Member-only story
How the book ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ shapes my perspective of my 2x great-grandmothers
Over a year ago, I took on a daunting task of blogging about the lives of my eight 2x-great grandmothers (2gg’s) aka the grandmothers of my own grandparents I have four grandparents, they each had two and that equals eight. Technically, I also had three step-2x-great-grandmothers who were the second spouses of my male ancestors, but I will save their stories for another day.
I started this journey really with the intent to explore the realities of immigration in my own family. People were casually tossing around phases like “We are all immigrants” which ignored that fact that most Black Americans did not emigrate by choice to this land, but were enslaved and transported here to be sold and used as a tool in service of the economic empire others enjoyed. It also ignored the realities of the oppression of the Indigenous residents of this land, both during the early days of colonization and continuing through now. I was curious to explore the immigration stories of my own family — what would they reveal?
My 2x great-grandmother, Jennie Tarleton Remley Murray, was my most recent immigrant relative. And when I explored her story from departing Glasgow Scotland on her own in 1884 to her death in 1941 as a resident of a County Asylum, I was shocked to learn that she and her…
