Crista Cowan: 0:00

You're gonna be our 100th episode of the podcast. Wow. That's a big deal. Yes. That's a really big deal. Oh my god. I don't know if we considered when we started this podcast that we would actually hit 100 episodes, but the fact that we are, that's amazing. So yeah, yeah, I'm- I love that this is the story we're telling for the 100th episode. That's amazing. Stories That Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover From Sea to Shining Sea the stories that live in us. I never thought this day would come, but here we are, and it is a big deal, and I'm having a lot of feelings about it. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you for listening to us for 100 episodes. We started this podcast back in May of 2024 because we wanted to share family stories with you. Family stories from around the world and this season from across the United States. And it has been a pleasure and a joy to share those stories. I have loved the guests that we have brought on and been able to have share their stories with you. But mostly I just want to thank you for supporting us for a hundred episodes, and hopefully, here's to a hundred more. So today, my guest is Lisa Fanning. And Lisa is on the board of directors for the National Genealogical Society. She runs the DNA track at the Midwest African American Genealogical Institute. And she is a brilliant genealogist. She's also got a really unique story that connects to the state of Indiana in a way that you might be surprised by. Enjoy my conversation with Lisa Fanning. Well, Lisa, I'm so glad you're here. I'm really excited to get to know you a little bit better. We've kind of circled around each other in the genealogy community for years. We have.

Lisa Fanning: 2:42

I think it was Virginia, NGS Virginia. I bet you. And I was so excited when I saw you. I was like, oh my God, that's Crista Cowan. And so I had to come up and introduce myself. And then we just have been circling since.

Crista Cowan: 2:55

Yeah, well, I'm so glad you did. It's been delightful to get to know you. And today I'm excited to get to know a little bit more about your family and your family story. So why don't we just start at the beginning? You live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, home of the Allen County Public Library. Um, but you are from Indiana originally, yes?

Lisa Fanning: 3:14

I am. I grew up in Indiana, um, in Richmond. Um, and Richmond is sort of central eastern Indiana, um, or sort central eastern part of the state, kind of near Dayton, Ohio, if you're familiar with that. Um it's historically those land, that land part of the state is um was occupied by the Miami Shawnee Lanape people. Um, but the Quakers moved in um in the early 1800s. Um so they settled Richmond. Um, so that's that's where I grew up.

Crista Cowan: 3:54

I love that.

Lisa Fanning: 3:54

And were your parents from there originally? Uh my mother was. Um, my father was from Cincinnati, Ohio. They met in Richmond at a party. I love poets. They're both poets. So you know, poets kind of like each other. They're on the same, they have the same vibe. So nice. I love that. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 4:16

And how many kids in your family?

Lisa Fanning: 4:19

Just me and my sister. Okay. So it's a small family, um, very small. And are your parents still living? My mother's passed on uh about seven years ago. My father's still living. Okay.

Crista Cowan: 4:32

Yeah. So tell me a little bit about growing up. Did you, I mean, were you guys a big with with poets for parents? Were you a big storytelling family, or what did that look like?

Lisa Fanning: 4:41

Yeah, I mean, I would say my whole extended family, um, they were storytellers. Um, that's that's really kind of what sparked my interest in just family history because they would always um talk about um their relatives because we are not my family, it has been in Richmond for like a hundred years, but they originally are from Tennessee. So they would always talk about their relatives that came here from Tennessee, and they were very colorful characters. Um, and my family is very funny. They're very religious people, but they're very funny people. So they tell the kind of stories in, you know, in a way that you want to meet those people. Um, so that kind of um sparked my interest in in family history, just wanting to to know more about where we originally came from, uh, why why my elders had these kind of funny accents, which are not really funny, but to me they were funny because I was just used to Indiana accent. And so I knew we came from someplace else. And that kind of really sparked a lot of my interest in and uh, you know, figuring out what that was.

Crista Cowan: 5:51

I love that. Do you remember from like growing up what like an example of a funny story?

