Back to the Drawing Board

If anyone besides me is still reading this blog, you may wonder why it went silent for about six months. What happened? The short answer: real life.

You'll recall that in my last post in early December of 2012, I had just ordered a Y-DNA  test kit from Family Tree DNA with the goal of finding out whether or not Sharon Leslie Morgan and I shared a common ancestor—specifically my great-great grandfather, James E. Leslie (1823-1875) of Lowndes County Alabama, whom Sharon believed had fathered a child with one of his African-American slaves. That child, Sharon believed, was her great grandfather, Tom Leslie.

I received the test kit a few days later, mailed off a sample, and eagerly awaited results via e-mail. December went by. No results. The first weeks of January went by. No results. Then on the evening of 12 January 2013, I became the victim of a violent crime—a home invasion that turned my life upside down. It was hard to think about genealogy after that, but once things began to settle down a bit, I e-mailed Family Tree DNA to ask about results. They replied that they had never received my sample! They sent another test kit, but after the home invasion, my family and I were very concerned about my safety, so with the full support of my family and the incredible generosity of my brother Allen, I began making plans to relocate to Charlotte, NC. At first I promised myself I would send off another sample before I left South Carolina. Then things got busy and complicated, and I ran out of time before leaving. I promised myself I would send off a sample the minute I got to Charlotte. When a few weeks went by and I received an e-mail from Sharon asking about results, I realized that in all the ruckus of moving and relocating I had completely forgotten about the sample.

I promptly sent off another sample and this time I arranged to track the package from the post office to the testing lab. A few more weeks of waiting went by, and when I was finally notified of the results, they were . . .

Inconclusive.

My DNA was compared with the DNA of other people who had submitted samples to the same lab, in order to identify people with whom I shared significant portions of DNA and to whom I might be related. Only one person on the list of names I was given had the last name Leslie, and he was NOT Sharon's cousin Frank Leslie. Sharon and I both had difficulty interpreting the results, so Sharon submitted the data to one of her contacts who knows about DNA testing. He e-mailed her to say that it looked to him as if there was no relationship. Sharon was incredibly disappointed because she was sure she had solved a longstanding riddle in her family history, only to find that she was mistaken. I was disappointed for her sake, but to be honest, I was also relieved. It was bad enough that my great-great grandfather enslaved other human beings and fought for a government that defended that enslavement as a soldier in the Confederate army. At least, I thought, he didn't heap additional disgrace on himself by fathering a child with one of the women he enslaved and then denying paternity, as the social code of the time, place, and race demanded.

In the last few days, however, Sharon has e-mailed me to say that she has been in contact with others who are knowledgeable about DNA test results, and they say IT IS POSSIBLE that we are related; perhaps not as directly as having the same great-great grandfather, but perhaps still related. Or it could be that our two family histories are bound up together, even if the relationship was not biological. We STILL do not have a definitive answer to this question. What I think we need is to find someone who is knowledgeable about this area, submit the data to them, and accept their decision as a final arbiter.

In the meantime, however, there is still much to do. I am not certain who James E. Leslie's parents were, and the trail appears to go cold after him. Charlotte, however, is only about an hour's drive from Statesville, the county seat of Iredell County, NC where my great-great grandfather was born. Who were his parents? When and why did he come to Alabama from North Carolina? I think it is time I reached out to The Genealogical Society of Iredell County and visited the Iredell County courthouse to see if I can find the answers to these questions.

The search is on. The game is afoot.

All in the Family

It looks as if other members of my family might have caught the genealogy/family history bug. My brother Allen may be the next victim.

I've previously blogged about the search for information about my Dad's World War II military service. When I received copies of reports of two accidents my Dad was involved in during his pilot training, I shared them with my brother Allen, who is both a licensed pilot himself and an artist of no small skill. Allen called me a few days ago to say that he had decided to create a painting of a P-51, the airplane Dad flew for most of his service. This led him to do research on the P-51, which in turn led him to do research on the structure and organization of the Air Force (or Army Air Forces, as it was known during World War II). During our phone conversation, Allen and I compared our memories of Dad's recollections of his wartime service.  I recalled Dad mentioning that he had flown with the U. S. 9th Air Force in England for a time, but I didn't know anything more specific. Using the data in the accident reports and my recollection as starting points, Allen did some internet sleuthing and now thinks he knows where and when our Dad may have been stationed in England. I went back to the website where I first found out about the accidents and reports,the wonderful U. S. Army Air Forces in World War II site and posted a query in their forums.

