Tombstone Tuesday: Alan T. Busby

Adopted Maternal Ancestry

Not everyone you research is going to be related to you!  The saying that you make your own family is true.  I enjoy learning more about the individuals that my ancestors had friendships  and interacted with.  Our ancestor's lives are multifaceted, and when you study the lives of their neighbors, schoolmates  etc...you put them in 3D 4D format.  You begin to see them in their flesh...They become REAL!

I have a fascination with Alan T. Busby.  No, I am not related to him, however he was good friends of my Grand Uncle Osborne Ambrose Cully.  I inherited Osborne's photo album scrapbook that was dated in the 1918 & 1919's.  This scrapbook is a treasure.  Uncle Ossie labeled some of the photos, which expanded my research on some of the individuals that were his friends.

In a couple of photos', Uncle Ossie and Alan T Busby were on the campus of Storrs Agricultural College on a tractor and in the dorm room of Alan Busby.  Storrs Agricultural College has gone through various transitions through the years and it is known as the University of Connecticut.  After doing some research on Alan T. Busby from Worcester, Massachusetts, I discovered that Alan was the first African American student to graduate from the University of Connecticut.  The school itself named some residential dorms after him.

The Busby's were a well respected African American family in Worcester, MA.  My research on the Busby's and on the Clough family of Worcester has become a great part of interest to me as it pertains to the migration and the development of an African American Community in Worcester during and after Reconstruction.  By my learning more about the various families in this area, I am learning more about my own, as they were all interconnected.

I made a request for the headstone of Alan T. Busby on Find-a-grave and it was fulfilled by Carol Abbott.  Alan T. Busby was buried at the Hawthorn Memorial Gardens in Cole County, MO.

Find A GravePhoto fulfilled by Carol Abbott

Alan was born on December 12, 1895 in Worcester, Massachusetts and passed away on June 10, 1992 in Cole County, Missouri.  Alan was buried next to his second wife Edith O Busby.

As I begin to build the lives of my ancestors who migrated from New Bern, North Carolina to Worcester, MA, I will be studying the families that were a part of that migration and those that were in Worcester thirty or forty years before emancipation.  Since Worcester had an already established Free African American Community, I want to understand what their role was in helping the Newly Freed Blacks to becoming self-reliant individuals in their own community.