Joyce was the first to adopt as a single-parent in Philadelphia, she complied a cohesive record of her complex family history tracing back to the 1600's and joined the Daughters of the American Revolution despite passing the grave of Marian Anderson when visiting family members, who used to play with Marian, buried in the same cemetery. She talks about being on the Board of Directors for the National Adoption Center, coaching other adoptive parents, and receiving the Family and Volunteer of the year awards; her promise to her grandmother to continue documenting and researching family oral history; her membership in legacy organizations Colonial Daughters and Founding Families of PA, NY, NJ; her Revolutionary War patriot, formerly enslaved Quaker, Cyrus Bustill, who baked bread for troops at Valley Forge; how Cyrus Bustill was owned by his grandfather and made arrangements to purchase his own freedom; Cyrus bringing his enslaved mother to live with him when she was too old to work as a slave and his handwritten letters to his brother-in-law who still owned his mother at the time of her death; Cyrus's wife, Elizabeth Morrey, who was European, African and Lenapi Indian; Cyrus paying a boy to teach him to read and write, learning to bake and going from enslaved to a leader of his community; Quaker diaries and records documenting Cyrus and his children; Cyrus and his children helping the Underground Railroad, raising money for churches started by Absylom Jones and Richard Allen, and founding the Free African Society; her grandmother's stories; Cyrus starting a school and the importance of education; her family being free people of color in the 1700's and starting several churches in Philadelphia; historical figures in family: David Bustill Bowser who painted John Brown, Frederick Douglas's cousin, Madeline Burr Turner- Aaron Burr's great granddaughter, Robert Douglas who was invited to England to paint portrait of the queen but was unable to obtain passport, Paul Robeson, and Humphrey Morrey- first mayor of Philadelphia and his son Richard who owned and freed his "wife" Cremona who was European, Native American, and African, one of richest women in PA, and mother of Cyrus's wife Elizabeth; writing a children's book documenting family history; waiting three years to obtain DAR approval for Cyrus's service; her family documentation housed at Howard U, U of Penn, Yale, Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and William and Mary; building a database of 90,000+ African American Philadelphians interred at Eden Cemetery, including 90 family members; meeting the white descendants of Richard Morrey who were unaware of his black family with Cremona; a white relative learning about her own African DNA resulting from grandfather's secret of passing for white; five family historic markers in Philadelphia; meeting the white descendant of a relative who was colored in Philadelphia but decided to pass for white in Boston; how her complex history shapes her identity today. Joyce was featured in a PBS episode of "Movers and Makers" and her family history was also the subject of the PBS Documentary "The Montiers: An American Story". Read Joyce's biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
Comentarios