Stories That Live In Us

Project Managing the Saga (with Nicka Sewell-Smith) | Episode 52

• Crista Cowan | The Barefoot Genealogist • Season 1 • Episode 52

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When Nicka Sewell-Smith set out to find her great-grandmother Easter's maiden name, she never imagined it would lead to uncovering 10,000 descendants from a single enslaved community...

In this moving conversation, genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith returns to share how her search for one ancestor evolved into the groundbreaking "Trask 250" project. By meticulously tracking enslaved families from the 1850s through freedom, she's reconstructed a community that remained connected across generations. Nicka reveals how a chance cemetery visit, a cartoonist cousin with perfect recall, and strategic spreadsheet management helped piece together a family narrative that spans from pre-Revolutionary African ancestors to modern DNA connections. Her story demonstrates how determined research can transform overwhelming historical data into powerful family connections that bring pride and healing to thousands of descendants.

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Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Well, I'm at 10,000. Like that was my goal. Like my goal was, if I can hit 10,000, then that way I can release it. Like I will feel comfortable, like letting this loose. You know what I mean, because I want my best work to go out with this. I want people to be able to break through brick walls. I want people to be able to get closure.

Crista Cowan:

Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything history. And I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything. A few weeks ago, you heard the big announcement about Ancestry Networks and hopefully you also listened to my episode of the podcast with Jenn Utley. Well, today my guest is another Ancestry Nicka Sewell-Smith, and I think she might be our first repeat guest. So that's exciting. I love listening to Nicka's stories, but today she's going to tell a story about the Trask 250. It is a network of individuals who were enslaved by the same individual, and she has managed to trace their descendants in an incredible fashion, and so I'm excited for you to hear her tell about that journey that she's taken to create that network. And you're my first repeat guest. Oh my gosh. So that's exciting.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Oh my gosh look at us repeating.

Crista Cowan:

We're so good at this. Well, nicka, I'm so excited to have you back. Yay, yay. There's so many different stories we could tell and different stories that we could tell together, and that means we'll probably have to have you back again.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

What am I going to be talking about, then? I don't know, but there are plenty of things to talk about.

Crista Cowan:

But today specifically I want to talk about your journey with the Trask 250. And I have kind of watched that unfold a little bit from a distance and so I know some of the broad strokes. But I'm really excited today to dig into kind of the whole arc of that story for you as research, but then also maybe some of the individual stories that have emerged as you have done that. So let's dive in. What was the impetus for this whole project?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Well, believe it or not, it started with unnamed ancestors, which I think is something that everyone deals with, right? Anyone that's beginning genealogy doesn't almost always have all the names, unless they're related to us. But just in case you're not, sometimes you ask family members questions and they just they don't have the answers right. And you know, as you're going through the process of genealogy you want to make sure you're interviewing people, because you cannot get that information back once those people die. And so I went about asking folks in my dad's family, like you know, just for names, and by the time I really started on this, my father had already passed away. My aunt, his sister, was dead. Both of my grandparents were dead and the only first cousin I had was all dead. So I was like a proverbial genealogical orphan in my family, and so I had to rely on my dad's first cousins for like anything about my grandparents family. And so I had to rely on my dad's first cousins for like anything about my grandparents. And luckily I had nurtured relationships with these people, and I just remember trying to fill out information about my great grandfather and I remember I was going through the steps, I was going through the census, and I ended up finding him in 1900 in New Orleans where he was supposed to be, but he wasn't with his parents and I was like, well then, who are his parents? And so I called one of my dad's first cousins. And the interesting situation with my dad and his first cousins is that all of them were raised together, they were raised by their grandparents and so you know, they really more function like siblings than they did first cousins. And so I call Ramona and I'm like, okay, honey is not living with his parents, like what are his parents' names? And he go and she says I don't remember her name. She was like, but I just I remember going on the train to Oakland to see her and I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Now, at this point I'm living in the Bay area, so I'm like Oakland. My dad never told me he went to Oakland. My dad is from Chicago. Okay, like it lived in California, like that's it.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

