Letter to the GenealogyGuys

Since the Genealogy Guys are the ones who told me about Genealogybank.com where I found some awesome info about my family, I figured I'd send them an e-mail. Here it is:

Hey Guys!

I've been listening to the show for about two months and I'm still catching up on old shows. I wanted to thank you for telling me about GenealogyBank.com because it helped me bust through a brick wall.

In August, my family (the African-American decendents of Major Reddick of Archer, Florida) will be having a family reunion. I've been doing genealogical research on various branches of my family since I was 15, but I never researched this branch. Major Reddick is my 4th great grandfather and I was excited to learn about this branch of my tree. After being handed a family tree and a summary of past research, I set about trying to find evidence to support our oral history. One brick wall was the identity of a man named Rinaldo or Rinaldi Reddick. No one had figured out who he was, but he seemed to be related to Major Reddick. He had purchased land near Major, and there weren't any other African-American Reddick families in Alachua County at that time. Was he Major's brother? Another slave from the same plantation? Or a son that we didn't know about? No one knew, but thanks to GenealogyBank.com, we now know!

I searched for Major Reddick on the site and discovered his name, so I took a chance and paid for the site. It turns out that Major, along with Nally/Nallie and Abraham/Abram Reddick (known sons of Major) and Rinaldo Reddick were all witnesses in the disputed elections for the US Senate in 1876 and 1880. Twice, Horatio Bisbee and Jesse Finley ran against each other and disputed the results of the elections. Colored and white voters in several counties were called to testify about voting day. The testimonies of the witnesses were collected and published in several documents. Going through the documents, I read Rinaldo Reddick's testimony. There, he was asked, "You are sometimes called Nallie Reddick, are you not." Rinaldo responded, "I am."

Finally! I had proof that Rinaldo Reddick and Nally Reddick (who had listed his middle initial as R in one census) were the same person. Not only did I bust through a brick wall, but I found the only documents that our family has ever seen where we have direct quotes of our ancestors. As additional proof, I received the land records from NARA that indicate that Nally and Rinaldi/Rinaldo are the same person, but that's another letter.Thanks Genealogy Guys.

Oh, if you can, please let listeners know that our family web page, the Reddick-Benbow-Means Family Reunion, is on Rootsweb:

http://genealogy.freepages.rootsweb.com/~aisha1978 or they can search Reddick on the freepages website and our site will come up. I'll be posting the documents that I discovered on GenealogyBank in the next few weeks, along with the other documents we have collected about our family. Maybe we'll find some cousins!

Aisha from Katy, TX