About the Editors

Mrs. Melva Shipley is a lifelong learner, educator, and genealogist. A retired public school teacher, Mrs. Shipley has traced husband DeWitte's family for 10 generations, back to 1692. That was the year his seventh great-grandmother, Lucie, was purchased by the Carrolls of Maryland.

Mrs. Ayanna Shipley Washington is a philomath that in addition to her career, enjoys utilizing various investigative techniques to further the research and preservation of family histories. Encouraged by her maternal grandmother who was the family Griot and actively practiced the West African tradition of preserving oral genealogies and history through story telling, she decided it was necessary to pursue the same level of meticulous research for her paternal family in hopes of preserving it for future generations.

Jennie K. Williams, Ph.D. is a historian with expertise in American slavery and the domestic slave trade, digital methodologies, data and data ethics. Her book, Oceans of Kinfolk: the Coastwise Traffic of Enslaved Persons to New Orleans, 1820-1860, is under contract with UNC Press. Dr. Williams is the author of the Oceans of Kinfolk database, lead author of the Louisiana Kindred database, and Co-Founder, along with Eola Dance, of Kinfolkology.