Have you considered the role DNA might play in corroborating the oral history of your family?

LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson, JD, LLM, CG®, CGL(SM), is a trustee and President of the Board for Certification of Genealogists. She earned a BA from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, and both a Law degree and a Master of Laws degree from the New York University School of Law. After working as a corporate tax attorney for thirty-five years, she retired from a partner-level position at Ernst & Young in 2013 and turned her attention to her longtime avocation of Genealogy. She is now a full-time genealogist focused on writing and teaching, and currently serves as the Registrar General of the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage, a national lineage society that honors ancestors who were enslaved in the United States before 1870.

 LaBrenda published A Guide to Researching African American Ancestors in Laurens County, South Carolina and Selected Finding Aids(2016), an award-winning book that was hailed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s long-running genealogy column as a model for researching African Americans in South Carolina and other states. 

Opening music - Sweet Mellow Spice by A. K. Alexander Productions