King dies, and we are left with Emily P. King. The problem that my grandfather faced is the same problem that I face now, I cannot determine which Emily King to search on depth unless i know which Emily King adopted the P middle initial.

I have several photos on my cloud, but I need to run an update. I will post them as soon as possible.