Shaw Family Descendants: Piecing History Together, Seeking Other Descendants of 435 Freedman Who Migrated from South Carolina to Falls Co. in 1867
Last week’s article announced plans for a monument to be installed in Marlin that will honor and recognize the 435 freedmen, women and children who made the journey from Kingstree, South Carolina to Falls County, Texas in 1867.
This week, I want to share more context about how this history became known, and the women who continue working to connect descendants to their ancestors.
Sharon Styles of California and Angela Shaw Ross of New Mexico are cousins, a relation they discovered through genealogical research many years ago. Styles has been doing genealogical research for nearly two decades, starting with her own then expanding to help build family trees for others.
“We’ve been working on our Shaw ancestors since 2008, way back there, off and on,” Styles said. “So we knew about the website (Black Pearls of Genealogy) that David Anthony Taylor had, but the website is not what revealed our ancestry to us, we more or less revealed our ancestry to him. All of the information on the website regarding Marlin, the timeline, the history, and so forth is information that myself or Angie supplied to David. I remember sitting at the computer transcribing those names on that list, all 435 names in cursive. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it because it was our history.”
Styles had planned a visit the new International African American Museum (IAAM) on Gadsden’s Wharf in 2023, and sent a request to their genealogy center explaining that she was trying to find records on her Shaw family who left South Carolina in 1867 or so and came to Marlin, Texas. Dr. Shelley Murphy shared her request with a group that meets online called the Freedmen’s Friday, and one of the ladies in the group, Karen Taylor, found the 11-page Freedmen’s Bureau Transportation Request, listing the 435 freed people who journeyed from South Carolina to Texas.
“David Anthony Taylor also attends the Freemen’s Friday meetings every week and he had done memorials at a couple of other locations. He reached out to one of the other ladies in the group to say ‘I’d like to put one of these monuments in Kingstree.’ She contacted me and Angie and some other people who work on this and we were like ‘that’s a wonderful idea, great!’” Styles, Ross and others worked hard to plan a ceremony for the monument in Kingstree, and continued doing their own genealogical research all the while. Styles found military records for Ross’s great great grandfather, who had fought in the Civil War, and he stated in his records he had a brother in South Carolina that didn’t come to Texas.
“My whole focus throughout these years was trying to find the family of Duke Tisdale, because the Tisdale and Shaw name actually go together but that’s another story,” Ross said. “I had started my research trying to find that DNA family connection to South Carolina because I know I have an uncle that passed away there. It was just luck of the draw that I found Harold Tisdale, and guess what? His father was still alive at 100 years old.”
Despite the COVID pandemic, Styles and Ross caught planes to Kingstree to meet Tisdale, where DNA testing confirmed an official family connection. In May of 2025, the ladies realized the fruits of their labor at the unveiling ceremony in Kingstree. Ross noted the gravity and importance of the event and did not waste an opportunity to seek more familial connections.
“When we did our little presentation to the family, I opened my mouth and asked people in the audience ‘are you my cousin?’ and a lot of folks came up to me!” Ross said with a laugh. “Sharon and I travel with DNA kits, and there was an older lady in the audience who came up to me and got DNA tested and she became a positive family member that we can include too. We know the ties between Falls County Texas and Williamsburg County South Carolina, we’ve made that jump and know that the research that we’re doing is important.”
The Kingstree monument ceremony was beautiful and moving, according to the cousins. They thanked Taylor for his efforts, and he proposed building a sister monument in Marlin.
“When he said let’s put one just like it in Marlin, sort of the beginning and the end of that journey, it was wonderful for us,” Styles said. “When we were in Marlin in July (2025) for the Shaw Family Reunion, we presented the idea to our family and they were excited to be involved in it and we’ve been working on it since then.”
Using the document found by Karen Taylor, Ross found the shipping order, the name of the steamer they were on, and newspaper clippings confirming their arrival and departure.
“You have to get in rabbit holes when you’re doing this kind of work,” she explained. “Of the 50+ Shaw names on the list, Sharon had discovered at least 1012 of those families, developed family trees and knows who they belong to. The Shaws are already pretty much developed and we know who we are, but now our quest is to find some of those other names. We want to find other living descendants because the monument is going to be coming this summer, and this is a community event. We know for a fact that other families come to Marlin yearly for family reunions, so this monument is going to represent a whole community, not just the Shaws. We’re over the moon excited about it but we want other families to know that we are looking for them.”
Styles explained the process of “reverse genealogy”; building family trees based on records and deeper research than is usually required of building one’s own family tree with help through living familial relations.
“We started building trees on ancestry.com, and we’d start with, let’s say, Mr. Pendergrass, who ended up in Bastrop County. We build in him and his wife, and we go through the 1870 census and put in everything we can find from 1870, then we go to the 1880 Census and find him there, document whatever information we can. We then start tracking their children. At some point, they’re going to pass away, but they’ve got five children so we start following them and finding where they live. They might have started in Bastrop County but moved to El Paso, or some moved to California, so yes, we have been cracking those families and we have reached out to some living descendants of those people who started on the 435 and they’re excited to hear from us.”
In future editions of the Marlin Democrat, you will see guest articles by Styles and Ross on genealogical topics, alternating with groupings of names from the travel manifest. If you see a name that you recognize or know to be an ancestor, please be encouraged to contact Styles and Ross. They are truly generous with their time and hope to help build many more family trees connecting the brave freedmen, women and children who came to Texas for better lives to their descendants. Further, if you are a genealogical researcher yourself, amateur or otherwise, Styles and Ross would likely be thrilled to accept your assistance on this project benefitting Marlin, Falls County, and beyond.
Sharon Styles can be reached at honey_be_2001@yahoo. com or 916-275-8084. Angela Shaw Ross can be reached at sharon.kay@sbcglobal.net or 505-414-0404.