But this, this cousin, ramona, is like a. She's like a supercomputer. She remembers every day of her life. She can tell you what she was eating and drinking on, like January 20th of, you know, 1973. She could tell you what clothes she had. I mean, like it's remarkable the amount of detail that she could remember and it was crazy because she was telling me about this train ride. She was telling me about how their uncle had gotten them the ticket, how my great-grandfather had taken like a man in like the 40s, took two kids across country by himself and they rode from Chicago on the train to Oakland, and how she remembered my dad was there. They had an older cousin named Maury who was their uncle's son, and the aunt was named Nora and I remember this name is like so like it's going to keep coming back like over and over again in the story, but there was always an aunt Nora. I have a ton of aunt Noras. Like my grandfather's sister was Nora and my great grandfather's sister was Nora, and so she just was like yeah, they, she was sick. We came out to see her and she died shortly after that and Ramona said I remember the house we went to, the address is is this and this on Ashby in Berkeley, and I was like how old were you? She was like, oh, we were like eight and I was like we're in the 2000s, how do you remember this? And so you know she was right. Like she's like go track down Maury. She said he's a cartoonist. And I was like, wait what? And she said, yeah, he's a cartoonist, he has a comic strip. And I'm all in the recesses of my mind like all these things start playing.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

I remember being in second grade and having to do a project on mazes corn and not knowing what to do for this project on this poster board. My dad said, well, you know what I'll draw, thanksgiving. And I was like, dad, you can't draw. And then I literally saw my father freehand an entire Thanksgiving scene and he goes just color it in and I thought to myself this is like a family thing that I didn't know. It was Like my niece is a makeup artist Like we have all these creatives. My aunt Nora was a mill artist. Like we have all these creatives, my aunt Nora was a Milner, like it's like just super interesting. So I just I was sort of like blown away, like and she said, yeah, she's. Like this is his address. She said, look up the address, get the phone number. He's going to know who you are. And and I just I was like completely thrown.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

So I literally Googled him and he was a cartoonist. His name was Maury Turner. I miss him so much. He had the first syndicated minority comic strip in the United States. In fact I think it's still in publication now he's been dead for almost 10 years and it was called we Pals and there was even a. They even made it into a animated series called Kid Power. And there was even a. David made it into a animated series called Kid Power and he was still living in his mother's house in Berkeley. And it was crazy too, because I've been on that block, I've been in that neighborhood. One of my very, very good friends his mother lived there, they were neighbors and so I just called and I'm like this guy is not. Like. I'm hoping he has caller ID.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

At this point I wasn't married, so obviously my last name is going to send a note to him that obviously it's someone in the family. So I call, he picks up the phone and Maurya has this kind of high pitch voice. He's like hey, and I was like hi. So my name is Nicka and he goes oh, you're one of Uncle Sugar's people. They called my great-grandfather Sugar, we called him Honey, I guess both, because both of them are sweet, I don't know. So he's like yeah, he's like I know who you are, and I was like Jack. I said Jack is my great-grandfather, yes, so the relationship with Maury is that him and my grandfather were first cousins and so thus making him and my dad first cousins once removed.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

So that whole train trip, all of that. And I'm telling him and he's talking about Ramona and he has everyone's names and he's like, oh, and I have some stuff for you here and I'm like, oh, my, like what? So then at that point I just kept calling him and I said here's the thing I find honey and I find your mother, nora. They're on the census in 1900 in New Orleans. They're with their grandparents. What is their mother and their father's name? They have two different last names. Do they have different dads? And he said I can't remember mama's name. He said but you know what, go to Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, mama and my mom and my dad, uncle George and Aunt Nora. He said they are in this section. He said the next grave over to them. It's boom, boom, boom. That's where she is.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

It was all this information just came to me like so fast, like I was like what the heck my family has this history in the Bay Area and I had no idea. And I've been living here half of my life and I passed by this cemetery every day on BART and I had no idea that my great, great grandmother was buried there. So I head to the cemetery and I go to the office and the cemetery is so old. They had, you know, they had like the little cards. You know the little card system. You have to pull it out and they're like OK, so who would you like to go see? And so I'm like, all right, my aunt's name is Nora Turner. Her husband's name is George Turner and I knew, if I got to them, that she was going to be right there. So I walk over and it's gated.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

