How To Discover & Preserve The Family’s Treasure Trove

I’ll never forget when I first came to the realization that the wonderful treasure trove of our family—the family elders—were not being appreciated or respected as they should. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was December 2019. Until that time I hadn’t fully understood or appreciated the enormous wealth of information that our elders, not only possessed but actually were themselves; information crucial to my own understanding of my heritage and the essence of who I am as a human being.

That December, my wife’s side of the family experienced the devastating loss of one of my father-in-law’s sisters, our beloved Aunt Pearle. She was 83 years old and as her name suggests, she was a precious gem. I had the privilege of knowing her for nearly twenty years. She was a sweet, generous woman. She grew up in Kingston, Jamaica but spent most of her adult life here, in the U.S. After Aunt Pearle’s passing, I began to reflect on the legacy she left behind—the many fond memories cherished by all those who knew and loved her, including me. That’s when it hit me like an anvil. I’d never taken the opportunity to tap into her stories—the recipe for who and why she was the Aunt Pearle we all loved so.

To sit at the foot of our elders, soaking up their wisdom, hearing their stories, stories passed down through the generations is not only a privilege, but a responsibility that is far too often taken for granted or outright neglected nowadays. This process has always been a major aspect of African history and culture. The greatest function of our elders has always been to pass on the history, oral or written; the language, the culture, the accomplishments, to a young generation. And for Africans and African Americans that has historically been accomplished through the gift of story-telling. What we do with those shared stories, those collected memories will either cultivate the soil from which we attempt to grow our family tree, or impair our vision and devalue our family legacy.

My devotion to genealogy is spawned by my thirst for truth, and the researching of my family history rewards me with a sense of validation almost unparalleled in any other study I’ve engaged in. I was privileged to know five out of my eight great-grandparents and listening to their stories and memories about their ancestors was much more than casual interest for me. I think back to the days spent sitting with them on the front porch, eating the most delicious foods, the recipes passed down from generations before them. They were always happy to share the ingredients of their lives and of the lives of those who came before them. It was like being wooed in a courtship that eventually became a lasting love affair. Their stories transported me, through my imagination, to times and places far off in the distant past, and only through their recitation could I travel there.

Appreciate the time spent with your Elders

One of those porches belonged to my mother’s maternal grandparents. I always enjoyed visiting them. Their home was a place where all of us, as children could be children, yet still, learn some of the most valuable life lessons. My great-grandparents’ formal education stopped short of high school, yet my great-grandfather would sit and teach my brother and me algebra. They lived through Jim Crow. They relocated from the rural South to the North East during the first Great Migration, also known as the Black Migration, which took place between 1916-1940. They struggled for their own civil rights and of the civil rights of all African Americans, and they even managed to own several businesses.

I remember my brother and me swinging on an old swing set that had belonged to my mother when she was a girl. To us, those days at my great-grandparents’ house were magical. The sun seemed to shine a little brighter there, the breeze just a little cooler. We drank water from the public water fountain as we played in the neighborhood park down the street. The neighborhood itself consisted of just three streets with the shortest street connecting the longer two. Riding my uncle’s bike up and down those roads I used to imagine I was traversing the world of a lowercase backward “h.” Funny how a child’s imagination works. Everyone in the neighborhood knew each other. All of the adults were referred to as “Mr.” or “Ms.” by the neighborhood children because respecting one’s elders was as natural as breathing.  I remember my great-grandfather never ceasing to be amazed by the beauty and wonder of the world around him. Twenty-six years later after his passing, I can still hear his voice as he’d exclaim, “can you imagine that!” That same amazement of the world’s beauty and wonder is an ingredient in my recipe of me. Thank you, Great-grandfather. Even as I write this, I am lost in a reverie of wistfully fond memories.

Connect to the Recipes the Elders have passed down

My great-grandparents’ home seemed huge to me as a child, and it frightened me. There were so many doorways in that house. It was almost like a maze. If you walked out of any room on the first floor, you’d find yourself walking back into the same room from the opposite direction. That made it easy for my older brother to sneak up and startle me. What’s interesting about that is somehow I’ve overcompensated for it as an adult. Nowadays, I like to sneak up on my wife and startle her. We had a lot of fun! Attached to the house was the little restaurant they owned called “Bonner’s Sweet Shop” also known as “Bonner’s Rendezvous.” It was a popular place and was started so my great-grandmother could stay home and take care of their special-needs adult child, my sweet and precious Great Aunt Carolyn. The restaurant was eventually shut down due to my great-grandparents retiring a year after I was born in the early 1970s. To this day my mother talks about the famous malted milkshakes they served. She talks about her unlimited access to the restaurant’s ice cream sandwiches when she came home from school. She would take one up to her bedroom to enjoy while she changed from her school clothes into her play clothes. My mother then would return downstairs to run the restaurant while her grandparents went inside the house to watch the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. However, she mostly played the pinball machine for hours until interrupted by customers. Although my mother is not a fan of lemon meringue pie, she fondly recounts it being the most requested dessert on the menu. I wonder what special ingredients my Great-grandparents used to make up its recipe.