Remarkably, this query has already produced results. A user pointed me to The Newspaper Archive website with a brief article about my father:

The caption reads: "Big responsibility is in the capable hands of 19-year-old Second Lieut. William S. Leslie, above, Birmingham, Ala., who may soon pilot a B-24 Liberator over Axis targets. Believed to be the youngest four-engine pilot ever to graduate from an army air forces school, lieutenant Leslie completed his course at the Fort Worth, Tex., bomber base."

The clipping is from the (Madison) Wisconsin State Journal, Thursday, 25 February 1943, p. 3. Apparently, the story about Dad being the youngest pilot ever to complete four-engine training was run by newspapers across the country. We still don't know how or why Dad made the transition from four-engine bombers to single-engine fighters, and we still don't know for sure where or when Dad was in England, but we are searching for clues. As Sherlock Holmes would say, "The game is afoot!"

Lawyer Needed

Some legal research is needed.

Anybody know where I can find a good lawyer?

No, it isn't for me. I'm not in any legal trouble (I hope). But my great-great grandfather may have been. It seems my great-great grandfather, James E. Leslie (1823-1875) was involved in a legal matter that was ultimately adjudicated by the Alabama Supreme Court during their January 1860 term. The court rendered a decision in the case of Purcell's Adm'r [Administrator?] vs. Mather which can be found in Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Alabama, vol. XXXV, pp. 570-574. I found the text of the ruling via Google Books in a link supplied by Sharon Leslie Morgan. The ruling is brief but rather complicated and technical, concerning a contract my great-great grandfather made to hire a slave from another man, and the arrangements to pay for that hire. If the first link to Google Books I provided doesn't work, please go to the Google Books homepage, search for Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Alabama v. 35 and search inside the book for James E. Leslie.

I took one introductory law course in college years ago, but the legal issues in play in this case are way beyond my scant knowledge and ability to comprehend. What I'd like is for a lawyer to read the ruling and explain it to me in plain English (or in something as close to it as possible) so I know what's going on here. What are the issues involved? Was my great-great grandfather directly involved in this case or only peripherally involved in a dispute between other people? Was my great-great grandfather accused of or guilty of some kind of misconduct? I'd like to know in order to get some sense of the kind of person he was. Was he a saint or a scoundrel, or, like most of us, somewhere in between? Any help my fellow genealogists and family historians could give me in answering these questions would be a great help.

Thankful Thursday: Happy To Be Here

Thankful Thursday is another daily blogging prompt from GeneaBloggers. I'm back after a long, unintended hiatus, and that's what I'm thankful for today.

My genealogy research seemed to be cracking along in June and July, and then in August some things came up that brought everything to a more or less screeching halt: work for my church that had to be completed on a deadline and remodeling and renovation to my apartment: new siding on the building, new kitchen cabinets, new sinks, a new coat of paint, and new flooring. Oh, and by the way, I'm also thankful that a minor medical problem that I was concerned about turned out to be only a minor medical problem.

With all that going on, it was hard to concentrate, and then I had to remember where I left off and get back into the swing of things— but it's all coming back to me now. I'm unofficially collaborating with Sharon Leslie Morgan, author of the Our Black Ancestry blog to research James E. Leslie, my great-great grandfather, and the man she believes to be our common ancestor. Earlier this week at her request, I wrote letters to the church James E. belonged to and to the Lowndes County Alabama tax assessor's office requesting information about the man. Next, I'll write to the county courthouse in Hayneville to see what legal records I can find. Earlier today Sharon pointed me to James E. Leslie's Confederate military record on the Fold3 website. The record confirmed her belief that James E. came to Alabama from Iredell County, North Carolina, so we have a new place to hunt for records. I'm back on the trail of my ancestors, and it feels good!

Tombstone Tuesday Twofer: William W., James E., and the Big Surprise

Tombstone Tuesday is another daily blogging prompt from Geneabloggers that turned out to be especially appropriate for me this week.

I've been away from the blog for a few days, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy with genealogical research. In fact this past week may have been my biggest yet so far in terms of discoveries and their emotional impact. What I found this week has changed my life. I found that I may have African-American ancestors and relations that I knew nothing about.

