While I was studying the women in the Edelweiss Club during the past several years, I came across quite a bit of information about some of their parents. They were in the same age group with my great grandmother, Jenny Virginia Allen Turner. My great grandmother was born October 1, 1866 in Montgomery Alabama, seven months after the end of the Civil War and the ratification of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. Most of the parents were born in the 1850s and 1860s, during the final years of slavery or during the first years of freedom.

I began by studying these parents and then I became interested in others living in Montgomery, Alabama during that time and began to expand my investigations to include them and by extension, learned what was happening in the community that my family lived in during Reconstruction and after.

I found women and men who worked for themselves as farmers, carpenters, barbers, grocers, preachers and seamstresses. There were others who worked for the government as janitors, teachers and mailmen. Some worked for private families as nurses and chauffeurs. There were murders, scandals and everyday life.

I began by looking for the people I was interested in, in census and death records and city directories. After building a picture of their lives from these records, I looked them up in the local newspapers. I found stories of murders, obituaries, graduations and teaching assignments. Most of the stories appeared in the white papers and were obviously biased towards the African American citizens. I also found stories in black newspapers. Some had long publishing lives, but there were several that only came out once or twice. These papers carried more personal information – marriages, who just moved into town, who was visiting who and other more personal stories. In these newspaper articles I found new people to investigate.

I haven’t written anything on my blog since May and I decided I need to start writing up all the information I’ve found. I need to do a timeline of the events and also place the new people on the map I made for the Edelweiss women. Hopefully I won’t get lost in these for too long!