Decorated with framed photos, timelines, Army medals and awards, Ron Jefferson’s “man cave” has become home to memorabilia from his past 12 years of research — creating a family tree that now has more than 5,000 connections on ancestry.com. What started as curiosity about his dad’s side of the family quickly evolved into years of research and travel as Jefferson began to learn more and more about not only his own family history, but the history of African American people he was not taught in school. “It’s very important to know your family and where you come from,” Jefferson said. “Many family members consider me the family historian.” Jefferson’s own history Jefferson was born the youngest of six in 1946. His family lived on Whitesbog farm in New Jersey growing blueberries and cranberries. After graduating high school, Jefferson joined the U.S. Air Force and served four years as a jet aircraft mechanic. Jefferson spent most of the next decade hitchhiking across the United States, from New Jersey to Oregon, sometimes traveling as much as 600 miles a day.

Eventually, Jefferson settled in Kentucky in 1973, where he began a career in law enforcement. By 2000, he had resettled in Portland, where Jefferson served as personal security for three different Portland mayors. Now, Jefferson lives in Vancouver with his wife of 19 years. Though retired, he spends much of his time doing research on his family with the hope of gathering it all into a book someday. Mapping a family tree Jefferson first joined ancestry.com 12 years ago. While he has met many new cousins and other relatives through the genealogy tracking site, much of the research he has pieced together about his ancestors came from patching together different stories and bits of knowledge from living family members. The histories he has uncovered date back centuries. In 2020, he visited the Pritchard House, once home to his great-great grandfather, Marshall Pritchett, and his brother who were enslaved by David Leary Pritchard from 1836 to 1866. In learning about many of his enslaved ancestors, Jefferson has spent hours researching the treatment of enslaved people in the United States — the joy of learning about his family history is mixed with anger about how so many relatives were treated.

For Jefferson, it is important to highlight that his history, and African American history in general, is about more than slavery. One way in which his family makes him proud is that, from the Civil War until now, they have served in the military, a combined 150 years, he said. “As African Americans, we didn’t have heroes to look up to because they were never put in history books,” Jefferson said. “When I went to school and they mentioned the Civil War, they never mentioned African American soldiers.” In his research, Jefferson uncovered the names of nine family members who fought in the Civil War and 13 who served afterward as Buffalo Soldiers. Jefferson has discovered new Black heroes — his own ancestors. And he is making sure to share what he learns with family. Family response In sixth grade, Jefferson’s cousin, Patricia Lowe, remembers her teacher asking the class to go around and share where their ancestors came from. Many of the students started naming European countries. When it came time for her to answer, she said “My ancestors are from New Jersey.” The teacher chastised her, saying that New Jersey of course was not a country. The only place outside New Jersey Lowe could think of where her ancestors may have been from was Africa — she remembers feeling shame about that because at the time, the only depiction of Africans were images in the National Geographic. Growing up, Lowe did not know much of her family history. She knew her grandparents and extended family, but that was about it. She grew up in a small town in New Jersey. Walking to church every Sunday, she passed a few dozen graves — one of the names was Greenwood, which never meant anything to her as a child. About a decade ago, as Jefferson began his family research, he told her that Greenwood was their great-grandfather, a man who had fought in the Civil War.

“I actually started to cry, because I saw it every Sunday but I never asked anybody about it,” Lowe said. “I wish I could go back in time and tell (my sixth-grade teacher) that my ancestors came from Africa, but they came from other countries, as well. And that my great-grandfather fought in the Civil War.” The work Jefferson has done to uncover his family history made him realize how much of Black history is not taught in schools, even today, he said. He said he notices a pattern — as advancements are made, more obstacles are put in the way of successful people of color. With the research he has done, he is providing his own family with a new sense of pride for their past, by highlighting the familial accomplishments and reflecting on past traumas. “Black History Month means so much more to me now than it ever did before,” Lowe said. “Because to me, it was for other people. My heroes were Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King, baseball players — then suddenly, boom, there I am with my own relatives that I can hold up.”