Military records have been a big help in building my family trees. Reading the records give lots of clues even when I look at them more than once.  I started this research journey looking for maternal records and soon learned how women most often had less public records than men. 

These photos and posters in this post are from the publicity efforts during WWII to engage African American men to enlist. Meanwhile, there's no mention on how too many in the South weren't able to have jobs other than sharecropping or risked the high probability of getting arrested and become absorbed into the convict leasing scheme. 

My grandfathers were in WWII and I often asked them about their service and experiences while in the service. No need to guess that the stories included racism and discrimination. It has been an awesome experience to see the records that match the times of the stories that my grandfather shared. 

Growing up I was always reminded by my paternal grandmother about my grandfather’s Caribbean heritage. My paternal patrilineal heritage is from St. Vincent although genealogy research shows my grandfathers maternal line being from Grenada, Barbados and St Lucia. Reading the records over time got quite confusing until I created a chart.

I came across. Caribbean Americans in New York City 1895 - 1975 browsing at the Newark Library in the African American Studies room during the grand opening of the remodeling. It grave good insight about the early 1900s migration. I was always told that my family were whalers and came over after a huge storm and settled in Perth Amboy. On the highway my grandmother would point to the Perth Amboy sign on the turnpike and say that's where the Hazells are from. In the early 80s we went there for a family function although I dont remember meeting anyone.

My last name is pronounced Hazell with a long L while family pronounces Hazel. I wondered who changed the pronunciation? My grandmother?

Storm in St. Vincent 1900

With the disastrous hurricane in 1898 which caused 288 deaths and the Soufriere eruption which caused the deaths of between 1,300 and 2,000 persons, many unemployed laborers were forced to emigrate immediately in order to find jobs for the support of their families.
https://archive.org/stream/landusepopulatio00spin/landusepopulatio00spin_djvu.txt

As I continue to unfold connections to my DNA result matches, learning my haplogroup has completely befuddled me. My haplogroup is F2 originatIng in Southwest China. So this is where the mother of my genetic family line originated.

THIS is my whoosah. My mojo. My oh snap. Wow.

Meanwhile, I do have a touch of conspiracy theorist in my cypher after working a couple of decades in entertainment media production. How do we really know what’s true? We’ve seen limitless behind the scenes in movie making and writers craft interviews. Not including reposts on straight out lies in Egyptology findings.

I’ve longtime had interest in anthropology and actually interviewed for a doctoral program at Columbia in early 2000s. A maternal anthropology program at that. My first love is archaeology inspired from the King Tut exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the 70s.

And here I am making discoveries in family genetic anthropology.

​Incredible.