I mean, this is like the older part of the cemetery and this, this one of the grounds people comes and he says he's like oh, you want to come on this side. I was like, yeah, so he lets me in. And he's like well, where are you looking? And he actually literally guided me to where I was supposed to go. And so I went to Aunt Nora. I was like, okay, there she is, that's her. I went to Uncle George and then right next to her was Easter and I was like her name's been Easter, this whole time it's a holiday. No, how do people forget this? But they did, and just that quick, literally getting to her great-grandchildren, that's how quickly her name was forgotten. And I was just, I was floored and I just remember I stood out there and I just talked to her for a little while, because it took me five years to get to her gravesite, to get to her name, and just the fact that she was like under my nose like the whole time in the Bay Area, and I, I, you know, I went through the steps. I knew she she died at Agnew State Hospital in Santa Clara. So I ordered her death certificate because I'm like I want to know who her mother is.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

And it turns out the household that my great grandfather and his sister ran in 1900, they were with her mother and her stepfather and so you know, just imagine you're looking at the census, you're like, yes, I'm back a generation, but where's the one in between this one? So yeah, it was Lettie Reeder and her husband Smith Reeder, which Smith. Yeah, it was Letty Reeder and her husband Smith Reeder, which Smith. He suffered kind of a very interesting death Before they put in like the proper drainage systems in New Orleans. They had this sort of rudimentary system where, like they had planks over like the drainage canals or like the neutral ground and he fell off of one of them, and like that's how he died, and like I'm reading this and it said he was killed by a bad street, like that's literally the headline in the newspaper.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

It was strange and based on his last name, I was pretty sure he wasn't my third great-grandfather, but you still have to vet this stuff anyway. So Nora was a Spears, my great-grandfather Honey was a Sewell, and then there was a whole other set of kids there's three more kids who had Williams, but everyone stayed in contact. So when I talked to Maury, he's telling me about where the Williams are. So I'm like, oh my gosh, like this is a whole like wing of like my family story that I had no idea about. So then I got in contact with those folks. They were in Danville, illinois, and like it was just it was crazy and that's really how the whole thing started was I didn't have a name and I had to hunt around to go and find it and I found it in a cemetery. I passed by every day.

Crista Cowan:

Yeah, wow, and Maury, like every family has a Maury, but sometimes you have to hunt to find them and sometimes you don't have a personal relationship with them, so you have to ask around to get to that person. And the fact that not only was he still available, but that he was willing to talk to you and it sounds almost like he was waiting for you.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Oh, absolutely Like. I think one of the things that I'm so sad that I did not get the experience with with Maury is Maury loved to draw you. Like that was like his thing, like it was like a gift that he would give everyone in our family and we just were always talking about history so much until, like I just never like I didn't want to like bother him with being like hey, so can you go to work for a second and like draw me. But I never did, and he would do it for everyone and like he I think he really was waiting for me because there were elements of his story growing up and just being a kid in Oakland and all of that that he would like incorporate into his comic strip and like do storytelling. And then he would always do. He always had a history lesson in his, his strips and so it was like gosh, like it was almost like we were kind of made for each other. You know what I mean. And he, I remember he um just asking like what do you remember about Easter? And because she came to live with him and he said, well, we went out to Natchez to go and get her and I was like, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa. So at this point I had this 1900 census. My great grandfather was born in 1889. You already know what that is. We don't have 1890. So I'm having to like play catch up. Luckily, no-transcript it. So I'm like gosh, like who's his dad? I know his mother's Easter, I know they were in Concordia.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Parish Maury's telling me that she lived in Natchez, mississippi. Well, that's just across the bridge from Concordia. So I'm like, okay, he talked about her dementia, like she was living by herself. She was, she was a widow at that point, her youngest children, you know, and her husband had passed and he, he said they had to go get her because the neighbors were saying that she was just like walking and doing things. So he remembered driving all the way out to Natchez to go and get her.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

But he was like, but I had been out there before because we would go visit, we'd take the train, and the train is a really important part of this story because Uncle George, aunt Nora's husband, was a Pullman porter. That's how they got out to Oakland and if you know anything about Oakland and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and A Philip Randolph and all of that, they had a major chapter there in Oakland, and so I'm again. This is all this history I've been around like and I had no idea my family's connection to it. So they would go out during the summer and Maury was like you know, he's the kid from California. He's like why are we? Why?

