A Genealogist’s Most Powerful Tools, Luck and Karma: Finding the love of my life and eleven more slave names

I have had many recent breakthroughs, one truly bizarre one.

I have known for a long time that my 5th great grandmother, Barbara Culp, was scalped by Indians in South Carolina in 1761. She lived to have the child she was pregnant with and two more, including my 4th great grandmother.

My husband and I have been married for 36 years. He was raised in Illinois and Wisconsin. I grew up in the Southwest. We met when we were both in our late twenties. He came to my home town as a stranger who happened to land a job here when he finished graduate school in another city. He had been here a year and a half before I moved back to this town. We met on a blind date and he asked me to marry him two weeks later.


When my father-in-law died in northern Wisconsin this June (2009), the question came up about their family’s genealogy materials. My husband’s 90 year- old father, Ed, had collected a great deal of information but my husband’s sister wasn’t interested in it. So, even though I am drowning in my own family history, I said, "I'll take it." (The true test of a natural born genealogist.)

Two weeks after Ed died, his 80 year-old cousin, Jim, whom I have never met, called me and was very excited that someone in Ed's family was interested in Ed's genealogy materials. He had talked recently to my sister-in-law, and she made it clear that she was clearing out Ed's house and sending Ed's stuff to me, the daughter-in-law. Jim was ecstatic that I was interested in keeping all of the stuff. So Jim and I are now bosom buddies.

Now get this picture:

I am trying to write a book about my own Culp and related ancestors who owned slaves.

I have found 48 slave names and I am working with a university project (LowCountry Africana) to get that information online. Some of those enslaved people were the daughter and grandchildren of my 3rd Great Grandfather, Peter Culp. They are my family and I am trying to find them, as well.

Then my father-in-law dies and I get all of this totally different family's stuff. I don't need this. I don't want this. I don't want to "do" my husband's family. I don't have time for this! But this Cousin Jim told me in his first phone call that he was coming up on the first anniversary of the death of his dear wife of 57 years. It is just a matter of a few days. And he is so happy to talk to me for two and a half hours about Ed’s mother's Thomas family and I don't have the heart to cut him off.

He has tons of materials that he is itching to send me immediately and what am I going to say? (Shall I say, "I'm really busy with my own family right now, Jim."?) He is genuinely elated as he talks of getting this package together to send to me.

So instead I say something like, "I'd be thrilled to have that hundred pound package of new genealogical materials."

This is when the Universe decides to teach me a lesson in Karma. You can't avoid it if you are sending out the signals to bring things to you.

This is THE REST OF THE STORY. This is where it gets strange.

You must trust me on this. My husband and I met on a blind date and he asked me to marry him two weeks later. We had just celebrated 36 years of marriage when I received this package of materials on his father’s mother’s Thomas line.

I still cannot report this without getting chills. What I found in the Thomas family records:

• The man responsible for protecting the settlers, the Commander of the British Militia at the tiny settlement of Fishing Creek, South Carolina, at the time my 5th great grandmother was attacked and scalped, was my husband’s 5th great grandfather, Colonel John Thomas.

Two hundred forty eight years ago, my husband’s ancestor failed to protect my ancestor from being scalped.

My husband always said he “recognized” me as soon as he met me and that’s why he asked me to marry him so soon after we met. He was looking for me and he knew I was the one he was looking for. He has always said that, and now we know why. KARMA. He has spent this lifetime making me feel safe and cherished.

The second part of THE REST OF THE STORY.

• When I looked at Colonel John Thomas’ will, I found the names of eleven more enslaved persons in South Carolina: men, women and children, who I can document on LowCountry Africana.

So, my husband’s family documents that I didn’t want, that I considered to be a distraction from my own work, turned out to be impossibly interwoven with my family and to my work finding and saving slave names.

One thing I know, if I had not been looking for slave names in Col. John Thomas’s will, I wouldn’t have found them. This was in my mind when I wrote my previous blog (We, White Family Genealogists, Must Make Good Faith Efforts To Search Our Own Records). I have found the names of 59 enslaved persons while sitting right here in my own bedroom in the last 10 months using a book I've had on my shelf for 25 years and materials I received unsolicited from my father-in-law's 80 year old cousin.

Have you missed any names in the documents you already have? Look again. Please.