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by Brenda K. Kinsler (Author), Charles Charlie Smith (Foreword by), Cynthia P. White (Author)
As I stood in the Door of No Return at the House of Slaves in Senegal, West Africa, the tears flowed relentlessly as I sought to reconcile what was done to my ancestors. The heaviness of what they/we endured weighed heavily upon me as I struggled to complete the writing of our family's history. The resolution came when I understood that the legacy of slavery thrust upon us did not define us; it is instead what was done to us. Many of our own ancestors as well as countless others from the Motherland resisted unto death rather than live as captives of faithless men. Our ancestors who survived the harrowing Trans-Atlantic voyage upon ships amid death and dread vowed inwardly that they would survive. From Whence We Came, the story of the African American Kinslers traces our genealogical roots from the leaving of Africa, our arrival in the South Carolina colony and the plantation of the German-Swiss Kinslers.Our presence was felt in the Civil War, and we earnestly hoped that the Emancipation Proclamation would free us. We survived the Reconstruction Era, Jim Crow, and segregation at its worst. Kinsler family members were on the frontlines in the fight for Voter and Civil Rights. We stood firm as a family then, and we remain so today. Our knowledge of who we are and upon whose shoulders we stand sustained us in the past, presently, and will continue to do so into the future. The inquisitiveness of my children about the origins of our family was the impetus for what became a consuming passion for discovering the genealogical roots of our Kinsler family. For more than twenty years, I have engaged in a mission both formal and informal, to gain every morsel of knowledge available about our Kinsler origins. For every bit of information revealed, a deeper hunger to know more, to connect the dots of our fragmented beginnings burned within me. This drive and thirst to know more led me on a journey from Florida to South Carolina and as far away as Utah to push the limits on seeking the means to legitimize our story.
