Around South County: South county resident explores the many branches of her family tree

Elinor Thompson shows some of the documents she has collected over the years in her quest to trace her family tree.
Photo by Mitchelle Stephenson — For the Capital

By Mitchelle Stephenson
For the Capital

Elinor Thompson decided about 10 years ago to begin researching her family history. That isn't uncommon. By some accounts, genealogy is the fastest growing hobby, surpassing stamp collecting, quilting and even gardening.

But for Elinor Thompson, who is African American, researching her family's history posed some difficult challenges.

Going back a few generations isn't very hard, recent records are well kept, and oral histories in the first person are relatively easy to come by in her large, extended family.

But going back before the early 1900s becomes tricky for a variety of reasons. In some cases, records have not been well kept, while in other instances records have been lost.

The 1890 U.S. Census records were destroyed by fire. In fact, fire is responsible for many lost records, including fires at black churches, where marriage and death records were often kept.

Whites during the post Civil War-era may have been reluctant or even opposed to accurately recording names and information, and prior to the Civil War, many slave owners catalogued the slaves they owned simply by number, not name.

Even so, Elinor has traced her family lineage to 1795, back to a freed slave, John-Thomas, or possibly Thomas-John Sharps.

Even the names are confusing.

According to Elinor, illiteracy among early 18th century freed slaves was widespread, and some who could read might conceal their skill for fear of losing their property or being beaten for acting above their supposed station.

Sometimes simply mishearing a question or answer led to data being written down incorrectly for posterity.

To conduct her research, Elinor spends several days a week at the Maryland Archives, which she has been doing for years. She scrolls through marriage records, census documents and takes countless photographs of the microfiche images of manumission papers. Manumission papers are documents freed slaves would have had to have in their possession at all times, to prove their right to freedom.

Elinor has so many documents, oral histories and photographs, that she is working on a book, "Tracing Our Sharps Family Roots." It is a compendium of information about African Americans in southern Maryland, and specifically in southern Anne Arundel County.

The book will be available Aug. 1 when the Sharps Historical Celebration takes place at the Knights of Columbus hall in Edgewater.

One of the things that Elinor learned through her research is that slaves in Maryland typically came up from the South. When they arrived, they were often given the surname of their specialty or trade.

"If you were in the field and used a hoe or sickle - that is how the Sharp's name came about," Elinor said.

Elinor said that biracial offspring caused problems in official state and federal records, straining her effort to trace her family's roots. In fact, throughout the colonial era and the 19th century, it was illegal for a white person and a black person to marry and have a child, so sometimes those earlier census takers would simply refuse to record people.

She also noted that since people during that era weren't born in hospitals, it was up to the census takers to detect and record them.

In addition, the recording of a person's race was a matter of judgment on the part of the person writing down the information.

Some of her relatives are listed as Negro, while the same name might be listed somewhere else as Mulatto. A marriage record may differ from a census record, which may differ from a county or church's birth and death records.

Elinor gives the example of George Moreland. The census records show him being born in 1847. Elinor uncovered Anne Arundel County marriage records that show him marrying Fanny Smith in 1867. In that record, he is listed as George Maulding. Also in that record, he is listed as "colored" with a question mark alongside the race designation.

Moreland or Maulding?

"You never know," Elinor said. She continued, "if the census taker had a bad day, or if the person shared the name of a prominent white family in the area - there are a lot of reasons why they didn't want to put the name down."

She tracked the same man to three different birth years: 1847, 1850, and 1851; and three different spellings: Moldland, Moreland and Maulding.

"These are the clues you have to follow to piece the story together," Elinor said.

She focuses her attention one relative at a time. If she tracks down older relatives, she meets with them to get an oral history, recording as much information as she can.

"You go down a branch and find something and chase that down as far back as you can go," Elinor said about her methodology.

She once found a slip of paper for the sale of a plot of land, 53 acres of farmland in an area that is currently off of Sands Road in Lothian. It was purchased in 1913. As she read through the records of the transaction, she found the father's name: Sharps.

Another clue.

But aside from her indoor research, she also takes her family to churches and graveyards throughout Maryland, both on this side of the bay and on the Eastern Shore. Her daughter, Ebony Thompson is 20, and has been going to graveyards "forever," she said.

"I'm mostly humoring her, but then I get interested when we find something," Ebony said.

The ''Tracing Our Sharps Family Roots'' book will be available for sale at the Knight of Columbus hall during the Sharps Historical Celebration family reunion on Aug. 1. There is a $20 advance purchase or $25 fee at the door to get in.

For more information on the Sharps/Moreland/Maulding/Thompson family tree, contact Elinor at tracingourroots@aol.com.