Every day I get the privilege to serve as an ancestral ambassador for my loving + wise + well ancestors.
They bless me with their love, presence, power, protection, wisdom, and life stories.
I receive them with gratitude and pour libations in their honor through my creativity.
I created this digital collage entitled “Pouring Libations to Great-Great-Grandmother Sarah Ann Montgomery Jones’ Lineage and Legacy.” It represents sacred generational wealth!!!
While reading her death certificate and other documents on ancestry.com, I learned that Great-Great-Grandmother Sarah was born the daughter of Mary Jane Collins Montgomery Washington and William John Montgomery on July 14, 1857, in Helena, Arkansas.
Her mother Mary Jane Collins Montgomery Washington was born the daughter of Lilly Webb (born in North Carolina) and Carter Collins (born in Alabama) on July 14, 1832, in Alabama. She died on January 1, 1912, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her father William John Montgomery (known by his middle name John) was born in Arkansas.
According to her obituary, she attended Freedman Schools in the south before earning a college degree in the north that prepared her for a teaching career. She taught school in Arkansas for several years.
She married my great-great-grandfather John Henry Jones (born in California in approximately 1830) between 1870 and 1872. They had eight daughters and three sons in Arkansas, Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. She made sure all of her children had an opportunity to get educated.
When he died at the age of 70 in 1900, she became a widow and began working as a laundress while raising her children in Louisville, Kentucky.
When she died of pneumonia at the age of 80 on February 18, 1933, in the home of her daughter Lillian Jones Brown, she had survived the death of her second husband Alendas Hoke in 1911 (approximately) and married her third husband Henry Hughes in 1928. She had been living in Indianapolis, Indiana for over 40 years and was active in her children’s lives and church community.
I included two photos of her and photos of her daughters Lillian Jones Brown (a wife, mother, drama school teacher, nonprofit founder and leader, and honorary member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority), Lavinia Jones Toles (a wife, mother, and social worker), Jessie Jones Gentry (a wife and mother), Florida Jones Leeke (a wife, mother, social worker, school teacher, principal, and member, national officer of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, and my great-grandmother), Betty Jones (died as a girl), and Susan Jones (a writer and nurse) in the collage. I did not have photos of Edna (died at 19) and Sanoma Jones.
I placed photos of my grandaunt Lillian Jane Leeke Schell (a wife, mother, French teacher, and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority), the daughter of my great-grandmother Florida , and myself at the bottom of the collage.
I used my painting “One Drop of Black Blood #2” as the background for the collage.
Ananda Leeke 