Lisa Fanning: 5:56

Yeah, they talked about religion, uh, their their religious lives a lot, um, you know, things that would happen at the church. Um, and they would always talk about old Daddy Lum. And so old Daddy Lum was a name that I've you know known since I was little. And who that was was the matriarch of my mother's maternal family from uh Tennessee. Um and he became the center of my research when I first started. Um, so I got to know who old Daddy Lum was. And um, yeah, so just kind of funny stories when they would visit, um, they lived in a rural part of Tennessee, so you know, they would talk about they didn't have any lights at all after the sun went down, and and that was kind of scary. There'd be snakes around. And my mother would talk about she loved, she always wanted to be a ballerina, and she would like when they would go down south, she would be on their um the uh porch and she would she would spin like a ballerina, she would say. So just kind of funny stuff like that, you know. Just kind of kind of quirky. Kind of quirky, yeah. I love that. Where in Tennessee were they from? Um, they were from right outside of Dixon, Tennessee, which is I think it's like a couple hours from Nashville. Okay. Um, yeah. So kind of central Tennessee. Yeah, middle Tennessee, and that is where that accent came from. My um great aunt, because my grandmother passed away before I was born, she died when my mom was 12. So uh my mom and her sister, um, and in a lot of ways, they were raised by her, even though they didn't live with her, they lived with their father after she passed away. But my mom was very fond of her, so we would always go visit her like on Friday evenings. And she when when she would see us coming up the stairs to our house, she would say, Now you children, come in here and sit rotture. So so there was this accent that was so unique. And for me, it was melodic. And I I love languages, so I was just fascinated by that. And it was kind of like, yeah, we don't come from Indiana for sure, because no one speaks like that. Uh, but I loved it. And so I wanted to find out, you know, what Middle Tennessee was, why that accent I was. I did find out, Christy, you'll be amazed that that part of Tennessee was settled by people from southern England. So that that accent is an evolution of that southern England accent mixed with African, you know, accents from people who were brought over and enslaved. And so it's kind of a mix of all of that. But yeah, I finally went down that rabbit hole. I was like, I gotta figure out where this actually originated from. So I love that.

Crista Cowan: 8:37

I find accents so fascinating. I have a very um reflective speech pattern uh to have my whole life. And so, like, I show up in Northwest Arkansas at my mama's family, and even just thinking about them, I start talking like them, and yeah, I just slide into it and it and it's completely subconscious. Like I'm not doing it intentionally at all. Right. Um, but I and so I've made a little bit of a study of languages as well because I just find it fascinating how how they evolve over time and how when people, groups of people come together, how their language patterns affect each other. It's fascinating is fascinating.

Lisa Fanning: 9:12

Yeah, and they all they they did not lose that accent. I mean, they came when they were they were younger, but they didn't lose it. So yeah, I mean, it's the accent that my mother heard. Um, and there's certain words that she would say when she would be emotional or get angry, and you could hear that southern part come out of her. And the funny thing is it comes out of me too, right? Like if I'm really emotional, like I only I don't have children, I have a cat. So she gets on my nerves. That southern sort of like will come out of me. And I didn't even grow up there, so it it gets passed down. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 9:47

Yeah, yeah, it absolutely does. Those those early speech patterns get set when we're really young. They do. That's I love that. So when did you get really serious? Um, I mean, you've talked about what the spark was for how you got into family history or why, but when did that happen in your life and what did that pursuit of family history look like for you?

Lisa Fanning: 10:07

Yeah, I mean, I think it was really again the the the interest in the stories. It was the the you know, wanting to figure out like where our family came from. Because growing up, I just always, you know, I thought in you just know Indiana, that's your neighborhood, you know. Um, but then um I left, I went to school in in Bloomington at Indiana University, and then I got a fellowship to study um at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. And so I went out to um Maryland and and got my degree and started working in DC. I met a a friend of a person who became a friend of mine, and one day she was telling me that she had been to the National Archives and that she found her family in early 1900s um in this thing called a census record. And I was like, hmm, really? And that was it because because, you know, I had the interest all along, but I just didn't know, I didn't have the tools or I didn't know how to research my family, you know. So when she gave, that was like an entryway for me, um, like an open door, census records in National Archives. I live in Washington, D.C. Get down there right away. And I did, and I, and I had the information that I had about my mother's family, and I researched them to death. Um and then I eventually turned to my grandfather's family, and he's the his family is the family that has been in Indiana for almost 200 years, which I didn't even know that at that time. So that's what that's what got it all started.

Crista Cowan: 11:45

That's amazing. What year was that? Um, would have that would have been 1995.

Lisa Fanning: 11:51

Okay, so right literally like two years before the census started being put online, right? Exactly, exactly, exactly. So so everything kind of worked together, you know.

Crista Cowan: 12:01

Yeah, and so you think about you, you're just on that cusp of like the digitization of the records that have made them so much more accessible to people. How have you then seen, because you started right before that evolution, and how has that changed the way you approach family history?

