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.

Trying out mobile posting. Waiting for the perfect chance to sit down with my laptop and create the perfect post is way too long. Operative word - perfect. So long perfect. Life is too short. *Note to self. ~ Lisa