Crista Cowan:

are we going to the?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

country, like I don't want to do this. And he said his mother would always meet up with the same people every time and he's like, he's like it was these white people. And I just was like why are you coming out? Like this is weird, like why are you doing this? And he said it had something to do with slavery and but he couldn't understand it and I was like who are these people? Like what is this?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

And so they went and got her, brought her out to Oakland. They had her at the house. It didn't get better, and so then they ended up she ended up having to go into Agnew State Hospital, which is how she died in Santa Clara. She was, you know, on her way out. And then that's when the train visit with my dad and my great grandfather and my dad's first cousin happened, and so, yeah, so it was. It was interesting because when I got her death certificate it confirmed that Letty was her mom. But then there was like a whole like Letty had a different last name, and that was the other thing. It was like several generations of like different sets of kids and having to reconcile that. It was a little bit of a challenge at first, but I'm so glad that the family helped me, like mine, through it and it ended me up in Concordia, parish, and that's where I kind of had to stop for a while because I thought I had an idea Like I thought I had found Lettie in Easter.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

But I wasn't sure. Like I was like okay, they're in Concordia, it's 1880. Smith Reader, who married Letty, is right by. That's like I'm sure this is them. But when I tried to get back to 1870, it was nothing. So I'm like, did they, were they somewhere else? Like I don't, I don't know. So at that point, were they somewhere else, I don't know?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

So at that point you just keep going back to the same records over and over again, obviously trying to glean new things, trying to see if there's something you missed. And at that point DNA had kind of come to the fore. And I was noticing on this side. And here's the thing If people are thinking that if they're half relationships in their families, that that's not like a benefit, oh no, you won the jackpot genetically. The reason why is because you're only dealing with one set of ancestors as opposed to two. So with this, leti had three sets of kids. I come from one, nora's set comes from another, uncle Amos and them come from the third.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Anyone we all have in common is connected through Easter and then it's through both of her parents. So I'm looking at all of our matches and they're going to three different places. Some of them are in Concordia Parish, which is where our family was. Some of them were in Pointe Coupie and I'm like oh wait a minute, this is a French-speaking parish. I am not connected to these French speaking parish people. If you do Louisiana research, it's like very striated into, like French speaking parishes in South Louisiana and then like North Louisiana, which is really like South Arkansas or like West Mississippi, like culturally people still speak French. But it's not, it's just different. And I'm like I'm not really how do I have a? It's a ton of matches in pointe coupé, like what is this?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

And then there was another set of people in Woodville Mississippi and based on this I mean you have to think you know, easter's born in the 1850s, lettie's born in the 1830s this is during slavery. And I just kind of mined through, I was reaching out to different people and one of the DNA cousins his name is Christopher Alexis, call him CJ. He was like could this record in 1870 in Woodville Mississippi be Letty and Easter? He's the one that asked. And I was like okay, let me stop being ridiculous and saying it's not possible. People didn't have cars and they didn't have Teslas that they could cross the river and do these things. But maybe it is them. And so I looked at it and the ages pretty much matched and I was like, okay, I still need more proof.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

So then I went back to that 1880 census page and I was looking at everyone in all the households and I said, what if I research these people and find them in 1870? It might give me the clue as to whether or not these are really my folks across the river. Could this be a community? Why in the world did I ask that question? And that's how we get to the Trash 250. Once I did that, I noticed that everyone, except for my folks on that 1880 census page, they were all recorded together in 1870. The households were entirely intact. And then when I searched them out I found them all in a labor contract in the Freedmen's Bureau and it all matched. Everyone was in Ward 1, ward 2 of Concordia Parish at Blackhawk. Everything kept saying Blackhawk or Cut-Off, cut-off Plantation, grand Cut-Off Plantation. And I said, all right, here's the whole census page on a labor contract. These people are still there in 1880. There's something to this.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

