My True Roots®
Journey to the American Revolution
My Family's Providence in Alabama into American History
My Week in Residence at Auburn University
In February 2026, during Black History Month and Alabama’s commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary, I received a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to serve residencey at Auburn University.
It was more than a speaking engagement. It was a homecoming, a week of teaching, learning, remembrance, with gratitude.
Before I arrived at Auburn, I went down home.
I returned to Mt. Coney Baptist Church, my family church since 1875. I attended worship, walked among the graves, and spent time remembering the ancestors whose lives made my own journey possible. Before the university classrooms, microphones, museums, and public programs, I needed to stand on the ground where so much of my family’s story began.
That visit gave the entire week a deeper meaning.
I was not simply traveling to Alabama to give a presentation. I was carrying my parents, grandparents, and ancestors with me. I was carrying the stories of people who lived through slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, migration, military service, family separation, perseverance, and faith.
My presentation, “My True Roots’ Journey to the American Revolution,” traced that family story from the fields of Alabama to Pennsylvania and ultimately to my Revolutionary War Patriot ancestor, Nicholas Barrick.
It was the story of how one family history can hold many American experiences at once.
For years, I have gathered names from census records, military files, church minutes, marriage records, cemetery stones, oral histories, photographs, and family memories. At Auburn, I was given the opportunity to bring those pieces together and share them as a living American story.
The Email I Almost Did Not Believe
Dr. Mark Wilson guided me throughout this entire experience. As Director of Auburn University’s Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities, he helped make the residency, presentations, community visits, and introductions possible.
I still smile when I remember receiving that first email from Auburn University.
At first, I thought it might be fake.
I wondered, Who from such a prestigious university in Alabama would be emailing me? The invitation seemed almost too extraordinary to believe. My husband encouraged me to look more closely and pointed out that the email address carried Auburn University’s official designation.
He said, in effect, “You may want to answer that email.”
I am so grateful that I did.
What began as an unexpected message became a momentous, once-in-a-lifetime blessing. Dr. Wilson welcomed me, encouraged me, and remained present throughout the week as I shared my family’s journey with students, historians, community members, and organizations across Alabama.
Teaching at Auburn University
During my residency, I had the honor of speaking with students in two Auburn University history courses at Lowder Hall: Dr. E. Gaddis’s Fundamentals of Public History and Dr. Baltzkonis’s Historian’s Craft.
Each class gave me the opportunity to share how family history can become a doorway into the larger American story. We discussed genealogy, public history, archival research, oral history, and the responsibility historians have to preserve the lives of people whose experiences may not appear in traditional textbooks.
I wanted the students to understand that history is not found only in famous speeches, government documents, or the lives of well-known figures.
History can be found in a grandmother’s Bible, in a church cemetery. It can be found in an agricultural schedule showing what an ancestor planted, raised, and harvested, military morning reports, marriage licenses issued after emancipation, family photographs, oral traditions, and the memories passed down around a kitchen table.
I shared how my own research began, teaching those classes allowed me to show the students that personal history is not separate from public history. When carefully researched and placed within its proper historical context, one family’s story can help us better understand the history of a community, a state, and the nation.
Honoring My Parents’ Story
One of the greatest blessings of the residency was the opportunity to tell my parents’ story.
Their lives are part of a larger American story involving race, family, adoption, military service, migration, identity, and belonging. I have often said that I was born between worlds. Through genealogy, I learned that those worlds were not separate. They were connected through the people, places, and choices that shaped my life.
Standing before an audience and sharing that journey was emotional.
I understood that I was not speaking only for myself. I was serving as a vessel for the people whose voices were not always recorded, preserved, or welcomed into the official historical narrative. Their names deserve to be remembered.
Reuniting with My Mentor
The week also gave me the precious opportunity to spend time with my mentor, Mr. Dean Spratlan of the Bullock County Historical Society.
Mentors often see something in us before we fully recognize it in ourselves. Mr. Spratlan has encouraged my research, respected the history of my family and community, and helped me understand the value of placing personal genealogy within the larger historical record.
Seeing him again during this important week made the experience feel complete. It reminded me that none of us does this work alone. Behind every researcher, writer, teacher, and storyteller are people who offered encouragement, opened a door, answered a question, or simply said, “Keep going.”
A Warm Alabama Welcome
Throughout the week, I was welcomed with extraordinary kindness.
I spoke with members of the historic Lee County NAACP #5038. That gathering connected my family story to the continuing work of citizenship, civil rights, voting, education, and community leadership. I was able to share my Cousin Aaron Sellers and his fight suing the Bullock County Voting Registration Board and the amazing life he had also starting a NAACP Chapter in Bullock County, Alabama and how he testified in the Votings Rights Commission in Montgomery.
Elmore County Black History Museum, where I witnessed the importance of preserving local African American history. Community museums like this one protect the names, photographs, documents, and memories that might otherwise be lost.