Lisa Fanning: 12:18

Yeah, I mean, um, back in those days, as as you know, it was it was really um local libraries, it was um archives, sending, you know, getting forms and filling them out and then sending a check with a research and query to the staff of an archive. Um, it was joining your local um genealogy society if you had a had one. Um I used to, when I would travel, if I went to a place where my ancestors um came from, I would take time, go a little early or stay a little later to in the visit the archive or the library. Um and that worked really well for me for a long time. Um so, you know, for me, it's it's obviously much easier to do research now. Um, you know, it's right at your fingers tips. But I am glad that I kind of straddle both research environments because I feel like I have an interesting perspective, you know. Um, and and I think I became, I really became a researcher starting out at that time because you had to, it's almost like driving a stick shift versus an automatic. Like you really understand what you're doing and how to do it, what to do, uh, versus just, you know, sort of typing in something. I mean, it's it's great to have what we have now because I'm I mean have access to the world in a sense, but uh but yeah, that's that's that's definitely evolve, you know, a lot. And then with DNA, Lord, that's I love that.

Crista Cowan: 13:55

Okay, so your mom's mama's family was from Tennessee, but your mom's dad's family was from Indiana, and you knew your grandpa.

Lisa Fanning: 14:04

I did. He um until I was 16. He passed away when I was 16. He was born in 1897. Your grandfather. Yes.

Crista Cowan: 14:13

Wow.

Lisa Fanning: 14:14

So he um he had my mother very late. I she was one of the the kids that that back in those days, you know, she she came way after everybody else came. And so he was much older. My grandmother was still within her uh, you know, the the time where she could give birth, but towards the end of that, so here comes my mama. And um, yeah, so so he, you know, he I had him for 16 years. My grandfather was a very quiet, content man. He didn't really talk a lot. He was a minister, so you had a reverence and respect for him. You asked questions when you needed to. You know, he wasn't like a chatty Kathy, and he really didn't talk a lot about his family much. We knew who they were. We we um interacted with them um periodically. They lived in Indianapolis. His father was still living. Um he died, gosh, I can't remember when he died, but it wasn't it wasn't long after, I think he was like 101, 102, something like that. Very, they live very long lives, my my grandfather's family. But yeah, he didn't really talk about his family. So I absolutely knew nothing about my grandfather. So tell us, tell us how you found it, what you found, walk us through that. Yeah, so um basically, again, 1995, I dive into my mom's dad, uh my mom's mother's family, go as far as I can with that, and then I think, oh, I want to find out about my grandfather's family. So I call his youngest brother, um, and his name was Roscoe, and he and I said, Hey, Uncle Roscoe, great Uncle Roscoe, can you tell me about you know your family? So um he told me that his mother um family came from a a settlement in southern Indiana called Lost Creek, and that it was an Indian settlement, and that um his grandparents were part of a caravan of um seven families, six, six or seven families that came from North Carolina. And when he said caravan, I was like, Caravan? What do you mean a caravan? It's like covered wagon horses, and he's like, Yeah. And that they came from North Carolina in the early 1800s and they settled and you know, they basically built this settlement called Lost Creek. So, of course, that was intriguing to me. First of all, when he said Native American settlement, because I'm like, we're African American, and what is that? Then um Southern Indiana didn't know anything about that. Of course, the story about the covered wagon was way out there. So I was like, wow. So um I started doing research on that, and wasn't I wasn't able to get too far because you know they came so early in the 1800s. I was like, I, you know, I I I started to find them, you know, in the census records. Um and I had to reach out to people who had been studying um the story of African American um settlements in Indiana for longer than myself. So what I learned was they were one of actually many um settlements of free African Americans that migrated from North Carolina to Indiana. I think there were like 30 throughout the state, which was fascinating to me. I didn't learn this in school, right? So um, and I gave this this uh uh the this man, his name was Coy Robbins. He's very well known in African-American uh genealogy communities, passed on, but he was the president of the Augs chapter for Indiana. Again, this is the 90s. And I told him the last names of my what I uncovered about my grandfather's family. He says, Yeah, I think, I think those are people that came from North Carolina. They settled, first settled, settled in Orange County, Indiana, and then eventually made it up to Lost Creek. Um, and he gave me some resources to look at. One of them was Paul Heinrich's book, Free African Americans. And that was a ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, because Paul had studied um colonial black family, free black families for forever and wrote this book. Amazing book. It's like a Bible for people whose ancestors um were free, became free, bought their freedom, uh, were never enslaved. You know, it's sort of that free people of color is a mix of all those people. But what's unique about them is that they tend to be triracial. So they descend from African, Native American, and European families. Because, you know, you have to think about back in the day, people coexisted. You know, it wasn't sort of this completely breakdown of racial, you are over here, you over there, we don't like you, whatever, you know. And um, so when people coexist, they create families. They have children, you know. Um, but but they had to be insular also because they weren't enslaved. So they were free. And and so then they just married within each other's families and they create this huge, huge, huge group of people. And so my so what I found out through connecting my family to the the research that Paul had done on many, many, many, many families is that um basically the the group of of uh the community that my family comes from was a big community. They were in North Carolina, they were looking for a place to to resettle because North Carolina racial climate was changing all the time, and it was just a mess. And so it was just like we need to go someplace where we could be settled and no one, you know, people leave us alone. So they sent a man, his name was um, I think Bowen, Bowen Roberts, to find a new place. This is the story, right? That to find a new place for for them to settle. Um, and somehow, this is in I think 1827. So there had been in Lost Creek, there were already like 20 families uh living in Lost Creek at the time. So it had already started to become a place where free people of color started to migrate. And you know, the Quakers were there. So I think that had a lot to do with it, right? So then in 1827, he um goes out there and he comes back, and and this is what he said the fat hogs are roaming the forest with knives and forks sticking out of their bags. And that was basically to say the living is good and let's go, right? So um, so then a couple years later, there were six families. They were the Roberts, the Stuarts, the Chavises, the Travons, the Archers, and the Andersons, um, all packed up, got a caravan and went from North Carolina to southern Indiana. And I descend from four of those families.

