{"id":11176,"date":"2024-02-15T14:52:21","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T14:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=11176"},"modified":"2024-02-15T14:52:21","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T14:52:21","slug":"shirley-green-a-gifted-historian-tells-a-great-american-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/15\/shirley-green-a-gifted-historian-tells-a-great-american-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Shirley Green: A Gifted Historian Tells a Great American Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Shirley Green<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Fletcher Word<\/strong>
\nThe Truth Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are going to do history, you need to do history right,\u201d said Shirley Green, PhD, historian and author of a new book, Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color of Independence.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Green was doing this particular history and doing it right, she discovered things about her own family\u2019s history that delighted her, to be sure. Some degree of shock, however, was mixed in with that delight.<\/p>\n

Green has had numerous accomplishments in her life. A former police officer, she was Toledo\u2019s first ever female police lieutenant. She served as the City Safety Director during the Mayor Mike Bell administration. She has also earned a doctor of philosophy degree in history from Bowling Green State University and is currently an adjunct professor of history at the University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University<\/p>\n

Now, above all, she is an historian and an author, someone who has drawn on her own family\u2019s history and oral tradition to pen a work about the experiences of an African American family that was free well before the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n

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Benjamin Franklin, WWII veteran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Frank brothers \u2013 William and Ben \u2013 are Green\u2019s ancestors on her mother\u2019s side. The brothers fought in the Revolutionary War, as Green was to discover, with a Rhode Island regiment. Eventually, Green\u2019s mother wound up in Ohio, but she knew from the older generation that the family had roots, not only in Rhode Island, but also in Nova Scotia, Canada.<\/p>\n

Green had always assumed, as had her mother and aunt, that her Nova Scotia ancestors had arrived in Canada after escaping from slavery. There are in fact a number of Canadian cities and towns where settlements for former enslaved people were established. Those fleeing slavery were prompted to cross the border especially after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which enabled slave owners and bounty hunters to chase their slaves anywhere in the U.S. and imposed criminal penalties against those helping them.<\/p>\n

Ontario towns such as London, Chatham, North Buxton, Windsor and Toronto established such settlements. So, it was natural to assume that the Black folks in Nova Scotia also ended up there as a result of the mid-19th <\/sup>century flight.<\/p>\n

Green knew of her Nova Scotia connections primarily because of Thomas Henry Franklin, her great grandfather, himself a Nova Scotian. Franklin had the opportunity to pass along the tale of the family\u2019s travels \u2013 in part, the role that two brothers, William and Ben Frank, played in those travels in the late 18th<\/sup> century \u2013 to a local Nova Scotia historian in the late 1920\u2019s when Franklin was in his 70s.<\/p>\n

Through oral tradition, however, Franklin passed down even more information to descendants about the route the family\u2019s ancestors had taken to end up in Nova Scotia but, as Green would eventually learn, Franklin passed down considerably more to the male side of the line.<\/p>\n

Green knew that Franklin\u2019s son, her grandfather, left Nova Scotia in the early 1900s for New York looking for a better life, eventually serving in the Army during World War I and fathered two sons who served in WWII. His youngest daughter, Sarah, Green\u2019s mother, attended Wilberforce College and settled in Ohio.<\/p>\n

As Green writes: \u201cThe bigger story, passed down only through male members of the family, described how the first member of the Franklin family came to America from Africa by way of Haiti, an enslaved man who eventually gained his freedom. Two of his descendants \u2013 two freeborn brothers with the last name of Frank \u2013 fought together in the \u201cBlack Regiment\u201d from Rhode Island of the Continental army during the American Revolution. It was a story about a manly struggle for liberty and acts of freedom. It was a wonderful story that pulsed with pride in the past\u201d<\/p>\n

However, as Green herself would discover, this \u201cbigger story\u201d was not the complete story. And the complete story, when she finally uncovered it, would be a complete surprise.<\/p>\n

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John William Franklin Sr, Green’s grandfather<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Green was in class working on her doctorate in 2011 at the University of Toledo taking a course on African American history when Professor Nikki M. Taylor mentioned that Black migration to Nova Scotia was a result of loyalty to the British during the Revolution not flight during the time of the Underground Railroad.<\/p>\n

Green went back to her mother, who went back to her sister and finally to a brother, Green\u2019s uncle, who told the story of two brothers who fought in the Continental Army. The mystery remained. How did part of the family end up in Nova Scotia \u2026 and when?<\/p>\n

Green\u2019s task, as she saw it, was to connect the two stories as she delved into her family background. She did that and more. She discovered how and why the family of the two Frank brothers ended up in both Rhode Island and Nove Scotia. She also managed to uncover ancestors that predated the Franklin brothers by almost a century.<\/p>\n