I look at the landowner on the labor contracts, a man named AT Welch, augustus, trask, welch. So I'm like, ok, it's not an estate. He lived past the Civil War. I got to track down his family when I traced his family tree. That was interesting because everyone before him was born in Massachusetts. So I said, okay, wait a minute, maybe I'm wrong. I wasn't wrong. Augustus Trask Welch's generation was the first set of kids in that family born in the Deep South. Everyone else was literally from Western Massachusetts, from Springfield, amherst, from Springfield Amherst, all of that, and they came down to Mississippi through land grants, through service, military service, and they started plantations.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

And I was like, okay, well, here are all my options. And at the generation above it was like gosh, it was a situation you don't want where you're researching a slave people. It was a bunch of slaveholders who died like right after the war. It was like 1868, 1872. You're like darn, like, you know, because you want, you want them to pass away before so that you can get the inventory and the will, and like all the estate things that would name the enslaved. And so I was like, well, ok, I have several options. Who am I going to pick? Let me pick the unmarried uncle. My suggestion to anyone listening is pick the unmarried uncle or the unmarried aunt because they had to leave their property to someone, and typically it's going to be a sibling or it's going to be nieces or nephews. And that was the best decision I made because when I went through, that uncle passed away in 1855. So it's a whole 10 years before slavery ends and it was voluminous. He basically had a will where he divided up enslaved people in plantations between a niece and a nephew and then, as I dug further, I discovered he gave an entire plantation of enslaved people to his niece the same month that he died. So I'm like, my goodness, this is like one population of people and then another two in the will.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

But go back to what I said about DNA, how we had three separate locations of people. And when I got to the estate, that's when I started finding everyone on that 1880 census in the exact same households that they were in 1870 and in the labor contract, and then now in 1855 with the slaveholder, and I was like. At first I was shocked that I was even able to like. I'm like, what Like is this? Could this be a methodology? Like, could this be an actual thing? And I don't think I ever really thought about it until that. And what was even crazier was when I went back to all those matches initially it was 50 people where we were all triangulating together, we were all sharing DNA. Every single time I looked at their trees and I saw where they stopped. I could pick it up another generation beyond, just because I had found them as enslaved people. And I was like this is the golden ticket for all these people Like, they don't even know, like.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

And then I said, okay, now I got to make a choice. This is way bigger than me and this is way bigger than my individual family. And so, like, what am I going to do? Like, am I just going to sit on this information or am I going to make it available? Like, am I going to use my gifts to bless other people so that they don't have to spend five years and have to end up in the cemetery trying to find the name of Easter? And I was like okay, like, let me make something of this. And so I was like all right, I got to name it.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

And there were 250 people that were a part of that initial will. It was more than that, but that was like the seminal folks. And I said, okay, I tested my theory of are these households, you know, from the enslavement time period to 1870, to the labor contract, you know, is everything still intact? Like, if that's the case, then if I trace the earliest people I should be able to find all the connections genetically and that's exactly what happened. And so now it's to the point where, if we get a new match, I already know how these people fit in. Like I'm like, oh, all, right, you were with Moosa and Katie or Dunbar, ok, and for some people, because their folks like never left these locations, I pretty much have their entire family trees, like literally, like part of me is glad we ended up in Concordia Parish because our tree would have converged, like I would have been a cousin of myself. But it is just, it's incredible, like it is my gosh. So, so, yeah, so the will and the probate, like that was the first part.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Then it was like, all right, I have to. I have to really get my bearings on this family. I need to know where these slaveholders were, who they were dealing with, who their associates were. I need to know, you know, how much money this operation was. I mean, it literally became almost like a dissertation for me, like I was like I got to know this inside out. You know, like what was the motivation? Like why did they stay down there?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Then I discovered that the family papers were at the Mississippi State Archives and it was 300 folders worth of information and I was like, oh gosh. So you know, luckily I live within three hours. So I went down there and I pulled slaveless, multiple slaveless. I started going through deeds I have more than 50 transactions because they were mortgaging against these people's lives every single year. And as depraved as that is and you know our thinking now it was also a gift to me because it was almost like a yearly census, because they couldn't mortgage against enslaved people that either had quote unquote no monetary value or they just they couldn't do anything with them. And so, literally I had slaveless, I had these, these deeds, these mortgages, and it was literally a census. And so some of these ancestors they were born before the founding of the United States, but I have them documented 15 times. Wow, like literally on paper.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Some of them I have their words when, in addition to the collection that's at the Mississippi Archives, some of the papers were left at Amherst College and then some of them were left at Harvard. And then it was like, all right, now I got to get that stuff and I will never forget. I'm like, okay, they don't have it digitized at Amherst, like how am I? I'm like I'm not, I can't get to Massachusetts. So I just wrote the librarian and I was like, hey, you have this collection and I would like to get some of the things. And it was mostly letters that were there, like all the financial transactions ended up at Harvard. But the letters from Israel, who was James Trask's brother, they ended up at Amherst College. And she's like well, how many do you want? And I was like you have the nerve to ask me how many?

