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| Antoinette Harrell and her father Walter Boykin |
I woke up this morning thinking about my paternal ancestry and called my dad to get some information from him about his side of the family. Talking to my dad is like talking to a living history book. My dad can recall events that took place when he was just a child. Most of my genealogy research has focused on my mother side of the family.
The time has come for me to focus on my dad side of the family. In my last blog I said that I didn't know much about my paternal grandmother Mary McKay Boykins. My dad changed all that this morning in our conversation. He told me that his mother was born in Mississippi.
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| Jake and Martha Boykin |
I went to the census on Family Search and found my grandmother Mary and her parents Charlie and Florence McKay. Charlie was born in 1884 and he was a mulatto, his birthplace was Mississippi. Florence was born in 1884. After Florence and Charlie were divorced, Florence moved to Tangipahoa Parish and later married a man named John Allen. According to the U. S. 1940 Census, John and Florence had two children living in the household at the time--a daughter named Jessie May who was twenty-year old and a son named Lonnie who was eighteen years old at the time this census of taken. In 1910 they lived in Beat 5, in Pike County, Mississippi, I have yet to trace the migration between 1910 and 1940.
My great grandmother Florence was born April 29, 1884 and passed away on June 1966 at age of eighty-two years old in Tangipahoa, Louisiana. My paternal grandparents Ernest and Mary Boykins had six children; Ernest, Jr., Florence, Francis, Walter, Lonnie, Jerry, and Ellis Boykins. Grandmother Mary was born in 1913 in Pike County, Mississippi and she passed away in 1996.
I'm grateful to my dad for sharing our family genealogy with me. He's a true treasure besides being funny and most importantly motivating me to keep moving forward. I know he had so much more to share with all the Boykins offsprings.
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| The Registration Card of Ernest Boykins, Sr. |
Click on the link to hear the oral history of my father Walter Boykins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f4evPVINl8
