BIOGRAPHY OF A BLACK COMMUNITY: 1920-1960 by Muriel Miller Branch
A trailblazer's tale continues with AMMD Pine Grove Project’s President, Sonja Branch-Wilson's, selection as an inaugural fellow for Preservation Virginia's African American Fellows Program. Out of 40 applicants, only three were chosen, including Sonja, whose trade name "SonietheConnectaholic" exemplifies her passion for connecting people and researching genealogical and community ties. This opportunity was a natural progression for her research project, "Funeral Programs: The Biography of a Black Community." Her investment in historic preservation began in childhood, fueled by a strong curiosity about her family's history and the stories passed down by the only set grandparents she knew, Frank Adolph and Missouri Virginia Miller. She gained a deeper understanding of her ancestors, their struggles, sacrifices, and the wisdom they left behind. However, as elders pass away, so do their stories, unless they are recorded. For over 20 years, Sonja has been doing genealogical research, focusing mainly on her ancestral home in Cumberland County, VA. Her research project, "Funeral Programs and Records: From the 1920s to the 1960s," examines and extrapolates biographical details from funeral programs and records to connect people to places within the Pine Grove Rural Historic District. Her project will be composed of three phases, with the first phase involving digitizing funeral programs and records from one of Cumberland's longest-serving Black Funeral homes, Bland-Reid Funeral Home. The data collected will be used to make place-specific connections to the surrounding ethnographic cultural landscape and historical sites. This will "revive the voices" of those who once lived, worked, worshiped, and were educated in the community. The first phase will use a combination of descriptive, historical, field research, and digital humanities methods. One of the end goals is to create storyboards for each person and to have these displays exhibited. at a museum.
*photos are courtesy of AMMD Family Association archives