First, Green delved into vital, census, marriage and military records from Rhode Island data; she later found settlement records in Nova Scotia. She confirmed that the Frank brothers, William and Ben, were free men well before the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

Rufus Frank, a veteran of the French and Indian War, established a household in Rhode Island in the mid 1700s and was the father of William and Ben. William and Ben, carrying on the tradition, enlisted in the First Rhode Island Regiment of the Continental army. Green was able to detail quite extensively how the First Rhode Island Regiment, and the Frank brothers, spent the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n

The conditions were brutal in many ways. Underfed, poorly outfitted and not often paid, the regiment experienced a large number of desertions as soldiers left to return to their farms or to join the British side. The Rhode Island Regiment spent that brutal winter of 1777-78 in Valley Forge, the third and harshest of the eight winter encampments of the war. Of the 12,000 soldiers George Washington led into the encampment in December 1777, an estimated 1,700 to 2,000 died from disease, probably exacerbated by malnutrition.<\/p>\n

\"\"
John William Franklin, WWII veteran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe compiled service records housed at the National Archives and the military records at the Rhode Island State Archives and Rhode Island Historical Society provided the first clues to solving the mystery of the Canadian Franklins\u2019 lineage,\u201d writes Green.<\/p>\n

William Frank served honorably for a total of six years and after the war returned to Rhode Island. Ben Frank, on the other hand, served for only three years \u2026 then deserted.<\/p>\n

Ben headed for British lines and after the war, left the United States, along with other British loyalists \u2013 soldiers and civilians, Black and white \u2013 and arrived in Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n

Green\u2019s discovery of the real story, \u201cthe uncomfortable part,\u201d was not easily accepted by her family.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey scrutinized my findings, questioning me and providing guidance to make sure I was now getting the \u2018real\u2019 story.\u201d<\/p>\n

The real story, while it may have been uncomfortable, turned out to be fascinating, much more fascinating than it would have been if there had only been one branch on the family tree.<\/p>\n

Green\u2019s work was far from complete with that discovery, however. Her additional research into Rhode Island documents took her further back in time and unveiled an ancestor of Rufus Frank known as Frank Nigro who, by 1694, \u201chad established himself on Providence, the hometown of Rufus Frank.\u201d Frank Nigro would gain his freedom a few years later and the racial identifier \u201cNigro\u201d would be dropped. He became \u201ca purchaser of land; was a landowner who leveraged his property for money \u2026\u201d among other documented events. This industriousness, writes Green, set the example for the Frank men who would follow him.<\/p>\n

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Thomas Henry Franklin, Green’s great grandfather<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Using oral tradition, exhaustive documentary research and genealogical science (DNA), Green has compiled her family\u2019s history that is both compellingly interesting and convincingly accurate. The two brothers\u2019 \u2013 William and Ben Frank – divergent paths during the American Revolution and the Canadian side of the family\u2019s re-entry to the States in the early 1900s \u2013 John William Franklin, Sr \u2013 present an almost unique tale for a Black family in this hemisphere. Only 10 percent of African American families can trace their roots to before the Civil War, according to data compiled by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates (Finding Your Roots<\/em>, season 1)<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this book, I recount the lives of the Frank\/Franklin families from the 1750s until the 1830s. I show how Frank men used their military service to assert their manhood, gain standing in their community, and help to create free African American and African Canadian communities,\u201d writes Green in the book\u2019s introduction.<\/p>\n

Green has more history to delve into. Next up is a look at the story of Albert King, the first Black Toledo police officer in the late 19th<\/sup> century. Green will be working with the African American Police League to honor King by placing a marker at the tomb in Toledo where he and his wife, their three daughters, a sister in law and a \u201cboarder\u201d (whose identity is not quite certain yet) are buried.<\/p>\n

In addition, she will be quite involved in the approaching ceremonies for America\u2019s 250 anniversary in 2026 \u2013 the semiquincentennial. In the next few months she will be speaking to a group in the Hudson River Valley that is planning a series of activities.<\/p>\n

Such events mean that in the future Green will undoubtedly be enlightening readers with so many more fascinating lessons from history.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Fletcher Word The Truth Editor \u201cIf you are going to do history, you need to do history right,\u201d said Shirley Green, PhD, historian and author of a new book, Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color of Independence. When Green was doing this particular history and doing it right, she discovered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[216],"class_list":["post-11176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headline","category-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11184,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11176\/revisions\/11184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11176"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=11176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}