about the book
Our Fragmented Family Tree
Our Fragmented Family Tree: Broken Roots, and Buried Truth in the World We Live In is a deeply researched examination of African American genealogy, Black family history, and ancestral identity. In this work, David A. Geiger documents how slavery, segregation, and systemic injustice disrupted African American family lineages and left generations disconnected from their roots.
Through extensive genealogy research, the book traces African American ancestry using census records, death certificates, military service documents, DNA ethnicity estimates, and oral family history. Each chapter reveals how historical systems altered names, erased records, and separated families, while also highlighting resilience, faith, education, and survival across generations.
Rather than presenting history in abstract terms, Our Fragmented Family Tree grounds the past in real people and documented evidence. It restores context to lost stories and connects individual family narratives to the broader African American experience in the United States.
Written for readers seeking African American genealogy, Black ancestry research, and a deeper understanding of Black family lineage, this book serves as both a historical record and a call to preserve truth. It honors ancestors whose stories were buried and ensures future generations remain connected to their heritage.
Why This Book Was Written
Our Fragmented Family Tree was written to confront what history left incomplete.
For many African American families, ancestry is marked by gaps. Names were changed, records were lost, and entire generations were disconnected from their origins due to slavery, segregation, and systemic injustice. These breaks were not accidental. They were the result of systems that denied identity, erased lineage, and made truth difficult to recover.
This book was written to reclaim that truth.
Through documented records, genealogy research, and lived experience, David A. Geiger set out to preserve family history that might otherwise remain buried. The work is both a personal responsibility and a cultural necessity, created to honor ancestors whose lives were not fully recorded and whose stories deserve recognition.
Our Fragmented Family Tree exists to restore connection between past and present, to ensure future generations are not left searching without guidance, and to affirm that understanding where we come from is essential to knowing who we are.
This book was written so the truth would not be lost again.