{"id":83469,"date":"2023-02-08T16:10:20","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T21:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=83469"},"modified":"2023-02-08T16:11:21","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T21:11:21","slug":"manitoba-woman-uses-brock-archives-to-trace-familys-black-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2023\/02\/manitoba-woman-uses-brock-archives-to-trace-familys-black-heritage\/","title":{"rendered":"Manitoba woman uses Brock archives to trace family’s Black heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rosemary Postey was always curious about her family\u2019s roots.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Several of her relatives have black curly hair and others had dark skin. She suspected Indigenous heritage, until one day her uncle revealed a photograph of her great-grandmother.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It confirmed her Black ancestry \u2014 and piqued her interest to search for more information.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On a quest to learn more about her Black heritage, the Manitoba woman was surprised to find photographs of her Black ancestors in a digital archive collection hosted by the Brock University Library.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>Rick Bell Family Fonds<\/span><\/a> features more than 300 photos and various papers spanning more than a century that document the Bell and Sloman families, who descended from former slaves in the American south and later laid roots in Niagara.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t imagine my joy when I found these pictures,\u201d said Postey, whose grandfather is Earl Sloman. \u201cMy family never spoke about our family roots.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The collection includes photos of her grandfather\u2019s siblings, as well as several pictures of a relative named Lizzie Robinson (n\u00e9e Sloman) with her family.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"An

Rosemary Postey\u2019s great-grandfather John George Sloman, third from left, is pictured with three of his four children, Wilbert George Dangerfield Sloman, far left, Mildred Sloman, second from left, and John Ivison Eldon Sloman, far right. Earl Sloman, Postey\u2019s grandfather, is the missing sibling in the photo.<\/p><\/div>\n

To Postey\u2019s knowledge, the Slomans in her family emigrated to Clinton, Ont., directly from England 153 years ago and were not of Black heritage. Turns out, some of the children and grandchildren of the original Sloman immigrants married Black partners. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandfather was quite dark skinned,\u201d she said. \u201cHe married my grandma whose parents had emigrated from Scotland. There were eight children in my mom\u2019s family and there was such a distinct difference in some of the children\u2019s physical appearances.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Postey stumbled upon the Rick Bell Family Fonds in her search to learn more about her great-grandmother Mary Ester Day (n\u00e9e Sloman) \u2014 her father\u2019s mother and the woman in the photograph her uncle gave her. She was curious if the Day family had come from the United States through the Underground Railroad.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although she did not find any photos or information about her great-grandmother, she said seeing the Rick Bell collection confirmed there were other Black links in her family tree.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She also learned that <\/span>she is distantly related to <\/span>Rick Bell, the person who donated the collection of family photographs and papers to Brock in 2010.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

David Sharron, Head of the Brock University Library\u2019s Archives and Special Collections, connected Postey to Bell, who gave her the name of another distant relative who might have more information about her family.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why archives exist,\u201d said Sharron. \u201cRecords like these can connect past generations to those in the present and the future. There is always something to discover. We are thrilled that Rosemary was able to find these Niagara roots in the Brock University Archives. The Rick Bell Family Fonds is quite special.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"An

Rosemary Postey is related to Lizzie Robinson (n\u00e9e Sloman), centre, pictured with Robinson\u2019s husband Abner Robinson, left, and son Joseph John Robinson, right. Robinson\u2019s mother Elizabeth Ann Sloman (n\u00e9e Day) was a sister to Postey\u2019s great-grandmother Mary Esther Sloman (n\u00e9e Day), and Robinson\u2019s father Joseph George Sloman was a brother to Postey\u2019s great-grandfather John George Sloman. Robinson\u2019s mother died when Robinson was young, so she was raised by Postey\u2019s great-grandparents. Robinson was a sister to Rick Bell\u2019s grandfather Albert Sloman.<\/p><\/div>\n

Postey plans to continue her quest to find answers about her great-grandmother Mary Ester Day (n\u00e9e Sloman). In the meantime, she is compiling photographs and documents she has found so far in her extensive research, which included a cross-Canada visit this past summer from her home in Manitoba to Ontario to visit the London Public Library, the Clinton Branch of the Huron County Library and the Huron County Archives in Goderich.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am so proud of all my ancestors and proud of my Black heritage,\u201d she said. “My search has been a labour of love and I plan to continue digging deeper to find out more about them.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To learn more about the <\/span>Rick Bell Family Fonds<\/span><\/a> and an <\/span>online exhibit<\/span><\/a> featuring pieces from the collection, read about it this <\/span>Brock News<\/em> article<\/span><\/a> from 2021.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rosemary Postey was always curious about her family\u2019s roots.\u00a0Several of her relatives have black curly hair and others had dark skin. She suspected Indigenous heritage, until one day her uncle revealed a photograph of her great-grandmother.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":83475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9794,3319,1,4],"tags":[777,5682,5265,806,2701,3059,5300],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83469"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83496,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83469\/revisions\/83496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}