Crista Cowan:

Oh, let me here's my spreadsheet Isn't the correct answer. All of them Right right All.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

So she sent them to me. Now, because of this project, they've digitized all of them and you can get them online Like nobody has to make the and even the stuff at Harvard got digitized too. And so I was just reading through these letters and you know how does Israel factor in? He's really the one that came down from Massachusetts. He was a lawyer and he, you know, got licensed to practice in New Orleans in the you know the territorial days, and then he eventually ended up going to Natchez. He married a woman in Natchez, mississippi, carter family, very old, prolific family in Natchez. They had a plantation in Natchez. His brother, james, comes down. James goes to Wilkinson County, mississippi.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Israel's father-in-law passes away. They move that enslaved group down to Woodville, mississippi, and then their third brother, augustus did you see the names? Keep repeating. So Augustus comes, he buys this plantation in Concordia Parish and he paid an absorbent price for it in like 1812. It was like $60,000 or $70,000. It was absolutely nuts. And James ends up basically saving the day for him financially, buys him out. So Israel and James come in a partnership Around 1822, israel I think it's because of his pastor, samuel Osgood was like an abolitionist and he you, can you read his sermons and you're just like I don't know how anyone who was in the North living as a slaveholder I mean because Israel was splitting his time between Western Mass and Mississippi, and I don't know how you sit under that and not be convicted about what you're doing, but not before you open a cotton textile mill, which, of course, where are they getting the cotton from Down South?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

So Israel divests in 1822, and then James becomes the sole owner of these plantations in Concordia Parish and then the two that are in Wilkinson County. When James passes away, he gives one plantation to his niece, charlotte. She's married to a man with the last name Ventress. The Ventresses come from Western Massachusetts. So it's really I just I really had to like it, was it really kind of challenged my historical knowledge Like you're, like I didn't realize the North was involved with slavery, like this, like it's so untold, like I don't really think people understand it until you dig into stuff like this. So Charlotte gets her own plantation. I found out later, a year later, augustus, from the labor contract you know, james Trask is like here, nephew, here's yours. That became grand cutoff.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Charlotte then takes some of her enslaved and moves them to Pointe Coupé Parish, louisiana. That's how we get the third group, and then now they immerse themselves in with Creole culture down there and so that's the identity that everyone has. So I just laugh now I'm like, okay, I made so much fun of everyone else that was researching Louisiana for years because I was like my people are and I'm like actually they are in those parishes. So yeah, that's how you have the three groups and it is just. It's the finances of it all are nuts.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

But you know, there's even a connection to the Louisiana Slave Revolt About what? A year before the revolt happens, in 1811, israel buys a plantation on the German coast. This is why all the other stuff is going on. I mean, we're talking decently early history here. This is 1810. And he mortgages against who I call the elders, or the oldest folks, the most attractive 50. He mortgages against them in who I call the elders, or the oldest folks amongst the Trash, 350. He mortgages against them in order to buy the plantation in New Orleans.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Well, some of those enslaved people on that plantation end up in the Louisiana Slave Revolt, which is said to be the largest slave revolt in US history, and they get executed by the state of Louisiana. You know they get decapitated, their heads put on poles that lined the river. And I found the documents for the trial where it's mentioning Israel Trask. Everything is in French and I'm just like, what in the world did I stumble upon? Like this is crazy. They even gave one enslaved person clemency, like they basically kept him from being executed. And I don't know who that person is, but when you go in and look at the indictment it looks like it says Sago, who was like the elder, like that's my five times great grandfather and I know that he survived because he's the only enslaved person.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

