We Are The Champions
CHERYL LEONORA SMITH
September 8th, 1946 - June 29th, 2021
I just lost a dear cousin of mine named Cheryl Smith. She was the first person to stress the importance of genealogy to me. Champion, Berry, Shannon - she drilled those names into my head, making sure I knew that people I encountered with those surnames are related to us. She couldn’t tell me how, but she had fond memories of Berry family reunions in Scitico, Connecticut, a place I couldn’t even begin to spell correctly until I saw it in writing several years later. Cheryl was a legendary dancer and educator, and we only grew close once we began working together, but it was an added plus that we were family. Unfortunately, I didn’t fully understand my relationship to these families until 2019, and I was not able to share this information with Cheryl before she passed. This post is dedicated to her memory.
My great grandfather Dock Emery Smith (1891-1972) in 1920 with his first four children: Luther William beside him, Arthur Mac in the background, Orice Lee in the foreground, and Christine on his lap.
Cheryl’s father Arthur Smith and my grandfather Orice Smith were brothers. Their only surviving sibling is the jazz pianist Emery Austin Smith. Uncle Emery and I are very close, but most of our conversations center around music. One day, I got him to explain that his grandmother, Sarah Smith, had a sister named Amanda Berry. I didn’t have Amanda in my records because she was born in 1885, in the midst of the vacuum created by the non-existent 1890 census. Amanda first appears on record in the 1900 census with her mother, Tarsa Andrews, and step-father Aaron Andrews. Sarah and Amanda’s biological father, Elijah Brown, most likely died around 1887. Amanda married Emory Berry and Sarah married Doc Emery Smith, connecting the Smiths and the Berrys forever. Sarah was 23 years older than Amanda, and already married when Amanda was born, so it’s a blessing that their descendants knew about each other.
Meet the Browns.
I also had a cousin named Leslie Shaw. He was a jazz singer, and came up in several conversations I had with musicians. He died in 1999, long before I started singing, but he was always described as a great man and a cousin of Emery Smith. Of course, any cousin of my grandfather’s full brother would be my cousin too, so I began researching Leslie’s ancestors to see how he fit in. I ended up at a familiar name: Champion. His 3x great-grandparents were James and Louisa Champion. Cousin Cheryl told me we were related to the Champions, and now I know that Uncle Emery had said it as well in reference to Leslie. When I called to ask him, he wasn’t sure what the relationship was, or even if it was real. Culturally, it’s very common to claim kinship with people that are close to you. Leslie’s grandmother Annie Hargrove moved to Hartford, Connecticut from Americus, Georgia in 1916, just like Emery’s parents. Annie’s sister was Bertha Shannon, the source of the Shannon relationship that Cheryl mentioned. The Smiths had been raised to always refer to the Champions as our cousins, no questions asked.
Cheryl Smith, Stanley Smith, and Leslie Shaw, with Emery Smith and Shelton Smith in the background.
Proof finally came once my mother took a DNA test. She matches multiple descendants of Louis Champion, the son of James and Louisa. I started to wonder if I was really related to Louis’ wife Sarah Ann Tatum, similar to how I turned out to be related to Emory Berry through his wife, Amanda Brown. My mother matches members of the Tatum family, but eventually I realized that’s because two of my aunts, Jennie and Julia Brown, married Tatums! They were both sisters of Sarah Smith and Amanda Berry. Julia also had children by her second husband, and the descendants of those children are shared matches between my mother and the Champions. Because those cousins are not Tatums, but still match Champions, it can be inferred that the Brown sisters are the blood connection to the Champions.
More evidence comes from the census records. In 1870, James and Louisa Champion are the direct neighbors of Elijah and Tarsa Brown. Even with all this information, I still was not convinced until I saw a census record for Sarah Brown Smith’s daughter Mary McNeil. In 1930, she was living in the home of Robert and Eugenia Jones, and she was listed as a cousin. Eugenia was the granddaughter of James and Louisa Champion, through their daughter Susan Nathan. With these records, I am confident in saying that Tarsa Brown was another child of James and Louisa Champion. Tarsa is also recorded as Tarzey, Tiser, and Emeline, so she isn’t very easy to research, but I am hopeful that there is a document that confirms her maiden name. *Edit- 12 hours after writing that sentence, I came across the Social Security Application Index listing for Tarsa’s son James Colonel Brown, who recorded his mother’s name as Tarzay Champion! Once I order the original form, I will add it to this post.*
We are the Champions.
Champion as a surname is fairly easy to research (unlike Brown and Smith) so I also searched for proof of my ancestors’ bondage. The slave owner was George Martin Champion, Sr. of Marion County, Georgia. When his father Jacob died in 1832, he left George one “negro boy” named James. This was in Kershaw County, South Carolina, but George soon moved to Stewart County, Georgia, where he was enumerated in the 1840 census. They lived in a neighborhood called Draneville, which was transferred to Marion County in 1847. This area, also called Jacksonville and the Cut Off District, is directly adjacent to Sumter County, where my family lived after emancipation. Next, I will try to figure out who might’ve been James’ parents. Hopefully, I will be able to share this information with all of my Champion cousins. Here is a descendant list for James and Louisa Champion:
James and Louisa Champion
I) Louis Champion 1841-1914
Dalton Champion 1863-1924
James Daniel Champion 1864-?
Eliza Champion 1866-?
Louis Champion 1867-?
Abraham Lincoln Champion 1869-?
William Champion 1870-?
Elizabeth Owens 1871-1940
Mollie Champion 1872-?
King Champion 1873-?
George Franklin Champion 1878-?
Andrew Jackson Champion 1880-1945
Cooper Champion 1881-?
Mattie Harris 1883-1929
Clarence Champion 1894-1987
II) Tarsa Emeline Brown Andrews 1845-?
Sarah Smith 1862-1943
Mary J. Harris Shorter 1866-1944
Emeline Brown 1874-?
James Colonel Brown 1875-?
Julia Tatum Davis Sturgess 1876-1954
Elijah Brown 1879-?
Jennie Tatum 1882-1947
Louis Brown 1883-1917
Amanda Berry 1885-1960
III) Susan Nathan 1850-1927
Eugenia Jones 1867-1939
Daniel Nathan 1870-?
William Franklin Nathan 1872-1922
Susie S. Wade 1874-1956
James W. Nathan 1877-?
IV) Maria Guerry 1854-?
