THE GENESIS OF THE CHARBONNET DIALOGUES

Betty Charbonnet Reid Soskin

It was after I had reached a stone wall in reserching the history of the Charbonnets, my father's family, that I received the first email from Ken Jenkins, an architect in the engineering department of the University at Baton Rouge. 

Ken’s first wife was a Charbonnet. They had since divorced, but he was an expert geneaologist who was working to document his children’s lineage. This was a family who were white, and who were boxed in at the same point in their attempts at reconstructing the familiy tree. That first email from Ken was an inquiry listing my father and his brothers who had settled in California back in the 1920s. 

Then there was another researcher whom I’ve never met who was working to trace the family tree for another member of the Charbonnet “Creole” family (mine) and who at that particular time ran into Ken Jenkins and his search. This was Lisa Henderson who lived in Atlanta, but who joined the expedition through our mutually connections through cyberspace.

I can think of no better way to present this history than to post here -- in sequence -- the exchange of emails that slowly unfolded the entire story of the Charbonnet -- from the mid-1700s to the present. The narrative speaks for itself.