My maternal two times great grandmother Minnie Belle Burke was born in the early 1800s in Dallas County, Alabama. She was a hard working mother of two. Minnie Belle worked as a private Cook then as laundress for many years in Jefferson County, Alabama until moving with her second husband Edward Stacks, daughter Georgiana and granddaughter Clittee to Youngstown, Ohio. Millions of African Americans from the southern states traveled to cities like Chicago, Detroit, New York and Youngstown between 1910 and the 1930s in search of work, this was known as The Great Migration. While in Youngstown Edward found work as a laborer in the largest Steel Manufacture in the world (Youngstown Sheet and Tube) and Minnie Belle continued worked as a laundress. After the death of her husband and her ailing health in 1930, Minnie and her teenage granddaughter traveled back down south to stay with her younger sister Rebecca and her family in Bromley Baldwin County, Alabama. Minnie Belle died on December 12th 1931. Minnie Belle Burke Stacks is part of my history.
