In observance of Black History Month, the program of South Plains Genealogical Society's meeting February 8 will focus on WikiTree’s U.S. Black Heritage project.
Presenter Randall Merriott is a Lubbock native who owns and operates Irrigation Dynamics in Lubbock. He became interested in genealogy through a series of notebooks "left to me by my paternal grandmother, Deola Wenner Merriott." Merriott reports "she did genealogy the old fashioned way, by writing letters and visiting courthouses and cemeteries."
As he researched his own ancestors who had settled in parts of Texas, New Mexico and Arkansas, Merriott found names he recognized among members of the Buffalo Soldiers who had traveled Texas and the South Plains. Merriott is the manager of a WikiTree entry on the "Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877" also known as the "Staked Plains Horror."