Crista Cowan: 21:30

What? Yep. That's amazing. Okay, I have so many questions. This is fascinating to me. So, okay, so where in North Carolina were they from, do you know?

Lisa Fanning: 21:41

So I I think they were in different places, but I know that they ended up in in in Bertie County. They were in Chowing County. Um, a lot of the Andersons were in Granville. So you have there's a whole nother sect of Andersons, you know, it's a huge family because they had a lot of children. And it's like what you find in the free people of color community, there are certain families where that family will definitely be a part of their family, like the Evans, the Andersons, the Stuarts. They're you can find them, all of those families, and almost every free person of color family. And so my Anderson is Jeremiah. And Jeremiah descends from George. George descends from Jeremiah. Jeremiah descends from George. And his mother was Kate. And I know we're gonna talk about Kate because that's a whole nother story. But Kate was the original Anderson, and she was born in the late 1600s.

Crista Cowan: 22:37

Oh my goodness. Okay. And so, and so these families in North Carolina and in the 1820s, like North Carolina, like everything we all learn in school growing up, North Carolina is a slave state. So, how do these groups of people become free?

Lisa Fanning: 22:55

So my family became the Anderson family actually became free in 1712. And do you know how? Yeah, because the um the man that had enslaved him, his name was John Folker. In his will, he freed them and gave them 600 acres of land.

Crista Cowan: 23:19

Okay. And so they've been living free for over a hundred years in North Carolina, but now the tide is changing as far as laws, as far as local sentiments. Yeah. All of that. And so that's when they see this need essentially to leave to protect their families.

Lisa Fanning: 23:38

Exactly. But they actually started in Virginia. So that's really where the Anderson story begins. And um, they call it Lower Uh Norfolk County, or call it was a colony at the time. So 17, we're talking like 1712. So it was Lower Norfolk Colony. And so he um descends from like a British uh captain who was given land by the king of England to settle land in in America. He goes to Lower Suffolk, uh Lower Um Norfolk County. He marries a woman who comes from an equally prominent family. Her father was part of the House of Burgesses or something like that. Um and and the Fokker's father was uh uh also a sheriff. So they were prominent families in that part of Lower Norfolk County. Well, he John, so then John Fokker, he enslaves my family, and there were a couple of other families, not a not a huge group, but several different families, but they were apparently extended family members, so part of the same uh overall family, right? And um, he frees them in 1712 in his will when he passes away, gives them that all of this land, and of course, there's an uproar in the colony because that is not going to happen. First of all, they don't want other people who were enslaved to kind of start to say we want their, you know, we want our freedom too, and sl, you know, uh manumit us. And then he gives them all of this land, which I don't know if you've been to Sewells Point or you know about Sewell's Point and Norfolk. That is the land that they were supposed to have. Oh my goodness. That's where the Naval Academy.

