Vanessa WoodI am happy to announce the publication of my article “Becoming Holsey: The South Carolina Origins of the Holsey Family of Baltimore.”1 The story of the Holsey family is interwound with the major historical events of the 19th and 20th Centuries. The story starts with enslavement decades before the Civil War and follows the family northward to Baltimore. Like many of the stories I enjoy researching, the Holseys demonstrate a family’s connection that survive through time and separation.
I have been asked questions about an article. They are great questions, so I’ll share my answers.
Q. Are you related to the Holsey family?
A. No. I met a descendant of the Holsey family. They didn’t know their family history and I started looking at the family and found a rich and intriguing history that motivated me to keep digging on my own.
Q. How long did it take to research the Holseys?
A. Genealogies are not built in a day, or at least some kind of similar sentiment. I spent about five years researching the Holseys.
Q. What was your favorite part of your research?
A. I love any chance to do onsite, outdoor research. For genealogists, this is usually at cemeteries. The trip to the Arbutus Memorial Park in Baltimore was productive to confirm dates and burials of Holseys near one another. Seeing markers where the surname is sometimes spelled Halsey and sometimes Holsey, illustrated how a surname can change within the same generation.
Q. Didn’t the COVID pandemic affect your research?
A, Genealogical research during the pandemic was interesting. I used some of the “downtime” to attend the Boston University genealogical research course and earned a certificate. I had put the Holsey family to one side while I worked on other projects, but came back to working on them in 2021. It’s amazing what can be accomplished while masked!– I traveled south, I went to graveyards, I found county employees were less busy and more willing to help, at archives and university libraries student staff still had access and followed through with help.
Q. Is there anything you learned about the Holseys that didn’t make it into the article?
A. The answer is a resounding YES! Genealogical writing, at least for me, comes with multiple re-writes. I started writing from on perspective. When I needed to do a re-write I found I another branch of the Holsey line that better illustrated the Holseys’s connection with history and with one another. I’ve researched up and down multiple branches of the tree.
FEATURED IMAGE: Wikimedia (https://commons.wikimedia.org), “Chester County Courthouse (Built 1852), Chester, South Carolina.jpg,” rev. 15:44, 23 July 2009.
