My Slade Phenomenon

Cheryle Crockett's ancestry was a mystery to her.

The more she questioned it, the more she realized that for many people there were no easy answers. Her book, My Slade Phenomenon (www.dorrancebookstore.com/myslph.html) (Dorrance Publishing), is the record of her journey to find out who she is and where her family came from. There are few people out there who know the entire history of their ancestry, for the rest of us; this book can serve as a guide to inspire us to find out.

Crockett's journey began as a young child. Her Aunt Alleatha always made sure she knew about her Irish background and her connection to her grandfather, Charlie Wise. It was in reference to her grandfather that she first heard the term mulatto.

"Just what mulatto meant, I didn't quite understand, because I had never heard anyone in our family use that phrase before" she said.

After she retired, Crockett decided to do some research into her ancestry. Only having knowledge of her Jamaican and Irish backgrounds, Crockett found a need growing in her to find out about the rest of her ancestry. She had heard stories from her family about a great-grandmother with Native American blood. She began her search here. She found she was a descendent of the Choctaw tribe and that it was possible that her family had endured the hardship of the Trail of Tears. She felt an immediate connection to this side of her ancestry.

"I was turning back the history pages of a time before my existence to understand who these ancestors were, what they were doing, and where they had gone," she said. "I had found what the Indians noted as one's place in the circle of life."

The next stop on her journey was probably the most surprising of all. While researching the Slade side of her family, she found that she was distantly related to a family of Slades living in North Carolina. Fate intervened in her research and handed her a clue to solve her mystery. She received a phone call from a cousin who had seen a program on TV on which a man from England was searching for his family's descendents. The man's name was Slade and he was a Baronet from Somerset, England. Crockett followed this man's family ancestry and found that her family was descended from them. Most surprising of all was a picture of one of the ancestors. When she enlarged the picture, Crockett found herself staring into face that could have been her mother's own. Spinning in disbelief, she sent the picture to her mother who confirmed that they were indeed related. She was able to trace this family to America, where she discovered that her family descended from the slave-children of this clan. This discovery led Crockett to ask many questions regarding slaves who were born into their owner's family.

Feeling very strongly that she must know the truth, she commissioned a member of her family to take a DNA test to be matched to the Slade's of England. The match showed a distant relationship between the two families.

The last piece of the puzzle was her Jamaican ancestry. Because slaves were not taught to read and write, records of this ancestor were sketchy and sparse. From what she could piece together, this ancestor was taken from Kingston, Jamaica and sold into slavery. His descendent, Balane Staten was born in North Carolina and eventually emigrated to Texas.

"I had traveled back with these ancestors into an earlier dimension in time," she said. "I have held close to my heart the bloods of four of my known forefathers. Each one of them has lived on in the families they have created. I'm content with myself now in understanding this part of my family history."

Cheryle Crockett is a retired computer operator from Dunnigan, California. She has two children, Tony and Tracey and two grandchildren, Tramare and Talayna. She enjoys sewing, reading and gardening.