Welcome to AfriGeneas!

OUR MISSION:

AfriGeneas provides resources, leadership, promotion and advocacy for the mutual development and use of a system of genealogy for researching African related ancestry.

OUR VISION:

To find and document the last slaveholder and the first African in each family.

OUR GOAL:

To encourage and support all African ancestored individuals and families to begin and continue researching their roots until all possible resources are exhausted and the results are published.

OUR APPROACH:

• Cooperating, coordinating and combining our efforts, with others, to the maximum extent possible, where there is a similar mission.

• Providing and maintaining a searchable database of surnames.

• Collecting slavedata from descendants of slaveholding families as well as from public and other private sources.

• Discussing tips and topics to advance individual and group research resources through mailing lists, chats, newsletters and the internet.

• Growing and employing a community of volunteers.

• Extracting, compiling and publishing all related public records with genealogy value.

• Linking to specific Internet resources.

OUR HISTORY:

From AfriGeneas to AfriGeneas.com !!!

Our combined online history covers ten years of discovering, learning and utilizing Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), on-line services, and the wonders of cyberspace.

We have come a long way in a relatively short time. Our progress has been facilitated by many individuals. As we approach the new millennium as AfriGeneas.com it is appropriate to express sincerest thanks and appreciation for some key people in the period 1989-1999.

Orchids and Love To:

Marva Peavy, Electra Price, Lynda Matthews, Yvonne Cagnolatti, Alex Turner, Idette Vaughn and Mike Wade who, with others, pioneered genealogical on-line searching for African ancestry.

George Ferguson, (GFL George) AOL Genealogy Forum Leader, for his total support in the creation of an African American message board at America On Line. That one message board has expanded to six boards, three weekly chats and a dynamic African American Resource Area in the forum.

Sharon Morgan (Sam130) for her leadership in establishing and organizing The African American SIG (Special Interest Group) at AOL.

Phyllis Austin, Saundra Brown, Bill Bunkley, Debbie Cuffy, Horace Fox, Clint Hayes II, Renee Ingram, Elizabeth Kambourian, Bennie McRae, Valencia King-Nelson, Electra Price, Audrey Quick, Victoria Robinson, Crystal Simmons, Gloria Smith, Karen Sutton, Angela Walton-Raji, George F. Washington and Marilyn White among others, whose participation was critical in the initial growth and development of the SIG.

Victoria Robinson for coining the term AfriGeneas.

Saundra Brown, Clint Hayes II, Susan King and Michael Emery for the ground work to establish a UseNet Newsgroup focusing on African ancestored genealogy. It was during this process that the possibility of a mailing list was realized.

Carter E. Bing of The DRUM organization who provided the server and online resources that launched The AfriGeneas Mailing List with 64 subscribers in April 1994.

Sandra Hall, the WebDiva, for designing and hosting the first AfriGeneas home page and giving us a bold presence on the Internet.

Don Mabry, Tom White and the Majordomo server at Mississippi State University for hosting the AfriGeneas mailing list and the webpage since February 1996.

Susan Buckley, Linda Ball, Alva Griffith and Marilyn Goodgion who are almost singlehandedly responsible for the SlaveData Collection being on line. Lorraine Miller who was the first volunteer to process SlaveData.

Angela Walton-Raji (GFS Angela), Manager and moderator of the African-American Special Interest Group [SIG] in The Genealogy Forum on AOL, and her dynamic team of volunteers, Alva Griffith (GFS Alva), Marilyn White (GFS Marol), R.E.Broome, Sr., (GFS REB), Selma Stewart (GFS Selma), and Ivy Anderson (GFS Ivy) who provide one of the richest systems of chat sessions in the AOL Genealogy Forum.

Clint Hayes for taking the primary responsibility to create, edit and publish The AfriGeneas digital newsletter and who, all those years ago, had the vision of AfriGeneas.com.

Anita Willis (GFS Anita) for creating the Surname Database and Registry, for maintaining them since February 1997 and who is consistently there with quality involvement whenever there is a task to be completed.

B.J. Smothers who not only expanded the vision of the AfriGeneas leadership but extended that vision for us all through the design magic of these AfriGeneas.com pages. Brenda, there are just no words.

Last but not least, to each of you, our participating members and subscribers, who exceed 1200 daily.

Valencia King Nelson
Webmaster
May 1999