Continuing my suggested assignment from last week, as a daughter, granddaughter and devoted niece:
Begin recording short videos of loved ones as a way of preserving their memories. And don’t forget to keep things simple.
(Video from: Battle Family Archives)
By Donna Battle Pierce
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Our grandparents passed down family courage with scrapbooks and frames filled with poetry, essays, letters, photos, news clippings, and diplomas by the dozen. After our parents’ transition, we began passing family “courage markers” down to Gen-X, Gen-Y, Gen-Z and all, Today, I’m repeating a whisper from my childhood made by people who have now become ancestors, “When we share ancestors’ stories, we feel their smiles.”
I feel their smiles.
“Showing the many opportunities which Methuselah had for making a Christian record, and how by letting them pass unnoticed for nine hundred and sixty-nine years, he died and was lost.
The treatise is to saints and sinners as a warning against neglecting the opportunities that come to them daily for doing something to make the world better for their having lived in it, and clear their own pathway to eternal glory.”-H. Roger Williams
Ancestors are Smiling.
Contact me for permission to reprint Great Migration Library photos, or photos from the Battle Family Archives.
Thank you for joining me in the Great Migration Library. The doors are always open. Your chair is waiting. Ancestors are smiling down.
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Great Migration Library website
The Great Migration Library’s highlighted links often connect you to more information, books at AbeBooks, or other independent booksellers, available at the time of our posting. Note: Before selecting from a link, sort through available offerings for desired condition; new or used.
The Blighted Life of Methuselah by H. Roger Williams, MD (National Baptist Publishing Board, 1908).
Shape Them into Dreams by Ariel Williams Holloway (Exposition Press, 1955).
A Letter to Young Black Men by Eliot Battle (Tucker Publications, 1997).
Please note: I often reference Wikipedia.com as a second (and more diverse) source for dates, locations and other information.
Please join in my continued search for information regarding From the Plantation to the Doctor’s Office by Dr. Henry Roger Williams, published in the mid-1920s. Contact this great-granddaughter with any tips (from libraries, media archives, elders and more — including psychic readers).
© 2026 Donna Battle Pierce and Great-Migrations.com. All photo rights reserved by Battle Family Archives.
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