Ealy Family Heritage, Documenting Our Legacy is a fascinating body of work that not only documents the Ealy Family's history back to the 1700s, but it also captures the history of the Leake County, Mississippi communities where the family's presence dates back to circa 1835. That was when the family patriarch, Robert "Big Bob" Ealy, was transported to central Mississippi from Nash County, North Carolina as an enslaved young man. His enslaver, William "Billy" Eley, used him as a breeder. With his wife Jane Parrott, Big Bob Ealy had 12 children. Three additional children have been found. Because of his forced task of slave breeding, more will likely be unearthed in the future due to DNA technology. This first volume documents over 3,500 descendants. The family ancestral homes are the Lena and Tuscola communities of Leake County, but many descendants also resided and still live in Leake, Scott, Rankin, Hinds, and Madison County, Mississippi. During the 20th Century Great Migration, scores of Ealys migrated to Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Las Vegas, and other points North and West. Ealy Family Heritage, Documenting Our Legacy highlights four key areas - family, community, church, and school. These topics help to provide a comprehensive history of the family. A family history is more than just names, places, and dates. That's boring. However, this book is like no other family publication because it is chockfull of pictures, stories, and memories from family elders and others about the family, the communities, the churches, and the early schools for African Americans in southern Leake County. Oral history is a major part of family history research, as it gives life to the deceased ancestors. Ealy Family Heritage, Documenting Our Legacy was authored by Melvin J. Collier, a renowned genealogy researcher and author of two genealogical books, Mississippi to Africa, A Journey of Discovery and 150 Years Later, Broken Ties Mended. Collier is a great great grandson of Big Bob & Jane Ealy. He first heard his paternal grandmother, the late Mrs. Willie Ealy Collier, utter Big Bob's name from her lips when he was a teenager. Consequently, he began his genealogy research of the Ealy Family in 1993, nearly three years after his grandmother's passing, recalling much of the information she relayed to him. He has currently traced the Ealy Family's history back to Big Bob's mother, Annie, who was born circa 1795. Her name was given to numerous descendants. Collier discovered an unfortunate saga that involved the "ownership" of Annie and three of her children. They were the subject of an 1832 North Carolina court case, William Hunt vs. Edwin Bass et al, 17 N.C. 292, which went all the way to the North Carolina Supreme Court. Collier's research has also taken Jane Parrott's family history back to the 1700s to Lunenburg County and Brunswick County, Virginia. He has also uncovered autosomal DNA evidence of the family's African roots. In Ealy Family Heritage, Documenting Our Legacy, Collier uniquely combines the process of genealogy research with story-telling. He discloses how he researched the enslaved ancestors of Big Bob and Jane, while still telling the stories of their lives and their descendants' lives during slavery and afterwards. This also makes this book a great publication for even non-descendants who are interested in African American genealogy research. This book can also serve as a great template on how to organize and write a family history book. Whether if one is an Ealy descendant or not, this book is a great educational resource. Questions can be sent to [email protected].

Mississippi to Africa captures Collier's fourteen-year journey in unearthing the buried history of his maternal grandmother's family - a journey that took him back seven generations, from northern Mississippi to the Piedmont hills of South Carolina, and even back to a specific people and region in West Africa where his ancestry undoubtedly began. Trekking the paths of his ancestors and their displaced relatives before Emancipation (1863), this emotion-filled journey traversed down an intricate paper trail of federal, state, and local records, other public records, and oral histories, presented in a narrative style to inspire, entice, and propel readers into the fascinating world of genealogy and historical discoveries. Collier also uncovered the ways in which his ancestors ingeniously retained aspects of their African heritage. DNA technology confirmed his research findings and verified ancestral ties. The reader will gain many research tips and techniques along the journey.

What if God’s love were like the sun, constant and unchanging? What if one day you realized nothing could take that away? Firebird is a bright orange baby oriole who just loves the sunshine. But whenever a storm blows in, he frets and asks Mama why God allows the rain to take the sun away. When Firebird is finally old enough, his mother gently instructs him to fly up through the thunder and lightning to see what’s on the other side. It’s a rough flight, and just when he’s about to give up, Firebird rises above the storm to discover the sun shining where it always had been. God never lets the storm take the sun away. With that truth in his heart, Firebird continues to bask in the sunshine, but just as important, he learns to rejoice in the rain. Firebird is a children’s book that parallels the life of Samantha Crawford, a storybook artist in the inspiring new film Unconditional (scheduled for a theatrical launch in fall 2012) who has lost sight of God’s love.

150 Years Later is a unique story of DISCOVERY, TRIUMPH, and CELEBRATION. No other book unravels a historical mystery that led to an unprecedented family reunion. This book takes readers on a mouth-dropping quest that mended ties that were broken during slavery. In 1859 near Abbeville, South Carolina, 12-year-old Bill Reed was forever separated from his family. His father was sold away, and his mother, grandmother, and other family members were all taken away from the state soon afterwards. Waving goodbye to them, young Bill would never lay eyes on them ever again. He left South Carolina in 1866, shortly after he was emancipated, and moved to northern Mississippi after he was told that Mississippi was the "land of milk and honey with fat pigs running around with apples in their mouths." He died near Senatobia in 1937, at the age of 91, never learning that his family had been within 75 miles away from him, also in northern Mississippi. 150 Years Later is a riveting story of discovery that chronicles Collier's relentless journey of unearthing his great-grandfather Bill's mysterious history, finding his family's whereabouts and their living descendants, and breaking down barriers to mend the broken ties in an emotional reunion in 2009 - 150 years later. The involuntary break-up of families during slavery due to selling and other means was very common. However, the discovery of those lost branches and the reuniting of the descendants after 150 years is uncommon. This is what makes 150 Years Later very captivating and uplifting.

This is the first comprehensive overview on Iron Age urbanism south and north of the Alps.

This long-awaited biography provides a fascinating and comprehensive picture of García Márquez's life up to the publication of his classic 100 Years of Solitude. Based on nearly a decade of research, this biographical study sheds new light on the life and works of the Nobel Laureate, father of magical realism, and bestselling author in the history of the Spanish language. As García Márquez's impact endures on well into his ninth decade, Stavans's keen insights constitute the definitive re-appraisal of the literary giant's life and corpus. The later part of his life will be covered in a second book.