My Voyage Of Discoveries

I had just spent 5 days on a Genealogy Cruise that went to the Bahamas. It was hosted by the North Carolina Piedmont-Triad Chapter of the African American Historical and Genealogical Society and was billed Voyage of Discovery

We started out in Charleston South Carolina ready to go. Joyce McCollum, Me and Phyllis Grimes. The guy in the middle was the Uber driver who was hilarious and agreed to take a picture.

We met up with Joyce's ship-mate Naziah Hassan on board the ship who I got to meet for the first time. I later found out she is a New York-er living now in Phoenix. 

Next was that big body of water so calm and ready for us to debark and get ready for the speakers we wanted to hear.

I saw Our wonderful Coast Guard cruising along side us making me feel quite protected and at ease.

The Speakers that I listened to was Lamar DeLoach and his talk on Black Indians in the Carolina's.

 Tamela TenPenny Lewis who gave her talk on African American Fraternal Orders

Elizabeth Clark-Lewis and her Using Records to Document Enslaved Person's Heritage.

One of the Plenary Speakers was a fella by the name of William "Billy" Mitchell who is the Historian for the Apollo Theater.

This man had me in tears as he told his story of growing up in New York poorer than poor and rising up from getting sandwiches to the Apollo guests to being the Resident Historian. His presentation was full of humor and spell binding at the same time.  They call him "Mr Apollo" and will have a book coming out soon.

You can't go to any conference without networking. I met quite a few people with some interesting stories. Some of the people I met was on ship, walking along the beach where we had docked or standing in line buying gifts to bring back home.

No secret to any of my family but I love to go spend time at the casino.

They had one on ship so in my free time, I went and played the penny machine.

Next to me was two ladies who were there on a cruise for pleasure and not for the genealogy conference.

We started talking and I told them why I was on the cruise and found out that one of the ladies had taken a DNA test.

We introduced ourselves and found out they were cousins and their names were Vickie and Phyllis.

                                       I laughed and told them my name was Vicky

                                       My ship room-mate was named Phyllis.

That sparked a cruise friendship and also I got a chance to tell them about my aspect on genealogy and the importance of knowing your history.

I think I also may have convinced Phyllis to download her and her hubby's dna data to Gedmatch, and maybe just maybe Vickie will take a dna test.

I would really roll over if one of them matched me or my Arizona Genealogy buddy Phyllis.

After all how neat is this to sit next to two people who have names in common and laughed it up durn near the whole night.  It was the first time it has happened to me.

So knowing me and the way I think I looked up two names in the census and came up with this.

In the 1920 Louisiana Census there was a Philis Victoria born around 1872 living with her three sons and two daughters.

Source Citation
Year: 1920; Census Place: Police Jury Ward 1, Allen, Louisiana; Roll: T625_603; Page: 21A; Enumeration District: 17

Living above her is a Victor Victoria and his wife Dora who may possibly be another son of Philis.

Not to be undone in the 1935 Florida State Census there is a Victoria Phyllys widow born around 1893. This reminds me that some states did have state census every 5 years.

Source Information
Ancestry.com. Florida, State Census, 1867-1945 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.

The people above are not my people but who knows if their descendants showed up on my match list one of these days. 

Would I go on another Genealogy Cruise?

Yes, I would with the stipulation that it would have to be a much larger ship.

I ate too many motion pills and rocked and rolled to many times to keep my words of cuss down to a minimum.
The rooms were a tad to small for me but other than that its a big YEP!

Oh, and I would have loved to have seen  Family Tree Girl aka Shelley Murphy on board. I could have given her my TIMELINE!!!!

Oh well, I guess I will make another one for next year in Indiana at MAAGI .

I left the ship much richer than I arrived. Not with money but with knowledge, new friends and memories  which was my Voyage of Discoveries.