Finding My Place on the Family Tree

What begins as childhood curiosity at family reunions grows into a deeper search for connection—one that ultimately brings Adrian back to his roots and the answers he had been seeking all along.

The seed must have been planted during those family reunions. The bug’s bite was definitely during one of them.

We would spend about a week in the Chapel Hill–Carrboro area of Orange County, North Carolina, and our visit would overlap with the family reunion weekend in early August. All I knew was that we had to travel a little more than an hour south into Moore County—“into the country”—passing through the smallest towns I had ever known. Some were so small that the saying “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it” rang true.

Eventually, we arrived at the only brick building for about 20 miles. We would turn onto a dirt road, bouncing along for about 250 yards, and end up at a cul-de-sac that served as the small wooden chapel’s parking lot: Rieves AME Zion Chapel. The sparsely tree-filled field surrounding two sides of the chapel held the cemetery, where my paternal ancestors and relatives were interred. On the open-field side of the chapel, additional parking was available. Closer to the chapel, tables held a buffet of food and drinks, with lawn chairs and blankets spread out nearby.

We would walk the cemetery first, stop for an invocation, and then the greetings and conversations would begin.

Questions Without Answers

As with any reunion, we were introduced to familiar faces we mostly saw only at these events. Of course, there were also new faces and names. After the greetings and my parents’ brief conversations with them, my brother or I would inevitably ask, “How are we related to so-and-so?” The standard response would follow: “They’re your cousin,” or maybe, “They’re XYZ’s cousin, so they’re your relative too.”

These answers never quite satisfied me. I needed details—lines, connections. I didn’t know the words for it then, but I needed a tree.

Now I know the infection began back then. It simply hibernated, taking its time to germinate.

What Was Lost

I didn’t know about the 1981 forest fire that burned down the chapel and left the area bare for decades. The reunions moved from this isolated place to nearby parks and recreation sites. I assumed it was due to the travel, and that as more family members aged, the remoteness became less desirable. The chapel was never rebuilt on the original site (a new chapel was built a few miles north, just across the county line in Chatham County). By the early 2000s, the reunions had become too sporadic to continue.

Returning to the Roots

I attended the National Genealogical Society conference in 2017, held in Raleigh, North Carolina, and made a point of visiting Rieves Chapel. As part of the conference activities, I had the opportunity to conduct research at the archives at UNC–Chapel Hill. There, I found an article about the first Foushee Family Reunion, held in the summer of 1941 at the old homeplace, Rieves Chapel.

I had not returned to the site on that trip—it was only a side excursion, and yes, I got lost on my first attempt to find it. I did make it there the next day, and arriving felt like being replanted—grafted back onto my tree. I was amazed to see that there had been burials within the last three years. I was struck by the familiar names and relationships I could now connect through my research.

At last, I am satisfactorily answering the ever-asked question: “How are they related to us?”