I remember tasting my great grandfather’s coconut cake with apple jelly generously spread between the two layers for a filling. Years later, I tried to duplicate the recipe, but couldn’t make it taste like Great Grandfather’s. Sadly, his special recipe, like the lemon meringue, is lost to us forever. I remember my great-grandfather making my brother and me the most delicious egg and cheese sandwiches for breakfast. He never used a toaster for the bread. He would heat a cast-iron skillet, melt a slab of butter and strategically place slices of bread on the skillet. Once they were all buttery toasted, golden brown he’d flip them to get the same effect on the other side. The way my grands and great-grands would wield their cast iron cookware to make the most delectable foods is the reason I own a set of cast iron cookware today. For me, it’s a tradition passed down to me, even if they didn’t intend for it to be.

Assemble the pieces of the puzzle to form a portrait of the past

The old places like my great-grandparents’ house gave me the creeps. A few times my mother took my siblings and me inside the restaurant. Everything seemed old, the tables, chairs, stools, and countertops. The appliances were all draped with furniture covers used for storage. For reasons I can’t explain, even that frightened me. The house and the restaurant were like relics in time. You have to understand, my great-grandparents were born at the turn of the twentieth century. What I didn’t understand at that young age was that those dusty old relics were all pieces of a puzzle that, if assembled, would have been a portrait of who they were. I’m sure life wasn’t easy for them, especially at that time, caring for an adult child with special needs. But they made it look like it was. It all seemed so simple and uncomplicated. For what it’s worth, I truly believe it was a simpler time with fewer distractions. Today, I cherish those memories and the warm nostalgic embrace they engender.

I’ll never forget the day my brother and I braved the descent into the creepy cellar under their house with great-grandfather. I saw a huge collection of antiques, forgotten things of a bygone era. My brother and I were enthralled while my sisters who were much younger refused to have any parts of the adventure. I remember pointing to every item, inquisitively asking what they were. Not only did great-grandfather answer our inquiries, but every answer also came with a story, a memory of how the item came into his possession and what each one meant to him. I had no way of knowing back then, that he was sharing pieces of himself with us. Those stories in my great-grandparents’ minds were a treasure trove more valuable than all of the wonderful things he’d amassed in that cellar and throughout their entire home. Yet, I had failed to appreciate it all.

Today that house belongs to strangers. The restaurant is gone, torn down years ago. The nearly three acres of land they owned that once flourished, ripe with fruit and vegetation now sits in the solitude of inconspicuous, overgrown brush. The other acres of land they owned have been sold off to developers. The photos that decorated the walls of their home and filled up a chest have all but disappeared. The few remaining photos that did survive the erosion of time my family and I try to piece together knowing their value as ingredients to the recipe.

I’ve been fortunate to connect with relatives my family has lost contact with over the generations, as well as, distant cousins through DNA testing and genealogical researching sites. Their journey of genealogical discovery and their efforts to discover and preserve their family’s treasure trove has collectively served to bring the image of our larger family’s legacy into sharper focus. I wish I had been old enough to make sure that property was kept in our family. My great-grandparents, like their property, have long since passed away. But their stories, their memories, pieces of their essence, handed down to us, their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, still live on through the intentional telling and retelling, chronicling, and sharing of that legacy.

Oral history is a transaction – reinvest your withdrawal into the next generation

When building my family tree, the records and census information related to my 2nd great-grandparents and beyond served to confirm much of what had been passed down by them. However, the reality is that discovering and researching the paper trails of one’s ancestors only provides us with genealogical material. Without the stories our elders share about themselves and their ancestors, we cannot truly compile the narratives of their lives. And it is in those narratives where the very ingredients that make up not only the recipe of who our ancestors were but also, who we are and why we are who we are today can live and breathe.

I will forever regret, though I sat at the feet of my elders and listened to their stories, I didn’t know to dig deeper into that well. I wish I had asked them what their grandparents and great-grandparents were like. Did they remember any stories about them? The thing about oral history is that it’s a mutual transaction between one generation and the next. The elders must be willing to pass down their stories, and the younger generation must respect the elders and themselves enough to know the importance of receiving the information so they can fulfill the same function when it is their time to be the elders. Once that chain is broken, pieces of the puzzle that help tell the story of who they were and who we are can disappear forever like the recipe to my great-grandfather’s coconut apple jelly cake.

As Aunt Pearle was laid to rest, I wondered how much of her story she was able to pass down. I wondered about the effort the family would make in passing her story along to future generations. The truth of the matter is one day we will be the elders who will tell our progeny stories about the Aunt Pearls of our families, the collective stories and memories of our ancestors. Yet, even that is dependent upon our discovering and preserving the treasure trove that is our elders.

I would love to hear from you in the comments where you may share about your family’s treasure trove and how you are discovering and preserving them. I’d also love to hear about the recipes your Elders have passed down to you. Thanks for stopping by! Please this blog with others.