Ellen Fernandez-Sacco

Whew! Endogamy is a BIG THANG in my family. Uncles and nieces, first cousins...Learn all about it here.

Great conversation with @rediscoveringlatinidad !#CousinMarriage shapes families, economies, religion & local government, between the eighteenth & late 19c. Those dispensas hold all kinds of stories #eww

Finding Moses Williams: a virtual program, 19 Nov. 2025 Thrilled to announce i'll be presenting along with four other speakers at an upcoming virtual program. The Library Company of Philadelphia's Program in African American History and the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Art Museum are sponsoring the event. My twenty minute talk, "Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia, 1776-1830." presents the results of an archival journey.

Registration is open for Finding Moses Williams, a virtual event on 19 November 2025. Follow the link to sign up!

Thanks to @rrbbgenealogy.bsky.social, @efsacco.bsky.social, @shamrockgen.bsky.social & everyone who appeared on Season 6!🎙️

Vale Ancestors of Camuy: Estevan Vale Vale Ancestors of Camuy: Estevan Vale A few weeks ago, I saw a hint on my Ancestry family tree for Estevan Vale Caban. To my great surprise, it included a photograph! Could it be my great uncle?  After finally locating the origin of a foto for Estevan Vale in Ancestry's Passports database, I was struck by how much of a desire there is for an image of an ancestor.

Vale Ancestors of Camuy: Estevan Vale

Vale Ancestors of Camuy: Estevan Vale A few weeks ago, I saw a hint on my Ancestry family tree for Estevan Vale Caban. To my great surprise, it included a photograph! Could it be my great uncle?  After finally locating the origin of a foto for Estevan Vale in…

Celebrating My Phyllis Wheatley Award Recognition Thrilled to announce that I was awarded the Phyllis Wheatley Award for my article "Not Yet Completely Free"!

Celebrating My Phyllis Wheatley Award Recognition

Thrilled to announce that I was awarded the Phyllis Wheatley Award for my article "Not Yet Completely Free"!

So honored to receive the Phyllis Wheatley Award from the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage (SDUSMP), for my recent article "Not Yet Completely Free: Gradual Emancipation and the Family of Moses Williams, Philadelphia 1776-1833" AAHGS Journal v43! Hahom to many who helped!

So my read of this is that they are hoping this will go to SCOTUS and SCOTUS will rule in their favor by gutting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is to say that science funding is their trojan horse for legalizing resegregation in all facets of American life 🧪

I know it's one of our longest standing major global exports, but I would really like it if America would stop trying to find new and varied— or, hell, even our time-tested— ways of doing eugenics.

Mexican Artist’s Embroidery Unravels Global Gender Violence Crisis In a pop-up exhibition in New York City this week, Elina Chauvet bookends Women’s History Month with a crucial call to end the cycle.

In a new body of work on view in NYC this week, Elina Chauvet stitches a line between delicacy and brutality, using embroidery to approach the seeds of spousal abuse and subjugation that germinate into violence.

Fugitive Slave Acts - Definition, 1793 & 1850 | HISTORY The Fugitive Slave Acts, passed in 1793 and 1850, were federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people within the United States.

"They're disappearing people off the street how is this America??????"

www.history.com/articles/fug...

Appreciate the mention! It’s a 16 detail packed minute interview with Bernice Bennett on Williams’s family and what we can learn from their lives as part of the Free Black community in early 1800s Philadelphia. For more, see AAGHS Journal v43 Winter issue

From what I have been told, the owner had to resign in order for jer to by back the company. Of course, I will delete my dat if a Plecker buys the company. Holding steady for now.

Now's a good time to revisit our episode on the Fall of #23andMe, with genealogists @efsacco.bsky.social & @rrbbgenealogy.bsky.social: www.spreaker.com/episode/redi...

The lost story of the former slave who opened one of Providence’s first restaurants and elevated the oyster - The Boston Globe The shellfish was considered food for the poor before Emmanuel “Manno” Bernoon, an emancipated Black man, started serving them to the city’s elite in the 1700s.

The inventions of former slaves are often erased from text books and history books. Their ideas were stolen by white people who got rich off them all while they continue to portray Black people without knowledge www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/20/m...

