Ancella Bickley's Family

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FAMILY

Ancella Bickley was born to Mr. and Mrs. Willard Radford. Her husband is Nelson Bickley, whose great uncle was Carter G. Woodson-the Father of Black History. Her children are Renae Bickley Hill and Ancella Bickley Livers.

Ancella's father was born in Huntington, West Virginia. His father was a slave who, at the end of the Civil War, crossed the mountains from Frankfort County, Virginia following the railroad coming to West Virginia to work. Her father went to Cuba in 1913 and was there for 15 years. Within that time, he met and married Ancella's Jamaican mother who was just two generations out of slavery. Slavery ended in Jamaica about 1832 or so. So her immediate family were not slaves, probably her grandparents were. Ancella's parents returned to the United States in 1928.

Ancella was named for her Jamaican grandmother, who was married to a slave named Anderson Radford. Ancella speaks about her grandmother: My grandmother's family came from just across the river in Ohio. My grandmother was the child of manumitted slaves. Now that means they were freed slaves...Part of the family came from North Carolina and part of the family came from Virginia.

Ancella had a loving relationship with her parents with one of her memories being I was a very little girl. I wanted to read, at that time, Uncle Tom's Cabin and I was ill and in the hospital...He (her father) bought that book for me. That was a very precious moment in my life. The good relationship she developed with her parents carried over to her relationship with her daughters. The thing I am proudest of is I have two wonderful daughters and we have a good relationship...I love being with them...and we are friends.