I found directly quoted in a letter by Israel Trask and it's him asking Israel when he's going to bring his children down to Woodville again so that they can see them. And he's like I might die before you bring them down here next time. It's almost like tongue in cheek, like are you really going to bring them down here? But we have his words and he was born in what? Like 1773. And like, based on his name, and like his wife's name is Fatima, a lot of the elders have African names, like they didn't make them change their names and so you know, I can imagine someone listening is probably thinking well, like, have you traced back to, like, the slave ship these people were on? Trust me, I have tried.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

The document that I have is where there's a receipt between Israel Trask, his father-in-law, jesse Carter, and his brother-in-law, george Poindexter, who eventually became the governor of the state of Mississippi. This it's, yeah, their. This family is deep, but Israel went to Charleston to go and buy 12 Africans. It specifically says that it does not name them and it happened in the year 1805, so that's before the importation ban. I've looked through records in Charleston. I have not found anything. I even went and pulled up articles of when, just so I knew, like when they were bringing people in, like how did they advertise, like I mean, and they would run these ads for like a month until they sold everyone on the ship. And my thought process is I think that they used a trader, and I just don't know the name of the trader yet.

Crista Cowan:

This is a very like. It's a saga, right it?

Crista Cowan:

is a sweeping saga that spans generations, and you've done a whole bunch of work and I have so many questions Because the story itself is so expansive and it really like you've just told it beautifully as this arc.

Crista Cowan:

But every life is a story as well, and as you start to dig into that, you don't just have your family members.

Crista Cowan:

As you trace your line back, you've got all the collateral relatives and then you've got this entire family of white enslavers and all of the people they associated with, including you, even mentioned, like their religious leaders and other people in the community and financiers and family of white enslavers and all of the people they associated with, including you, even mentioned, like their religious leaders and other people in the community, and financiers and traders.

Crista Cowan:

Like you have such a massive amount of people to keep track of and a massive amount of information to keep track of, and Ancestry has just released a way for people to do that, which is really exciting. But you were doing this before that and we've, like you know, together at Ancestry, there's been a lot of us trying to figure out ways that we can help people keep track of all this information, because you really do have to if you want to understand the sweeping saga and the individual stories. You have to keep track of all that information, so can you give us just a little bit of insight about how you were doing that before these tools came along?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Well, for me it was spreadsheets. Like I lived and died by spreadsheets and when I teach other people how to do this for enslaved populations, that's really the core of what I'm teaching them and, honestly, like, any website where you can search is nothing but spreadsheets. Like that's what it is, it's just a database, it's just a database. And so I had to create my own and I went through and transcribed every single transaction by hand and someone listening is probably like, oh my gosh, that's tedious. But it saved me so much time on the backend because, yes, with indexing we have access to. You know, we can get to information quickly. But if there's a hundred names on a one image, every time I wanna go back to that image, I'm having to bring it up on my computer, zoom in, use my finger, you know, to get. No, I wanna do a find control F.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

It was easier because it was bulk. It was a lot of bulk work copying and pasting facts linking the images, you know, and then you have to remember, like for the enslaved portion. That's one thing. I'm tracing these people forward. So it's obituaries, it's marriage licenses, it's death certificates. You know it's like more than 500 of these things. I have to have them labeled and they're all in the folder. So it's like a big, it's like project managing. Basically, it's project managing the saga.

Crista Cowan:

So you just took a turn that I think maybe not everybody caught right, which is you've spent all this time doing this research backward back to this original group of 250 enslaved people, back into, you know, the enslavers and that whole community. But now you've turned and you're taking that research and you're saying, okay, now, from those enslaved people who are their children and their grandchildren and their great grandchildren, Because you got to them through a path, but there are thousands of other paths from them down to how many people?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Well, I'm at 10,000. Like that, that was my goal. Like my, my goal was if I could hit 10,000, then that way I can release it, like I will feel comfortable, like letting this loose. You know what I mean? Cause I want, I want the my best work to go out with this. I want people to be able to break through brick walls. I want people to be able to get closure and like pictures and whatever else. And that's also the beauty of this community is, you know, just like how that labor contract had everyone there and then in 1870, they were all together. In 1880, they were all together. These folks are still living together today.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

When you look at the census in 1950, it's exactly the same people. It's like no one left. They all stayed together. And now, with the descendants they helped me so much they're like, hey, I just found out about this, or I'll reach out to them. I'll say, hey, I can send you a report. The average report I'm sending people is at least 20 pages and it's going back to fourth and fifth and sixth. We're 10 plus generations with this and everyone gets it. They email me and they go. I'm overwhelmed. I never thought that I would get this, not just find out my ancestors, but have this much information on them as enslaved people.

