Books
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PROVE YOUR LINEAGE!
How Kathy's Inner Genealogist Can Help You
During her 60th year of life, the ancestors wouldn’t let Kathy sleep. They wanted their stories told NOW! They gave her a mandate to write ten books about various family lines, one book per year. Five of them won book awards from the Northern California Publishers and Authors, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, and the Sons & Daughters of the US Middle Passage. Her books may help you find your family history too; scan the QR code above to buy them on Amazon. Contact Kathy if your organization would like her to speak about genealogy or how to write your story.
Family Harambee! How to Discuss Potentially Challenging Discoveries in Your Family Tree: A Workbook.
Did your DNA results reveal you have an unknown sibling or parent, or did you learn you have ancestors from a different race? This new workbook helps families come to grips with potentially challenging discoveries involving your shared family history. This workbook is a follow-on to Kathy Lynne Marshall’s previous geneaology books that uncovered family secrets. User-friendly steps and easy-to-use forms help you convene a family event to discuss your ancestral lineage. Just fill in the blanks to customize the workbook for your event. There are also “lessons learned” that will help you schedule and conduct and genealogy trip.
Finding Daisy: From the Deep South to the Promised Land
Finding Marshalls: A Genealogy Trip with a Black and White Twist
Breaking bread with kin could lead to common ground, reconciling past wrongs and hurts, and forming new familial friendships—even when the topics of conversation are taboo. During her genealogical research, Kathy Marshall discovered White family members in Georgia, the descendants of the man who once owned Kathy’s ancestors. Her cousin, Amy, the slave owner’s 6th great granddaughter was aghast that her family had owned Black people. The two women set out for the back roads of Georgia, exploring cemeteries, courthouses and former plantations, meeting with other Black and White cousins along the way. Through wide-ranging and vulnerable conversations, they came to grips honestly with America, its weaknesses and its strengths.
The Mystery of Margaret Booker
Where are the women in history books? How did Margaret Booker, an enslaved Black woman with five children by the man who enslaved her, escape to freedom in the midst of the American Civil War? From West Virginia to Ohio by buckboard, Margaret’s extraordinary pluck and survival skills fueled her journey and gave her children a chance to grow up in the freedom she had only begun to taste. Once settled, Margaret found her newly freed father and built a business as a washerwoman in a thriving community of Black folks in Barnesville, Ohio. VIDEO OF 2022 JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION
Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Book Award Winner
The Marshall Legacy in Black & White
Why do we have no color, Grandma? In 1976, at age 19, Kathy Marshall’s innocent question began to untangle her family’s complicated racial history. Decades later, she researched her ancestors, first stitching bits of lore, then centering everything in facts gleaned from official historical documents. Inspired by the novel, Roots, she traveled to Georgia and discovered ancestors, both Black and White, the enslaved and slave owners. Her determination to unearth their stories is matched by what she learns: William Blount Marshall, a politician and White slave owner was a blood ancestor. Austin Marshall, a Pullman porter, put his son through medical school. Reverend Israel Smith’s congressional testimony helped force a voter recount in Alabama in 1870, confounding the KKK and others who didn’t want Blacks to vote. The legacies of her ancestors prove to Kathy that resilience knows no color.
Why do we have no color, Grandma? In 1976, at age 19, Kathy Marshall’s innocent question began to untangle her family’s complicated racial history. Decades later, she researched her ancestors, first stitching bits of lore, then centering everything in facts gleaned from official historical documents. Inspired by the novel, Roots, she traveled to Georgia and discovered ancestors, both Black and White, the enslaved and slave owners. Her determination to unearth their stories is matched by what she learns: William Blount Marshall, a politician and White slave owner was a blood ancestor. Austin Marshall, a Pullman porter, put his son through medical school. Reverend Israel Smith’s congressional testimony helped force a voter recount in Alabama in 1870, confounding the KKK and others who didn’t want Blacks to vote. The legacies of her ancestors prove to Kathy that resilience knows no color.
Finding Otho: The Search for Our Enslaved Ancestors
Kathy Lynne Marshall began an intensive search to learn the full truth about her lineage. She knew her maternal great-great-grandfather, Otho Williams, was born enslaved in 1834 in Maryland. But who were his parents and owner? What was his life was like almost 200 years ago? She read biographies of runaway slaves and researched stories about Maryland in the 1700s and 1800s. The Civil War Battle of Antietam, where 23,000 men died in one day, occurred within miles of her ancestral home. She sifted through hundreds of bills of sale, land deeds, probate and census records to learn where and how her mixed-race family lived. Kathy braids the reality of Otho’s life with facts and historical record. The man who emerges is one we will not soon forget.
The Ancestors Are Smiling!
This collection of true-life stories of eight Black Americans will have you laughing, weeping and sometimes gasping at their harrowing circumstances.
The stories begin in 1874 with Otho Sherman Williams, the son of enslaved Africans, a free spirit who ran away at age 15 to become a musician. In these pages, readers will also meet Reba who became a superstar at age 106. Charles was diagnosed with a death sentence in 1946, but who through a surprising turn of medical innovation, lived to 93. Other descendants of Otho Williams enchant and inform the reader about their unusual lives, lives made possible by the resilience of their ancestors.
Ken Anderson: Alias Special K
A poignant biography of Ken Anderson, Kathy Lynne Marshall’s husband, a fire captain whose remarkable life of service was cut short by a drunk driver.
The lineage of Ken’s Anderson and Matthews parents are populated with stories, photographs and genealogy documents.
