By Austin Fenner
Special to DNAinfo
One of the country's most prominent genealogists — who once helped prove Rev. Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond were related — was heading to a Harlem Mormon church Saturday to help hundreds of people dig deeper into their own family trees.
The headline act at this year's Harlem African-American Genealogy Conference, at Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints on Lenox Avenue, is Tony Burroughs, a former adjunct at Chicago State University.
“I am hoping to give people tools that will make them better researchers,” said Burroughs.
“The internet has so much data and itʼs so prolific people think that its going to solve all of their (genealogical) problems, but thatʼs not the case.”
Burroughs, who worked with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates on the groundbreaking African American Lives on PBS said one of the keys to success in tracking down ancestors was overcoming variants in people's names.
“When you research the 19th century, people names are spelled differently because education was not as prolific,” Burroughs said.
“I found my (last) name spelled 20 different ways.”
Khadijah Matin, an ordained minister, who was raised an Episcopalian and is a practicing Muslim, planned to attend one his workshops.
“Genealogy has helped given me a solid foundation,” said Matin, a former national president Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society.
“I know Iʼm not here by chance. I come from a family of storytellers. Genealogy is important in how my family sees itself.”
Matin said she has been sifting through the Internet, books, old newspaper articles, photographs and scouring microfilm at the Mormon library in Salt Lake City, Utah to fill in the missing pieces of her past.
Her works has been like putting grains of sand back in an hourglass to create a fuller picture of her family tree.
“I have found family members who were free (blacks), enslaved Africans and Native American,” said Matin, 58. “They all ended up in Nebraska. They provided horses to the Buffalo soldiers and some became doctors and lawyers.”
Matin said that during Americaʼs post Civil War era, she uncovered that her African-American ancestors did more than fill their lungs with fresh air as free men and woman.
“It was a time to articulate intellectually who they were,” said Matin.
Burroughs said he encourages genealogist to be patient as they try to read the tea leaves of their past. He advises to invest time by picking up a book on genealogy, taking a class to help understand the methodology of this detective work.
“I think anyone cane acquire these skills,” he said.
Burroughs said the recent crop of genealogy television shows have fueled part of the growing interest in people digging into their family trees.
“Genealogy is totally unpredictable, you never know what you are going to find until you start looking,” he said.