It all began innocently enough. I have a copy of my paternal grandfather's death certificate, which lists his father's name as William W. Leslie. I searched for William W. Leslie of Braggs, Lowndes County, Alabama on Ancestry.com and the following picture came up:

William W. Leslie, Oct. 3, 1851-Dec. 18, 1899.
New Bethel Braggs Cemetery, Lowndes County Alabama

(I have added the caption in case the inscription is difficult to read). I left an excited comment asking the person who posted the picture to contact me and share information. An African-American woman named Sharon Leslie Morgan replied, and invited me to continue the conversation further via e-mail. You can find the original photo and exchange of comments here. We began trading e-mails and documents, and the William W. Leslie she had found sounded like the William W. Leslie I was searching for. She is especially interested in the father of William W. Leslie, James E. Leslie, because in blog posts here, here, and here, she reflects on being a Leslie and discusses her conviction (or at least her supposition) that James E. Leslie (1823-1875) fathered a child with one of his black female slaves. That child was, or may have been, her great-grandfather, Tom Leslie. This is a photo of James E. Leslie's tombstone which she sent me:

James E. Leslie
Born Feb. 22, 1823
Died Mar. 1, 1875
"He left a Wife and three Children"
New Bethel Braggs Cemetery, Lowndes County, Alabama.

(Again, I added the caption in case the original inscription is hard to read).

The upshot of all of this, at least for me, is that I may have African-American ancestors and relations I  knew nothing about, a possibility that I (perhaps naively) had never considered. For much of the South's history, clandestine and unacknowledged interracial sexual unions (whether consensual or forced) and children resulting from those  unions were far more common than many people, white or black, were willing to admit. I knew this in an abstract, intellectual way from taking college courses in race relations and the history of the South, but there is a huge difference between understanding something as an abstract concept and seeing how it could affect the history of your own family.

I am still trying to process both my emotional reaction to this possibility and the evidence for it that Sharon Leslie Morgan has shared with me thus far. We both want to continue the conversation and gather and interpret more evidence, if it can be found. We agree that the evidence is not conclusive, but it is suggestive. There is much we both need to know before we can say with any certainty whether or not we are related through a common connection to James E. Leslie. We may not be able to resolve the question except through DNA testing.

If you'd like to know more about Sharon Leslie Morgan, she is the coauthor of a forthcoming book, Gather at the Table, due out in October. In the book, Ms. Morgan, a descendant of slaves, and Thomas DeWolf, a descendant of slave owners, discuss their experiences traveling across the country together doing research into their respective family histories and grappling with how the legacies of slavery and racism still affect them. Thomas DeWolf is a member of the Board of Directors of Coming to the Table, an organization that helps descendants of slaves and descendants of slave owners understand their common heritage and promote racial healing and reconciliation.

As for me, whatever happens, this experience has made me re-examine my concept of myself, my identity as a white Southerner, and my own attitudes on race and racism, and that can only be a good thing. It's good to take a good hard look at yourself every so often, and ask yourself what you really believe and why. As more than one philosopher has said, the unexamined life is not worth living.

Shopping Saturday: Braggs or Bragg's?

Braggs, Lowndes County, Alabama, as it appeared in
The New 11 x14 Atlas of the World, Rand McNally, 1895

. . . and the difference one little apostrophe can make. What does an apostrophe have to do with shopping, you ask? I'll explain.

Shopping Saturday is another daily blogging prompt from GeneaBloggers in which bloggers write about stores or shops that played important roles in their lives or the lives of their ancestors. I believe my paternal grandfather, Stewart Farley Leslie, came from a community that was named for a local store.

My grandfather was born in a tiny rural community (I don't know if t it was even formally incorporated as a town) in Lowndes County in south central Alabama called Braggs. In an old U. S. Atlas, circa 1895, it appears approximately halfway between Fort Deposit and Letohatchee. My father, who spent at least one boyhood summer there with my grandfather's relatives, used to laugh and say that it was the kind of place "you had to want to get to." Meaning, I suppose, that it was so small and out of the way that one didn't just blunder across it by accident. In some sources I've seen, the name of the place is written as Braggs, and in others it's written as Bragg's.

Why quibble over one little apostrophe? Because it can give you a clue to the origin of the place. I was searching FamilySearch.org one night in June, looking for information about my grandfather, when I found a 1900 census record listing his residence as "Precincts 5-6 Farmersville, Bragg's Store, Lowndes, Alabama." The apostrophe was there, perhaps, because the name of the place was originally Bragg's  Store. I'm just theorizing here, but possibly it could have been a trading post or a way station along the route to somewhere else. A cluster of houses grew up around it. A community was born. Over time, for the sake of convenience, (or perhaps the store went out of business), the name was shortened to Braggs and the apostrophe was dropped.