Crista Cowan: 25:30

Yeah.

Lisa Fanning: 25:31

So um that was his land. That was the land they were supposed to have. There was an uproar in the colony. So it was so much, so much so that um the executor of the will um decided to go to court and then exchange that 600 some you know acres of land for a swamp land, swampland like that was 300 acres in North Carolina. And my family was like, mm-mm, no, no, we're not gonna take that. So they were in court. There's like documents about this fight that they had. They they ultimately didn't win. Um, and they ended up in North Carolina anyway. I mean, it's really a sad story if you think about it, because it was rightfully theirs, it was legally theirs. Can you imagine? I mean, that you talk about generational wealth. Yeah. If they had had those 600 acres, like, yeah. But um, but you know, they were dignified people, they had a lot of pride, and they were like, okay, you know, we we tried, it didn't work, so we're going to North Carolina. And then ultimately that they decided to leave and they wound up in southern Indiana. But what I've learned, Crista, um is that it wasn't just the, I mean, so there's the group of families that I'm talking about that ended up in Loss Creek, and there were the settlements throughout Indiana. But what I've learned is that um so many of the families that were freed in North Carolina, Virginia migrated to the Midwest. And they're so you find them in Ohio, you find them in Michigan, you find them in Wisconsin. And you know how I know that? Yes.

Crista Cowan: 27:16

How do you know that, Lisa? DNA. Of course. And there's really this interesting numbers game. You talked about a lot of descendants and people of uh free people of color being related to the Andersons. I think people often can't wrap their head around the numbers. Um, when you do ancestry research, you have two parents and four grandparents and eight great grandparents, right? Like the number doubles every generation and it gets big really fast, but it's a math formula that we all can kind of wrap our brain around. Yeah. When you do descendancy research, that's a whole other game. And there is no math formula because somebody could have had zero children or they could have had 25 children. Right. And and when you start researching, you don't know how many children you're looking for. Yeah. And you know, you don't know you're done finding all the children until you're done finding all the children.

Lisa Fanning: 28:09

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 28:09

Yeah. And and it's interesting because you think like somebody born in the 1700s, like this family was freed in the 1700s. And if they have enough money to be prosperous, that prosperity often allows them to have larger families. Yeah. Because they can support those larger families. And, you know, within a generation, you can have 10 or 12 children. By the second generation, you're going to have 60 or 70 grandchildren. Yeah. By the third generation, you're going to have, you know, a couple hundred great-grandchildren. And you're still only 60 or 80 years into this. And we're talking, you know, over a hundred years. And now these families are starting to migrate to the Midwest. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of them.

Lisa Fanning: 29:02

A lot of them. And and the and with the DNA, like with those families in particular, like I was, I was fortunate enough to get my great uncle's DNA. He, every time I asked him, hey, Uncle Roscoe, would you take this DNA test? You know, because you won't want to get in all the pools, right? He's like, Yeah, sure, no problem. And so he's in all the pools. And I can tell you, when I get to, especially with ancestry, when I get to shared matches for people that are also free people, you know, descend from free people of color, it's like 15 pages of people.

Crista Cowan: 29:37

That's amazing.

Lisa Fanning: 29:38

What year was Michael Roscoe born? He was born in, I think, 1922 or 23.

Crista Cowan: 29:44

Good for you for getting his DNA tested. Get those older people tested.

Lisa Fanning: 29:49

Exactly. Yeah, because he on he unlocked the mystery through the information that he gave me, but he also his DNA also unlocked so much more. I mean, because you know, it's not just sort of like the Virginia, North Carolina story, but you know, through his DNA, like there's this little piece of like DNA segment from Sardinia that keeps popping up and all throughout all the tests, you know. His haplogroup or his maternal haplogroup is not African at all. It's from the British Isles. We were completely blown away from that, uh, you know, when we found that out because it wasn't expected. Yeah. Um, I think you do expect that a little bit more with African um Y DNA or with uh Y DNA from African-American males, uh, because of what happened during slavery and the number of uh children that were born from from those um, you know, from what you know, what happened in slavery. And uh so you expect that, but you don't expect, you know, European um mitochondrial DNA. Um, but then when you do study the story of free people of color in this country, it makes more sense. And Paul's book, again, illuminated that because there were a lot of um women from the British Isles that were indentured uh in this country. And a lot of times they had relationships. Again, people are people, people live next to each other, they have families, they have kids. That's just that's just how it works. And a lot of them had relationships with um triracial men or African men or Native American men, and and they had children, but because they were free, their children were free. And so there, that is why a lot of times you have that that that explains why you can have so many free African Americans in North Carolina or Virginia, because a lot of times when you trace back to their maternal line, um they descend from from women from the British Isles who who were indentured, but they were free.

