Once Freed From Slavery, Newly Freed From Oblivion

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 By Rick Geffken
RED BANK – When African-Americans trace their ancestry they are often confounded by lack of documentation. Rare is the family that can trace and name an enslaved forbearer. Rarer still is finding a picture of the slave herself. Charles Lawson of Red Bank is one of the lucky ones. Thrice lucky, actually.
A man of wide-ranging interests, Lawson is the head of the African-American Special Interest Group of the Monmouth County Genealogy Society (MCGS). As a young man just out of Keyport High School, he joined the U.S. Navy in 1968, serving on the aircraft carrier Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Traveling the world became a lifelong love, one that Lawson still indulges with jaunts to Europe and the Caribbean.
After his Navy stint Lawson was a New York City restaurant chef, and worked behind the camera at WCBS News. Later, and closer to home, he was on the staff of the Procurement Office at the now-decommissioned Fort Monmouth in Eatontown.

Along the way, Lawson found himself attracted to the theater. His imposing figure and deep bass voice earned him featured roles in over 25 local productions, most often musicals. He was a soloist with the Monmouth Civic Chorus and appeared in shows with the late Felix Molzer, founder of the Monmouth Conservatory of Music. Lawson favors opera and operettas, and has sung in “Mephistopheles,” “L’ enfance du Christ,” and Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Gondoliers.” Lawson has performed all over New Jersey in his favorite role as Balthazar, the black Wiseman in “Amahl and the Night Visitors.”
Lawson also took part in any number of theatrical productions at Brookdale Community College. He worked there with Mary Ann Schulz, stage manager at Brookdale’s theater. Their ensuing friendship led to conversations about genealogy and Schulz’s involvement with the MCGS. Lawson joined and was soon taking the lead in one of the society’s special interest groups. It fit perfectly with the African-American Historical Ministry at Calvary Baptist Church in Red Bank, with which Lawson was already involved.
Though Lawson’s most immediate family was from Virginia, he knew that some others had been slaves in North Carolina. The Lawson genealogy is obscured, like that of so many other African-American families, by lack of written records, forced separations by slave holders, and the passage of time.
In August, Lawson’s cousin, Byron Shafer, attended a family reunion in Newtown, Virginia. Byron’s wife’s great-great-grandmother, Gertrude Lawson, had married James Taylor in 1876.  The Taylor Reunion attending families had set aside a table for old family documents and pictures. Among those artifacts, Shafer found one of Lollah Lawson, Lawson’ great-great grandmother who was once enslaved in North Carolina. The picture was probably taken between 1870-1880, photographer unknown. No one in the New Jersey branch of the family had ever seen an image of their freed progenitor.
A few weeks after this exciting discovery, another important family photo showed up in Lawson’s email. His niece, Claudia Reels of Keyport, sent him a photograph of his paternal great-grandfather, George W. Pollard. The story of how this precious picture was saved is equally eerie.
The picture once hung in an oval frame in George Pollard’s daughter’s home in Keyport. When that generation of Pollards passed away in the 1950s, another cousin bought their home and placed old wall hangings and other bric-a-brac in the home’s root cellar. A cellar flood dampened and destroyed most of these things years later. During the subsequent cleanup, the old pictures were put out for trash pickup. Lawson’ sister, Dolores, who just happened to pass by, noticed the pictures and retrieved her grandfather’s damaged image. But, unbelievably, it was almost lost again.
After Dolores got home with the still-wet George Pollard picture, she placed it under her bed, temporarily she thought, to let it dry out. And then promptly forgot about it. For the next 15 years, their grandfather’s picture lay undisturbed just below where Dolores slept. After hearing about the family reunion from Lawson, Dolores recalled the picture. Though it was ripped and water-damaged, and hastily repaired with tape once, it is still a recognizable likeness of George Pollard. A little TLC will restore it.
And, to keep the amazing lucky streak going, in early September another Pollard relative in Virginia sent Lawson a picture of George Pollard Jr. If nothing else, these happenstances illustrate what can happen during genealogical research – thank you, Louis Gates Jr. When memories are jogged, relatives often recall past family parties and celebrations. Serendipitously, pictures sometimes re-emerge, and families are drawn closer, sharing their common heritage.
Lawson’s enthusiasm, if not his personal discovery stories, have inspired almost a dozen other Calvary Baptist Church members to search their homes and query their relatives about old family pictures.