Interestingly, in that same census record, there is no mention of my great-grandfather (my grandfather's father) and my great-grandmother (my grandfather's mother) is listed as head of household. I believe my great-grandfather (whose name, I believe, was William Wright Leslie) must have died before 1900. Perhaps my great-grandmother, Janie Cora Peake (She appears on the record as Janie C. Leslie), wanted to be near the store in hopes of making a living and supporting her young children. I estimate that my grandfather would have been about 13 in 1900. His older sister Mabel would have been about 14, and his three younger brothers, William W., James B., and Henry E. would have been about 10, 6, and 4 years old respectively. If anyone can help me verify this, I'd be most grateful.

THAT'S the difference one little apostrophe can make, and THAT'S the connection between a little apostrophe and shopping.

Follow Friday: Alabama Blogs

Alabama is the red one.

One of the daily blogging prompts at GeneaBloggers is "Follow Friday" in which bloggers write about blogs, blog posts, or websites they are following in their research and why they find them useful. I'm only getting around to this prompt today (Saturday) but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Beginning last night and continuing today, I've added all the blogs currently available in the Alabama Genealogy category of GeneaBloggers to my blogroll. That may seem like overdoing it a little, but I figure that since I'm really just getting started with my research, I have no idea where clues to my paternal Alabama ancestors might turn up. I'd like to meet bloggers with connections to the same state I'm researching in the hopes that they can point me in the right directions and share what they've learned with me. As my research into my mother's side of the family expands, I want to make similar connections with South Carolina and Virginia genealogy bloggers.

I Found My Dad!

Caption on the back of the original photo reads:
"1st Lt. William S. Leslie, 20 years old, Oct. 9 1943"
(Scanned image supplied by William F. Leslie)

This was a big weekend for me. I found my Dad.

Early Saturday morning I received a long-awaited e-mail from Craig Fuller of the Aviation Archaeological Investigation and Research (AAIR) website that maintains a database of accident reports involving World War II aircraft. The e-mail contained a link to a page where I could download copies of two reports of two accidents involving my father, William Stewart Leslie, during his pilot training in World War II. The serial number of the "Leslie, William S." in these reports matches exactly the serial number on a set of dog tags in my family's possession, so I know this is my Dad. Now that I know for certain his rank and serial number and the group and squadron he was attached to at the time of the accidents, I can use these pieces of information to try and locate more details about his military service.

In the first accident, he was returning to Camp Campbell (now Fort Campbell), Kentucky after a routine cross-country training flight early on the morning of 15 August 1943. He landed about ten feet short of the end of the runway because the sun was in his eyes, and when he landed, the spindle supporting the left landing gear on his Bell P-39F AirCobra broke, causing the landing gear on that side to collapse. The board investigating the accident concluded:

Bell P-39F AirCobra with U. S. Army Air Forces Markings

Although pilot did land a few feet short of hard surfaced runway due to the fact that his visual judgment was hindered because he was landing into the sun at 0830 o'clock, it is not the opinion of the board that this fact would have been a factor in causing the landing gear to fail. It is a known fact that landing gear spindles on P-39 Airplanes are light and delicate. It is believed that spindle had Crystallized and cracked.

In the second accident, he was leaving Camp Campbell for another routine cross country training flight on the afternoon of 25 October 1943 when ice formed in the carburetor of his North American P-51 Mustang, causing a sudden and and complete engine failure. The official report reads:

North American P-51 Mustang

"After about 50 minutes of flying there was a tremendous backfire and engine failed. Pilot made crash landing, wheels up" in a farmer's cornfield near Scottsville, Kentucky.

The board investigating the accident recommended "that pilots be directed to use full carburetor heat when atmospheric conditions indicate that moderate to severe icing conditions exist," and "That WILLIAM S. LESLIE, 2nd Lt. Air Corps, Res., be relieved of all responsibility in this accident."

I'm relieved to know that in both cases, the investigating boards concluded that Dad did not cause or was not directly responsible for the accident.  A pilot is always ultimately responsible for everything that happens on board his aircraft, but apparently in these cases there were mitigating circumstances. A severe enough accident might have caused Dad to wash out of pilot training, which I think might have broken his heart. Dad loved flying.

I admire his persistence, too. One accident is one thing, but after the second one, I would have considered the Quartermaster Corps or the Navy!

So What's This Blog About, Anyway?

Castle Leslie in Abedeenshire, Scotland where my ancestors lived.