Author chronicles creation of the racial gap between Blacks and whites BOOK REVIEW

The Plunder of Black America “concludes that the history and long shadow of racist plunder continues to be felt ‘in the form of poor health, fewer educational opportunities, lack of credit, food apartheid & spatial mismatch between housing & jobs”-Glenn Altschuler🙏🏽 www.flcourier.com/entertainmen...

🧬 We're back! 🔥Our Season 6 premiere tackles the Fall of #23andMe with genealogists @efsacco.bsky.social & @rrbbgenealogy.bsky.social! We cover DNA privacy concerns and how DNA helps many people of color trace families beyond recent generations.

Download, like, subscribe: rediscoveringlatinidad.com

What we saved from the federal government’s data purge Many federal datasets and webpages are no longer accessible in order to comply with Trump’s executive order recognizing only two genders.

Here are some of the government documents The 19th preserved amid the Trump-Musk purge:

*Maternal mortality data (CDC)
*Abortion and contraception data (CDC)
*Reports on violence against Native American women (DOJ)
*Research on mental health of girls and LGBTQ+ youth

19thnews.org/2025/02/fede...

Call to action: New York! Speak out on records access It's starting again. Every so often, records access -- particularly access to vital records -- goes on the chopping block. And access to these critical records for family h...

#genealogy #FamilyHistory #RecordAccess #NewYork
Upcoming deadline to speak out against new rules for Vital Records access in New York State (and NYC before consolidation). Act before February 11th! More details in next skeet.
www.legalgenealogist.com/2025/01/28/c...

You can read more about Irish-born William Payne in Margaret Seidler's book 'Payne-ful Business' payne-fulbusiness.com

Reviving Tsimshian Weaving With Threads of Community Colonial law forced many of our art practices into a deep slumber. Now, I am the first person in the US from my community to hold the skills to craft Chilkat dancing blankets.

Ruth Hallows is the first person in the United States from her urban Tsimshian community to hold the skills to craft Chilkat dancing blankets.

Beginning with DNA Painter - Legacy Family Tree Webinars Learn how the DNA Painter website can help decode your matches. In this introductory webinar, Jonny will explain how and why you would use the site’s main...

#DNA Painter with @dnapainter.bsky.social familytreewebinars.com/webinar/begi...

The Plunder of Black America: How the Racial Wealth Gap Was Made comes out in one week! It’s a story of several families over 400 years and how times changed but the theft continued. Please preorder now: yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

They have trashed valuable products your tax money paid for.

Trump Disbands President's Committee on Arts and Humanities The committee worked on projects including mobilizing artists to counter all forms of hate and the developing role of AI in arts and humanities.

Trump has disbanded the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. The group’s work was grounded in “the fundamental belief that creativity, diversity, and democracy are intrinsically bound, and that the arts and the humanities can be a powerful force for social change.”

All right y’all, so here’s the deal.

We’re struggling. Our monthly goal is to sell 1500 books. This month, we’ve sold less than 400.

We need your help. We HAVE to sell 1500 books by the end of Feb to keep our doors open. This was supposed to be a video, but Bluesky can't do 2 mins of video(Thread)

RFK’s racist blathering harkens back to the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia where Black people—told we were immune—were asked to care for the perishing and neglected sick. 10% of free Black Philadelphians died.

Artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Who Bore Witness to Native Life, Dies at 85 Her five-decade oeuvre is an intimate visual lexicon that bridges personal memories and joyful resilience.

Part of a generation of Indigenous artists who worked to “break the ‘buckskin ceiling,’” the late Jaune Quick-to-See Smith is known for merging humor and socio-political commentary with poetic depictions of Native American life.

The Anti-Apartheid Photographer Who Was Stranded in America Ernest Cole’s life story is an anti-colonialism epic, Cold War thriller, and a tragedy.

If you’re going to the MJK tribute at BAM tomorrow be sure to check out the ‘Ernest Cole: Lost and Found’ documentary about the South African photographer Ernest Cole. Scholar @johnedwinmason.bsky.social reviewed it for us last fall and it’s a must read. 📷