Reclamation by Gayle Jessup White

Reclamation by Gayle Jessup White

Author:Gayle Jessup White [White, Gayle Jessup]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-04T00:00:00+00:00


17

Paternity Test

2011

The looming question of my grandmother’s descent from Thomas Jefferson rested with the identity of her father. Without legal documentation, such as a birth certificate, or family records, such as a Bible (the one I had offered scant information), discovering paternity seemed an impossible quest.

However, when I finally heard from Cinder in April 2011, her news was tantalizing. I didn’t have a job, so as usual I was at home in front of my computer when I got her email. Cinder believed that she had a lead on the identity of my great-grandfather—Eva’s father. Recollecting that the 1900 Census had indicated that my grandmother was living in the household of Jefferson’s great-granddaughter, a woman named Carolina “Carry” Ramsay Randolph, she pointed out that “Cary” was also the name of one of my grandmother’s daughters, the one who near her death had wryly commented, “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.” Eva’s “presence in the Edgehill household [where the Randolphs lived], as well as the passing on of the Cary/Carry name, tied her tightly to the extended Randolph family,” speculated Cinder in our email exchange.

But the real intrigue rested with Carolina’s siblings. She had several, including a sister named Martha. She was married to her distant cousin, John Charles Randolph Taylor, with whom she had twelve children. Among the youngest was a boy, Moncure Robinson Taylor, born in 1851. “Cure,” as his family called him, did not get married until 1900, when he was almost fifty years old, during an era when most men married at half that age. The fact that he took a bride one year before Eva’s December 1, 1901, marriage in Washington, DC, stoked Cinder’s curiosity.

My imagination started racing as well. Did “Cure” remain single because he had a forbidden relationship with a Black woman, my Black great-grandmother? Were they in love? Did she die, freeing him emotionally to marry and their daughter, my grandmother, to migrate to Washington, DC? I had so many questions. It was best not to speculate too much, Cinder cautioned. “That won’t get us far,” she wrote. Still, it seemed that we were getting closer to identifying Eva’s father and the link to my family’s Jefferson lineage.

With Cinder’s guidance, I was having more success finding US Census records and following the clues they provided. I traced Eva from the 1900 Census to Washington, DC, where in 1910 she was living with my grandfather, their four daughters, her mother-in-law, and a sixteen-year-old cousin named May Robinson. May’s presence in the Jessup household would become an important clue in unraveling my father’s familial relationships. By 1920, one of Eva’s daughters was no longer listed—the family’s first tuberculosis victim. By 1930, Eva and all of her girls were gone. The census record listed my grandfather, his new wife, and my dad and uncle.

While I was working my way forward, Cinder was reaching back. We knew that Eva was born in 1883, so the logical step would have been to look for her in the 1890 Census.



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