Statue of Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama, where my father was born.

And who's this guy writing it?

Hi, I'm Neil Leslie (aka Niall Mor, or "Big Neil" in Scottish Gaelic) and welcome to the blog chronicling my adventures in pursuit of my ancestors: the Leslie and Leatherwood families of south central Alabama; the Moffatt family of northern Florida; and the Roberts and Allen families of central South Carolina--along with whoever else might show up. The title reflects my preliminary or working assumption (perhaps I should call it a theory or hypothesis) that my family originated in Aberdeenshire in northeastern Scotland, immigrated to the United States, and somehow, over several generations, worked its way to south central Alabama, where my paternal grandfather was born. That mysterious "somehow" is the subject of my search.

I also blog over at "It's All Straw" on everything from Catholicism to comic books, but I'm starting this blog because I've become interested in family history and genealogy again and have decided to see what I can find out about the Leslie family. My ultimate goal with the Leslie family is to find out who came over on the boat. Who came over on the boat to America presumably from  Scotland? How did the family wind up in Alabama where my father was born, and where from what I can tell, the family had lived for several generations?

 As a more short-term but related goal (which may evolve into a separate project), I'd like to know more about my father's military service in World War II. One of my great regrets is that I never asked him more about the specifics of what he did. I've made inquiries a couple of times and tried to obtain a copy of his service record but come up empty. It's possible that I don't have enough specific information to locate his specific records, or it may be possible that his records were lost. Just as I'm going to try again to find information about my father's military service, I'm going to try again to find out more about my family.

 I say “again” because I've been interested in family history for years but never did any systematic or thorough research. My interest in family history probably started when I was a boy and I learned that Leslie was a Scottish surname and there was a Leslie family tartan. My older brothers received Leslie tartan ties from my parents, but I didn't. Jealousy can be a very powerful motivator! Each tie came with a little placard summarizing the history of the Scottish Leslies. I must have read that card a hundred times, but without any context for the people and place names, I lost interest and forgot the details. In 1985, I was fortunate enough to go to Scotland (and get my own Leslie tie) but I wasn't able to do any family history research.

My latent interest in family history revived in the 1990s when I got a computer with internet access and I found out about the vast quantity of genealogical and family history information that was gradually becoming available in cyberspace. Back then, however, most of the stuff that was available was posted by government agencies, individuals, or networks of genealogists working on their own. If I remember correctly, sites such as Rootsweb were still privately maintained, and aggregate sites for genealogical information such as Ancestry.com were just taking off. ("You young people have it so easy nowadays," he says in best grumpy old man voice).

The next goad for me to do family history research was my parents' 50th wedding anniversary in 1999. I met relatives I'd never met before and heard stories I'd never heard before. I started collecting scraps of information here and there, but nothing complete. I wish I had started collecting and compiling more vigorously because my parents were with us only a few more years after that – my Dad, William Stewart Leslie, passed away in 2005, and my Mom, Cecelia Roberts Leslie, passed away in 2006. (*See my policy on names over there to the right*). I lost access to their memories and recollections.

In the years since then, it's bothered me that I don't have a more complete picture of our family history. I've tried to construct a genealogy, but my knowledge is fragmentary, incomplete, and  unreliable. My older brothers and sisters have become aware of my interest in genealogy and recently my brother Bill offered to pay for a year's access to the Ancestry.com website as a birthday present. I've accepted that offer. I've also started watching the TV series “Who Do You Think You Are?” in which celebrities find out about their family histories. I finally decided that if celebrities can do it, I can do it. I'll have more to say about the show later.

I started this blog because I wanted a place to write down anecdotes, tidbits, questions, and scraps of information that might suggest directions for further research. I would welcome comments, queries, tips, tricks, and gentle corrections. For now, I've decided to focus my attention on the Leslie family because I honestly don't know much about them. My Dad's sister, my aunt Elizabeth Leslie LeCroy, was something of a family historian, but she passed away in 1984. She passed on some of what she knew to her daughters (and my cousins) Jeanne and Marie Ann. They have added to what Elizabeth knew and shared it with me, but I need to review what I have. We know a bit more about my mother's family, the Roberts, because my uncle Eddie has become something of a family historian and has a good bit of information about the Roberts and related families.

Thank you so much for visiting my new blog today. If you like what you've read (or even if you don't), please leave a comment. A blogroll and an RSS feed will be added soon, so be sure to check back with us often. Haste ye back!