Crista Cowan: 32:01

Yeah. Wow. So so as you so as we kind of just talk through this concept of free people of color during that colonial era and then into the into the early 1800s, you've got individuals who were freed typically by someone who freed them after death, right? Like as part of their will. You've got individuals who are born free because the law at the time states that the enslavement condition follows the m the mother. Yeah.

Lisa Fanning: 32:27

Um, and then are there other reasons that depending on when they were born, you know, what era it was in this country, they might have been able to buy their freedom. Okay. You know, so those are kind of like the the three of the conditions. There may be more, but those are the ones I know the most. Um, and in in my family, um, I I don't know anyone had that bought their freedom, but we definitely, you know, the Andersons were were mostly African in ethnic origin. They weren't triracial at all. Their children married into the uh the Nansemen tribe, the Bass. There's a lot of Bass who were Nansen. And so a lot of their children ended up being sort of, you know, Native American, African, um, and they have different identities. You know, that's the interesting thing also with free people of color, is um you find, I'm sure you know this, a lot of people will, you know, that phenotypically look white, and then they've got the ancestry test bag, and it's like they they're not all white. It's kind of like, what? Where where'd that happen? You know, and usually it's because someone in their family was from a, you know, was part of this community and they married a white person or they passed into the white, you know, world or whatever. And but the DNA always ends up telling the story, right? It's it's it's the one thing that you can't escape. Um, the Stuarts that I descend from, their ancestor was um their make the matriarch of the Stuart and uh the Stuart line was uh uh an indentured white woman. And also Mary Underwood. We had to talk about Mary Underwood, that's a really important figure in my story. And actually, her daughter married an Anderson, so that's um how she factors into this. But she was a um triracial woman born in 1792. Um and she um she is she is the the focus of my research in 2025. Like I'm unlocking her story even more, but but yeah, she was um um, you know, a woman that just her origins were completely unknown to us until my great uncle took a DNA test and you know did the mitochondrial test, and he traces maternally back to her through his mother, and that's where that H1M1B one comes from, the haplow group.

Crista Cowan: 35:08

And this is Mary Underwood?

Lisa Fanning: 35:10

Yes.

Crista Cowan: 35:11

So was she part of the group that ended up in Lost Creek as well? All of her children.

Lisa Fanning: 35:15

All of her children went to Lost Creek, yeah.

Crista Cowan: 35:18

So tell me what you've discovered about Mary.

Lisa Fanning: 35:20

Yeah, so so yeah, so all of her children went to Lost Creek. She stayed in Richmond County, so she was born and raised in Richmond County in uh North Carolina. Um, she, when I find her as I'm researching back that line back, she's I find her in like 1810 and she's like early 20s, she's got three children, and she's living in a house. And I'm thinking, okay, that's odd. Like, um, but I'm thinking, okay, she's she's she's running her own life, you know, she's doing her own thing. And um she must have money or whatever. But then um, you know, I'm trying to sort of figure out who she's attached to. This underwood last name has to come from something, right? So I have to go on a deep dive into the underwood family, and I sort of recruit uh cousins to who are also descended of Mary. She was actually, she has two sets of children. There's three from her first set. I come from that. And then she married Mr. Russell, and she had a whole lot of other kids, right? So And did all of her children come to Indiana? Most of them. Some of them um are in different other places, but the majority of them migrated to Indiana. But yeah, um 1810, you know, find her in the census by 1820 or so. I think she's married, she has more children. Um, and then she's there at 1830. And I think she leaves and goes to Indiana around 1830, 1840. So then she's in Indiana and Vigo County. Um, she passes away there. But um recently, I because the family searches full text, I started looking for her a little bit more because I was just like, there has to be something about her before 1810. Like I just can't believe there's nothing there. Um, and I just kept digging and digging and digging. You know how you I'm I'm one of those kind of people that I believe if you just keep changing the search terms, you'll eventually get what you want. Like I don't stop at just, you know, so I'm like putting in different search terms, different positions of the search terms. Like I'm like determined. And here she comes one day, and she's eight years old, she's she's indentured apprentice to the man next door at eight that she's living next door to in 1810.

