I am beginning my journey on finding my past!  Over the last two years, I have been to Africa 5 times.  Three times to Equatorial Guinea for work, once to Morocco for vacation and once to South Africa on a mission trip.  As a result of these trips, I have been more interested in finding my roots back to Africa.  Here is the status of my journey:

I am from New Roads La. and have started doing my family tree on my grandmother's side. I have also taken the DNA test with African ancestry on my maternal side and will get my results in the next week or so. I am have been able to find my relatives using ancestry.com up to the 1900 Census. I am now looking for the birth record of my great great-grandmother (Victoria Jeanpierre) in the Catholic records. Per the census records, she was born somewhere between 1868-1878. I am now at the point of visually reviewing all of the 1880 Census for Pointe Coupee Parish (county) to find her. In the 1900 Census it listed she and her two brothers together. They were all in their 30's at that time. No indication of their parents could be pick up from the names around them. My first goal is to connect the information I will receive from the DNA testing to the information I find in Louisiana and hopefully find the ship that brought my maternal side to the states. I have a book written by Gwendolyn Hall that gives much detail information about the slaves in the parish and where they were brought from. I have also been in contact with an archivist in the parish, Brian Costello, who has written a number of books about it. I received the books from Hall and Costello this week and will be reading to look for more information about the events in the parish. My journey started about two months ago after coming back from a three week mission trip to South Africa.

If anyone has any information on the Jeanpierre group in Pointe Coupee Parish, let me know.  I will of course post updates as I go along this journey.