Crista Cowan:

I love that you've undertaken this and that you're willing to put it out into the world. I think that's amazing, but you come back to where you started. Right, it was your great grandpa, honey yes, honey and his mother, easter, and her mother, lettie. How do you get from Lettie to Segoe?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

So that's the interesting part. Letty's, or Easter's, death certificate said her father was a man named Daniel Parker. And there is a Daniel Parker who's a part of the Trash 250. Letty's a part of the Trash 250. But DNA was not leading me to any Parkers.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

And so I'm like, okay, something's off here, like what's going on, and the preponderance of matches are going back to a man named Sago Haynes in Pointe Coupee and I'm like how is that possible? He's born in the 1830s, letty's born in the 1830s. They're both trash 250. But Easter's born right around when the division of the estate takes place. And so I'm like, okay, this has got to be her father, because we've got like 40 matches going back to this man. And so I'm like, all right, well, his name is Sago Haynes and then Sago's mother's name is Maida and she's a Palmer, maida.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Palmer's father and mother are Sago and Fatima, and so that name, sago, gets repeated, even by blood relations, and not Musa gets repeated. Or you know, family or not, randall, gosh, fatima, several people, there's even a set of folks who took the last name Sago. You just keep seeing like it's all this repetition. It's a ton of repetition and you know, for me this is the furthest back, or one of the lines for me, the furthest back I've ever traced. Like to get this early is it's not easy, right? And I kind of stumbled upon it, you know, because I'm thinking it's Daniel Parker. It's Daniel Parker. Dna is like no, no, no, it's not.

Crista Cowan:

Well, so, as you think to the future, right, you're getting ready, or, by the time this airs, we'll have released this out to the public so that other people can find you know their, sago and Fatima. What is your hope for this project for the future?

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Gosh, I think for me, I just want, I want descendants to like walk through life, like being like empowered by this information. You know, the impetus for all of our connection is not necessarily like the positive one, right, Like it's not something that people like actively, like want to dig into. But one of the things that I find that like continues to infuse me about this whole situation is like people get, they feel, so much pride when they discover this, and that's what I really want, Like I want folks to be empowered and to feel like proud that these are these incredible people that we descend from and that we have this awesome community of people and that we're like an army, a little bit Like with just you know, that's just the 10,000 I've found so far. You know what I mean Like, and those are direct relations, Like that's not even branching off, that's just those folks and their spouses, like that's it.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

And so, and I just I really want to see, like you and me both know the new, the record sets that aren't out yet. You know what I mean Like we don't know the names of those things, but we know that stuff is coming and the innovation that's coming, Like what am I going to be able to do with this, with the amount of data with? You know, from a genetic standpoint and from a paper, traditional genealogy standpoint, what am I going to be able to do with that? You know what I mean. Like the sky's really the limit.

Crista Cowan:

Well, it sounds to me like you have positioned yourself perfectly to be somebody else's Maury.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

I would hope so. I hope I make him proud, like you know. That's the other thing I wish. I could just imagine me sharing all of this with him and in his, his, you know rendering of the, you know, like the great cloud of witnesses, you know like what his interpretation of it would have been, you know. But I guess in the by and by he is still sort of drawing it, you know. I just I just haven't seen it yet.

Crista Cowan:

You will Thank you. Thank you for sharing this story, thank you for sharing your process, thank you for sharing your heart, not just with me and the work we get to do together, but with the world and particularly with the descendants of these people. It's such an important work that you're doing.

Nicka Sewell-Smith:

Thanks for having me.

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Crista Cowan | The Barefoot Genealogist

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