Looking for a way to organize this blog.....

My first reading....  ROOTS REVEALED   

http://rootsrevealed.blogspot.com/

Then on to....

In Mississippi to Africa, A Journey of Discovery, written by Melvin J. Collier ---- you will follow a roots-tracing journey of discovery that faced:

        • The Great Black Migration
       • Slavery / slave-owners
       • Surname changes
       • Miscegenation
       • Oral histories
       • The Civil War
       • Family separations during slavery
       • A plethora of historical records
       • Slave documents
       • Christianity
       • DNA testing
       • Transatlantic slave trade (Middle Passage)
       • West African peoples & cultures

the sources that enabled Melvin Collier to document 7 generations include:

Bills of sale (slaves)

Books

Census records

Church records

City directories

County history books

Court records

Death records

Deeds of gifts (slaves)

Diaries / memoirs

Educable Children school records (Mississippi)

Freedmen’s Bank applications

Land records

Linguistic books

Marriage records

Military pension record (Civil War)

Newspaper articles

Probate records

Slave inventories

Slave narrative

Slave schedules

Social security applications

Southern Claims Commission records

Tax digests

Transatlantic slave trade data

Wills

.                                                               World War I draft registration card


I found interesting fact in the AFRICAN ANCESTRY BLOG (http://www.africanancestry.com/blog/)
excerpt from Hugh Thomas’ book, “The Slave Trade,” that are worth noting:

ORIGINS
Senegambia (in Arguin), Sierra Leone	2,000,000
Windward Coast	250,000
Ivory Coast	250,000
Gold Coast (Ashanti)	1,500,000
Slave Coast (Dahomey, Adra, Oyo)	2,000,000
Benin to Calabar	2,000,000
Cameroons/Gabon	250,000
Loango	750,000
Congo/Angola	3,000,000
Mozambique/Madagascar	1,000,000
TOTAL LEAVING AFRICAN PORTS	13,000,000

Here are a few other interesting stats:

SLAVES   DELIVERED TO
Brazil	4,000,000
Spanish empie (including Cuba)	2,500,000
British West Indies	2,000,000
French West Indies (including Cayenne)	1,600,000
British North America & U.S.	500,000
Dutch West Indies (including Surinam)	500,000
Danish West Indies	28,000
Europe (including Portugal, Canary   Islands,
Madeira, Azories, etc)	200,000
TOTAL	11,328,000

sharing a few more facts from African Ancestry blog...... 

Africa is the world’s second largest continent after Asia; Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the most populous black country in the world, with about 140 million people; and that Africa is said to be the first continent where human fossils were found.  

DID YOU KNOW THAT…

• Africans are some of the most educated immigrants in the world, and one of the most educated men in the world is Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe who holds seven degrees – two of them are Master’s degrees.
• Eighteen people from Africa have been awarded the Nobel Prize.  Coincidentally, two of them have houses on Vilakazi Street in Soweto, South Africa:  Nelson Mandela, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
• While there are between 2,000 and 3,000 languages spoken in Africa, with possibly as many as 8,000 dialects, Somalia is the only country in the world where all citizens speak one language, Somali.
• Even though diamonds are abundant in Sierra Leone, the largest diamond in the world was the Cullinan, found in a mine near Pretoria, South Africa in 1905.  It weighed 3,106.75 carats uncut.  In fact, half the world’s diamonds come from southern and central Africa.
• The Nile River is the longest river in Africa and in the world.  It’s over 4,000 miles long. And while it’s often associated with Egypt, it actually touches Ethiopia, the DRC, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Sudan, as well as Egypt.  This is a picture I took of it from my recent trip to Uganda.