Research into his own past proved a primer for the advanced project Chemistry Professor Rick Smith is starting with a student: uncover the genealogical history of Victor McTeer, one of the first African American graduates of the College.

One of Smith’s ancestors owned a huge swath of Nebraska, but everyone else was common-folk: farmers, shoemakers or plasterers. Lots of books have been written about the rich and famous of the past. Smith, who considers genealogy his hobby, is more interested in chronicling the drama of the lives of everyday people.

McTeer, who graduated in 1969, is a currently a well-known lawyer in Greenville, Mississippi. His mother is from Annapolis and his father is from Richmond.

“I'm extremely excited at the prospect of learning much about my lost past,” says McTeer. “Like many African-Americans, my oral family history ends with my great grandparents.”

That is the starting point for what Smith, along with Biology major Diamond Daniel ’09, will tackle over the next year.

“Our hope is to be able to trace McTeer’s ancestors back to or before they entered this country,” says Smith, who believes that the McTeer family has been in America for many generations. “At this point we do not know, but I suspect, that we will find slave origins in at least some of the branches of the ancestral tree.”

That’s where things get complicated. In the history of slavery, African Americans were only allowed to marry with permission of their masters, so formal marriage arrangements were not always possible or sanctioned. Plus, many slaves did not have surnames.

Diamond may receive course credit for her work, which will take her on a trek through databases, libraries, online reference guides and dust records hidden away in county courthouses.

“I always said I’d one day study my family tree, so when this opportunity presented I wanted to take advantage,” says Daniel, who is using the experience for practice before tackling her own family, whose roots are in St. Thomas, St. Croix and the West Indies.

The professor and the student plan to begin their quest by tracing McTeer’s family through the census records, and then proceed on to birth, death and cemetery records, along with marriage and church records.

“It is my hope that these volunteers and others may gain some insight into the familial background, achievements, failures, dreams and aspirations that led me to the challenge of an education at a school with so few people of color and on the practice of law in the Deep South,” says McTeer.

He hopes it will provide current students insight into the achievements and goals of their own families that may be facing similar, though more modern, issues.

“This is a massive project which will ultimately involve identifying several hundred individuals,” says Smith. “It’s like working on a jigsaw puzzle.”

It’s a good thing he loves a puzzle. Although Smith calls himself an amateur, he has for 30 years been conducting genealogical research. After buying a second home on the Virginia island of Chincoteague, he began studying families there. Last summer, he started a free website, www.accomacroots.com. His newly completed reference book, “Free Negro Records of Accomac County, VA,” is a register of 1,752 names of slaves who were freed between 1807-1863. And he is hard at work on a second and third book, which will contain historical deeds and wills written to free slaves.

Smith also writes a monthly historical column for Chincoteague’s local paper, maps and restores black cemeteries and tries to uncover the names of those buried in unmarked graves.

“In one sense, we are the reason for, and the culmination of, the lives of those who came before us,” he says. “So it is only fitting that we honor them by remembering who they were and what they did, and pass that heritage on to future generations. I believe our ancestors deserve more than two dates on a piece of granite.”

For Smith, every answer uncovered leads to another question, another challenge.

“A researcher in science is built to climb hills,” he says. “You want to climb and see the view from the top, no matter what the subject. Once you start, it’s in your blood to climb that mountain. The view from the top is always beautiful, but there is always another hill.”

After finishing McTeer’s family tree, Smith plans to research the genealogy of other early African American graduates of the College.