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James Albert ALLEN, my great grandfather, was bom free in Rockingham county NC in 1859, to a woman named "Laney". When he was about six years old, Laney moved a few miles down the road to Guilford county NC to be near her family; there she married a man named TATUM, and started a new family with him. Although James loved his step father and half brothers, he always used the name ALLEN, in honor of his biological father. This was all I knew. No one still alive in our in our family had ever heard of Laney's maiden name, or knew where she came from. I had exhausted all the records I could think of looking for James ALLEN, but had been unsuccessful in locating his marriage record. Normally a parent's name would be listed on that. I ordered the Colored Marriage Records that were available for my counties from the Mormon Library in Salt Lake but somehow, in doing so, I managed to transpose two of the numbers. I was devastated when the wrong microfilm arrived, and for two weeks I pretended it wasn't even there. Finally one day, I decided that I was being pretty silly, and decided to look at the film to see if I would recognize any neighbors of my ancestors.
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Imagine my surprise and joy, when my great grandfather's name appeared as James TATUM. As it turned out, the Clerk of Court had filled out the application for him because my great grandfather didn't know how to read or write. Of course, everyone in the little town knew that he was one of the TATUM boys... it never occurred to the Clerk that his nam¢ was ALLEN! His marriage record was filed in the wrong alphabet. As a result of this piece of sheer luck, I have learned many things about the CONRAD family that I would never have learned, simply because we didn't know Laney's name. Laney was Mary Delana CONRAD. Her family had already been free since before 1800 in Marlboro county SC. I found them there in Deed Books for that year, selling their crops, farm animals and household utensils, apparently in preparation for a move. By 1810, they were next door in Chesteffield county SC; then by 1820 the father had died and they had moved to Anson county NC, just across the border. Some had moved next door, to Richmond county NC by 1830. Quite suddenly, they appeared in Guilford county NC by 1840, a good distance north. I have not yet learned how the family obtained their freedom so early, but I expect it will somehow connect to Charleston SC. One of the 1800 deeds for Marlboro county showed a CONRAD son receiving a horse as a gift '~for good will and esteem" from a man in Charleston named DeBRUHL. In several of the SC records, their surname is spelled KOONROD, which leads me to feel that perhaps their owner may have been German or Dutch, and spoke with an accent. But, if it had not been for serendipity, I would never have had a clue to any of this. We came from Washington DC to California in 1959, when my husband was offered a job working in the (then) new field of computer programming at System Development Corporation (SDC) in Santa Monica. The computers then really were the large roomsized contraption like the ones you see in old movies. Data was entered onto IBM cards, and we always had a box or two of those around for our kids to use in making Christmas-wreath crafts and such, when they were Cub Scouts and Brownies. The company encouraged field trips by such groups to "see" the computers, with their huge tape drives whirling inside their canes standing taller and larger than a man. It was great fun, and we fell in love with the place - though it took a little doing to adjust to the lack of seasons. Today's home PC has more information stored on it than those old computers ever did.
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