Akee Tree

📖 The Scoop

"It began as mere curiosity when the funeral letter from Kansas arrived. It ended with discovering his African roots and preserving the saga of four matriarchs who kept the family bloodline alive during 140 years under American slavery. Four women: Akey, Jenny, Rose, and Eliza, labored to keep the Eskridge-Hanks family together under slavery until it was finally abolished and the Hanks family left Mississippi for Kansas after changing their last name. Genealogist Stephen Hanks' painstaking 10-year research takes him back in time, not only through his own lineage, but also through the family of slaveholder Richard Eskridge, whose slaves create a paper trail on four plantations, ending up at the early 18th century plantation of Colonel George Eskridge, a Virginia attorney whom George Washington was named after. Akee Tree delivers to readers a fresh, raw, and revealing account that will have them turning each page until reaching the last let of the journey: to Africa! Akee Tree is not only an objective, dramatic, and interpretive family biography, but also a compelling investigative search for identity, as Stephen Hanks discovers his African ancestor's tribe. However, Akee Tree is also something more: a powerful cry for those who share the same surnames today yet who once shared the same plantations yesterday to reach out to each other" -- Publisher's description.

Genre: Reference / Genealogy & Heraldry (fancy, right?)