Crista Cowan: 38:07

What you have a black woman, a black woman, black woman child in a record prior to 1800. That's amazing.

Lisa Fanning: 38:20

Yeah, yeah. And and so it's kind of like what happened? You know, so it changed it, she completely shifts the story, right? Because I see her as 1810, she's got three kids, she's living by herself, she must, you know, handle her business, she's got money, she's good. But then I realized 10 years before that, she's eight. Or she, yeah, she's eight. So she's living as an eight-year-old with this family um that has promised to feed her, house her, teach her, give her a Bible, teach her how to read and write or whatever. So that shifts the whole story. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 38:59

Yeah. And indentureship is an interesting concept that a lot of people probably aren't very familiar with. Um, I have ancestors who were indentured. For a lot of people, it was a way sometimes to just support their family. Like if they couldn't afford more mouths to feed or more children, they would indenture that child to a local family to learn a trade or to, you know, work in the house. Or and the family agreed as part of that indentureship to do those things, right? To feed them and clothe them and educate them in a way that um, you know, you hope that they actually carried out the promises. But often there were those contracts drawn up to help ensure that they hopefully would fulfill those promises. And so indentureship was just a kind of a part of the economic fabric of the United States at the time, in and the way that, you know, families were raised and children could be indentured at a very young age. Eight is young. I've seen children as young as four and five being indentured out. I've seen children as old as 16 and 17 being indentured out. And I think it just kind of depends on what was happening. So the fact that this record exists is amazing and that you found it. It is well done.

Lisa Fanning: 40:12

It really is. And she um they're also in North, I think I it might be for all free people of color, but I know specifically in North Carolina, all free children of color, and it that's noted on her on that um apprentice document, um, or that indenture, that uh they all would be apprenticed, like all of them. It didn't matter whether they had parents, with they if they were orphaned or, you know, of not of a lot of financial means, they were, you know, but for me, seeing that was like, wow, there is another, a whole nother story here because you know, um, it meant that she did probably have parents. Um, I'm I'm currently trying to figure out there is a family there that are underwoods, I think, because of DNA, that is her family. And I do know that we do unwe do descend from this very large, prominent Quaker, Pennsylvania Underwood family. That I know just because I'm also a genetic genealogist. So so I share, they share all of their DNA with me. So I literally have a smorgased board of DNA to look at when I'm doing, you know, this research because everybody wants to know. So I can tell that they are all also descending from the same Quaker, Pennsylvania prominent, you know, family. Yeah. That's amazing.

Crista Cowan: 41:43

Well, yay. So that's Mary Enderwood. We need to talk um about Kate Anderson, though. So tell us about her.

Lisa Fanning: 41:51

Yeah, so Kate, you know, is a really interesting figure. Um, I know that she had, you know, several children, mainly boys, I think. Um, and then um, you know, the the story, which I don't know how true it is, but it's what you know is out there. You know, I'm still trying to understand it, but is that she and John Folker had a relationship. Or it's hard to say relationship because obviously she was enslaved by him, right? Right. But when he dies, he leaves everything to her and the few other families that he enslaved, he leaves absolutely nothing to his wife and son. Okay. Right. So the speculation, because I don't think there is, you know, there is nothing to to prove that they had a relationship. But um, and I mean it that's not to say, I mean, it's kind of like the power dynamic makes you believe like how could it have been a relationship when you know he technically legally owned her, but uh, doesn't mean that they didn't have something. I don't know, but um, but anyway, she raises these these boys, um, and she's part of this fight, you know, to to get the land. I don't know when she dies. I haven't been able to figure that out, but um, but her children, you know, go on to um do a lot in life, you know. They, you know, migrated to North Carolina, they end up in Indiana, and then to sort of kind of push things just a little bit forward to sort of follow the line of Andersons that are kind of pioneers and innovators or whatever, my my uncle, great uncle Roscoe's daughter, who is you know a descendant of the Andersons, she ends up becoming the first African American and the first female attorney general for the state of Indiana. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. I mean, when you think about the whole story, right? Yeah. They lose all of this land. You know, they were enslaved. They lose all this land in Virginia. They get to North Carolina, they rebuild, and then they come to Indiana and actually really prosper. Because I think my my um my ancestor Jeremiah, he had over 700 acres of land. So that's even more than when he was, you know, at one point in in uh Lost Creek, which is more than the land that was, you know, um given to Kate and her descendants. Um but yeah, so so Kate is just, she's my eighth great grandmother. I'm still researching her, you know. Um, but I think she was probably an incredible woman, you know, to live through that. I mean, I don't know that she had a husband that doesn't ever come up. Um and, you know, but she raised her sons and she fought for what she was due. It didn't work in the end, but um, but yeah, she's the hero to me, you know, for for my family. Absolutely and she she puts us in this country in the 1600s.