Their work reminded me that history does not belong only to large institutions. Some of our most important stories are being preserved in small museums, churches, family collections, and local historical organizations by people who understand exactly what is at stake.
During the residency, I also spent time in Auburn University’s Special Collections and Archives, researching members of my family who lived in Birmingham. Sitting in the archives and examining historical materials connected to my ancestors gave me another opportunity to place their lives within Alabama’s broader history. Greg Schmidt, Head of Special Collections and Archives gave me a wonderful time and talked with me and Dr. Wilson about all they had.
Sharing the DAR Today Podcast with the Alabama Daughters
Another unforgettable part of my Alabama experience was attending the 128th Alabama State Conference, not only as a visiting Daughter, but as the National Chair of the DAR Today Podcast as guest.
I was honored to present a workshop explaining why DAR Today is more than simply a podcast. It is a national storytelling, educational, communications, and preservation tool. Through interviews, historical features, committee spotlights, chapter stories, we are preserving the work of Daughters while making that work accessible to members across the country.
During the workshop, I shared ways chapters can apply many of the same ideas at the local level. A chapter does not need a national production team or expensive equipment to begin. Daughters can record oral histories, interview longtime members, preserve chapter memories, highlight service projects, share local history, and create short audio or digital features that help future generations understand what their chapter accomplished.
I was deeply grateful to the Alabama State Regent Malinda Williams for inviting me and for making me feel so welcome. The kindness shown to me throughout the conference was overwhelming. I received so many thoughtful gifts, but the greatest gift was the fellowship. I met new Daughters, formed new connections, and enjoyed conversations that made the experience especially memorable.
There was also a beautiful connection to my years in Pennsylvania. My former Pennsylvania State Regent, Marguerite H. Fritsch, was in attendance as a guest. She now serves as the Organizing Secretary General during the Storage Administration. Her daughter, who also serves as a National Chair, for Celebrate Daughters was there as well.
Seeing my Pennsylvania “daisies” in Alabama brought another part of my DAR journey full circle. They knew me from an earlier season of service, and now they were present as I stood before the Alabama "bees" in my new role as a National Chair.
That moment reminded me that every appointment, every friendship, every chapter experience, and every opportunity to serve becomes part of a much larger journey.
Coming Full Circle at the Alabama Department of Archives and History
One of the most emotional moments of the entire trip came at the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
For nearly twenty years, that building had been a kind of sacred place for me. Whenever I traveled down home to Alabama, I found rest there. I found quiet. I found room to think, to search, to contemplate, and to sit among the records of a history that had shaped my family long before I understood how deeply I belonged to it.
It became my secret place.
I could walk through those doors carrying questions, grief, hope, and determination, and somehow leave feeling steadier. Just being surrounded by the documents, exhibits, photographs, and memory held within that place gave me a sense of peace. It reminded me that the lives I was searching for had not disappeared. Their traces were still there, waiting to be found.
After almost twenty years of returning to that institution, I finally met Steve Murray, Director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, and he gave me a personal tour.
I do not know whether I can fully express what that meant to me.
To be welcomed and shown around by the person leading the institution that had sheltered so much of my own research journey felt almost unbelievable. I felt as though I were walking the red carpet of my life—not because of ceremony, but because of what the moment represented.
It was recognition.
It was gratitude.
For years, I had come to the archives searching for my ancestors. On this trip, I arrived as a historian, a researcher, a writer, a speaker, and a descendant carrying their stories forward.
That personal tour became the quilt that wrapped itself around me the entire week.
Every experience had already been meaningful—the church, the graves, the classrooms, the museum, the archives, the Alabama Daughters, the students, the conversations, and the welcome at Auburn— I had spent so many years entering those doors as someone searching but this time.....the building said: “We remember you. We have watched your journey. Look how far you have come.” On that day, I felt as though the place that had held me for so long was finally celebrating the journey with me.
A Black History Month I Will Never Forget
To share this story during Black History Month made the experience especially powerful.
Black history is American history, and my family’s story demonstrates how deeply those histories are intertwined.
America’s 250th anniversary gives us an opportunity to examine the full sweep of that history—not only the celebrated chapters, but also the difficult ones.
We can honor the ideals of the American Revolution while also telling the truth about those who were excluded from its promises.
We can celebrate freedom while remembering those who continued to struggle for it.
From the fields of Alabama to Pennsylvania, and from Slavery to the American Revolution, this journey showed me again that family history is never just about the past.
It is about who we are. I came back to Alabama carrying the names, stories, courage, sacrifice, and faith of all those who came before me to honor and make sure they are not forgotten.
We speak their Names
Link to News Article: Elmore County Celebrates America250 with True Lewis’ My True Roots to the American Revolution
I was asked to submit my presentation in story form and it ended up being published in the Alabama Genealogical Magazine for the Spring/Summer 2026 | Volume 58
A full circle moment!
Thank you to my Husband, our Sons & Grandchildren & Family for all their support.
