La Belle Époque Challenge #4 : Elijah J. McCoy (1843-1929)

Question

La Belle Époque, challenge #4

This one is for the American side, it has been proposed by Greg Slade, and it looks like a real challenge indeed.

Elijah J. McCoy (1843-1929), engineer and inventor has a very good bio on his profile, his first circle seems complete with both parents, five siblings, two wives and one daughter ... but only one person (son-in-law) in the second circle ... and that's it!

Answer 1

Doing a quick search on FamilySearch it names Mary’s father as Jacob C. Delaney (1815) and mother as Eliza Ann Montgomery (1817), but no sources. There are profiles already on Wikitree for a Jacob Delaney and an Elizabeth (Unknown) Delaney both born in West Virginia and no other info, auto generated and appears the account is closed. I’ll look around and see if I can find anything about Jacob and Eliza.

Answer 2

What a challenge!

I went looking for any way to establish that Elijah's parents George and Mildred could have reunited with family/community from Kentucky, once they reached Canada.  

Didn't find anything directly on point, but did find an interesting primary source from 1856, an abolitionist book of interviews with American escaped slaves in the community.  Many of the interviewees came from various parts of Kentucky.  

* Drew, Benjamin "Chapter: Colchester.", ''A north-side view of slavery : The refugee, or, The narratives of fugitive slaves in Canada'' (Boston: 1856).

* full text available at unc.edu

* scan available at archive.org

Comments

Searching for Elijah's ancestors if of course what comes to mind first, but just a reminder is that it is a "Connect 1900" challenge, and going through descendants, nephews, in-laws etc might be an easier way to search connection than to bang your head on brick walls.

I don't know how you search records over there, so I will be of little practical help (unless someone finds a connection to France), but if I knew how to do it, I will try to collect low-hanging fruits : I see in the profile of his brother Milton that he married and had five children born around 1880s, with sources.

Why not add those, and push connections in any possible direction?

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most of the info on Milton’s profile about marriage and children is wrong. added more notes.

did not want to remove so much until someone else looked at it.

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Good to know ...

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Bernard is probably right about focusing on descendants.  In the Author's Preface of Drew book I found, Drew says that he changed the names of his interviewees to anonymize them.  That suggests that the fugitive communities in Canada West had a security culture to effectively protect themselves from recapture.  Intentional "inaccuracies" in written record-keeping may pose additional challenges to 21st century genealogists tracing these families to their origins in the American South.

I agree with S. that the Milton and Flora family group is unlikely to extend Elijah's connections, based on the sources that S. found about that Milton's ancestry.

So here's a new descendant in our tree: George A. McCoy (1873-1940) was Elijah's nephew.  He married a Margaret Gurney in 1905, but it may not have worked out.  In the 1910 census, George was living in a boarding house without his wife.  Further searches may be able to locate him and Margaret after 1910 to see if there were any children. 

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Way to go, indeed! And would provide a good illustration of how to proceed when origins have been obscured ... for pretty good reasons in such a case!

Answer 3

If one did want to dig into the ancestry further, I might suggest contacting one of the museums dedicated to Black History in the region.  From the County of Essex 'Early Settlement History' page ( https://www.countyofessex.ca/en/discover-the-county/early-settlement-history.aspx ): "Tens of thousands of refugee slaves fled bondage in America via the Underground Railroad and thousands of them found freedom on the welcoming shores of Essex County They settled in Amherstburg, Anderdon, Malden, Sandwich, Colchester and Maidstone. Many became farmers, craftsmen, merchants, traders, labourers and sailors.  Their contributions and spirit helped shaped Essex County and, indeed, the country. Their legacy is proudly celebrated with monuments and museums including the Amherstburg Freedom Museum and the John Freeman Walls Historic Site and Underground Railroad Museum in Lakeshore.  The Ahmsterburg museum site states: " The museum offers staff conducted and self-conducted research and genealogy. The museum fields many requests from around North America, which has been aided by the recent digitization of some of the museums archival collection.  Research is also conducted on an on-going basis by museum staff to present local family genealogies, and other local history that is made available on the museums webpage and shared on museum social media channels."