Crista Cowan: 45:15

That's amazing. I love that. I love that you can I love that you have her name and that you can speak her name. I think that's important. Yeah. And the fact that her sons carried her name on, um, like when probably, you know, they knew who their father was, but they chose to use her name instead. That actually says something.

Lisa Fanning: 45:34

Exactly, exactly. And, you know, um I think they were a very well-respected family. Uh, I I get that feeling from them. And um, you know, I believe that, you know, they had a lot of respect for her. And so they stayed in in Norfolk for a really long time. I think the fight to to claim what was rightfully theirs, but then eventually they they let it go and and moved on to to do even you know greater things. But yeah, I mean, knowing your eighth-grade grandmother in America is is not so common. That is not common for anyone.

Crista Cowan: 46:11

Certainly not, certainly not for African Americans. And so the fact that you have done that is incredible, that you have not only had access to the scholarship and research that was done before you, but that you have tapped into that and it sounds like expanded that. Um, I think that's just beautiful. You've got this migration from, you know, Virginia to North Carolina, from North Carolina to Indiana. And then as as you look at the family that um the family that settled in Lost Creek, where has your family kind of gone from that? Like who who is it in your family? You said you're descended from four of those families. Yeah. Like what gener is it great great grandparents? What generation is it to you that that is that migrant for me?

Lisa Fanning: 46:54

It would be third great grandparents. Okay. I descend directly from Archibald Stewart and Anna Anderson. Anna was the daughter of Rhoda or Rhoda Underwood, who was the daughter of Mary Underwood. I did not know any of this. Like in school, like I was not taught any, you know, anything about um African Americans being a part of the state for such a long time.

Crista Cowan: 47:15

The sweeping saga of it all. It's so fantastic. Um, and so appropriate for this particular podcast. Um, for this season, you know, we're focused on America 250. And as you kind of think about what you've uncovered since the 90s when you started doing family history, as you think about this, like how does uncovering all of this information change your view of what it means to be an American?

Lisa Fanning: 47:44

Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm really excited about America 250. Um, I think, you know, um, you know, it's it's a really, it's a really great time. I mean, I think celebration is important and necessary anyway. And so, you know, we we've been building up to this for a while. So I'm really excited about it. Uh, we have such a rich history as a nation, and it's worth, you know, celebrating um in all the ways that make it great. I think when it comes to my family, it really does also say that those 250 years are nestled inside a continuum, right? And that there are people who were here before that, and there'll be people that will continue on. And I think what's important, and I what I hope happens throughout the year of 2026, 2026, is that we hear all of the stories, right? Like, that it's not just a certain group of people who should be celebrated or that represent America. Um, as you can tell from from my own history, like we were here long before 1776, okay? And and that is an important story. It's it's part of the fabric of this country and it should be visible and it should be known. And and I'm hoping that, you know, whether I have an opportunity to tell it again in some other way or other people do, that that whole year is full of everybody's story. Because we're all Americans, we all have stories, we all contributed to this country, and you know, 250 years, you know, is full of full of all of those stories.

Crista Cowan: 49:25

So I love that. Lisa, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing Indiana. Thank you for educating all of us, and thank you for honoring your ancestors, not just with the life you're living, but with the stories that you're uncovering and making sure are told.

Lisa Fanning: 49:42

Thank you so much, Crista. I've I've enjoyed all of this. So of course it's been a pleasure. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.

Crista Cowan: 49:51

Well, that's it. That was episode 100. Thank you again for being here with us through this journey. If you like this podcast, one of the best things you can do to help us grow the podcast is to, if you're listening to it on a podcast app, rate and review the podcast and then share it with your friends. If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to like the videos, subscribe to the channel, comment. All of that engagement helps us drive more listeners to the podcast. And I don't know about you, but I think everybody needs more family stories in their life.