Episode 3: Where the Tide Ebbs and Flows

We met for the first time at her place in East Baltimore. It was a 45-minute drive, but more of a 3-year meeting in the making. We met initially through ancestry.com, but then migrated to Facebook friends. It was on Facebook that I saw a glimpse of her artistic and conscious inclinations. So, when we finally met in October 2018, there was a high level of excitement and nervousness about meeting someone new. She was also one of my first official in-home interviews, so I wondered if my questions were right, if there were something to get at in the connection of our stories. The meeting didn’t disappoint. Indeed, she was a relative through the Lawson branch of my family. Her 3rd-great grandmother and my 3rd great-grandmother were sisters. Although genealogy was somewhat new to her, she had felt the emotional, spiritual and intellectual benefits of it. She felt directly connected to her grandfather, Onan Lawson, whom she had never met. She told me that should she start a business it would bear his name, Onan.

Terita Russell holds an obituary of her grandmother, Mattie Lawson.

Terita’s grandfather, Onan Lawson (center) and his brothers, her two great-uncles.