Where to find a Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois family tree PDF
The novel prints its own family tree, but not as a drawing. The PLOS blog DNA Science says the book opens with four bulleted lists under the heading FAMILY TREE, in place of a classic pedigree chart.7 Those lists are in the front matter of every copy, and this page does not reproduce them.
No official PDF of the tree is online. The page Family Trees on the author’s own site says only that it is coming soon.5 The blog pages that rank for a PDF of the tree carry no tree and no file.
This chart is our own Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois family tree PDF. The PNG and PDF buttons over the chart, and again under Cite this page, save it as a file drawn in your browser, with the key that explains the broken lines. Harper published the novel on 24 August 2021 in 816 pages, and it won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.812 PLOS counts eight generations of one American Black family in it, and the chart holds eleven rows because it adds the ancestors of the Songs.7
The mother’s line, from Eliza Two to Ailey
The backbone of the chart is the prologue, The Tracing of the Line. It names one woman in each generation, whom she married and which children she bore.1
It begins with Eliza Two Pinchard Freeman, called Meema. She married Red Benjamin, he took her last name, and their daughter was Sheba. Sheba bore Clyde, the twins Benji and Charlie and the twins Adam and Abel, and for a last man a girl named Maybelline and called Lil’ May. Sheba died hours after that birth.1 The chart folds the five sons into a note.
Lil’ May gave birth to Pearl, and ten years later to a boy named Jason, whom the family called Root. The prologue names no father for either child, and the chart draws none. Pearl married Henry Collins and bore the twins Miss Rose and Henry Jr., called Huck, and after many childless years Annie Mae.1
Miss Rose married Hosea Driskell and bore Roscoe, the twins Jethro and Joseph, who died in their cribs, Norman, and last a daughter named Maybelle Lee, who insisted that her family call her Belle. Belle bore three girls, Lydia, Carol and last Ailey.1
Ailey Pearl Garfield, her parents and Aunt Pauline
Ailey Pearl Garfield is the youngest daughter of Mrs. Maybelle Lee Garfield and Dr. Geoffrey Louis Garfield, as NPR puts it, and NPR names her sisters as Lydia, the eldest, and Carol Rose.10 Publishers Weekly calls her father Geoff Garfield a physician in Washington, D.C.9 The excerpts of the novel call one sister Coco without saying which, and only a blog review makes Coco and Carol Rose the same sister.215
PLOS says Ailey’s paternal grandmother passed for white, and the Los Angeles Review of Books calls her Nana.711 Only BookRags names Geoff’s parents as Claire and Zachary, called Gandee, so their lines on the chart are broken.13
The prologue says that Annie Mae bore a daughter, Pauline, for an unknown man and left her behind in Chicasetta, which makes Pauline a first cousin of Belle.1 Ailey as a small child calls Aunt Pauline the sister of her granny Miss Rose and the daughter of Dear Pearl.3 The chart follows the prologue, and the table below gives both readings.
Dear Pearl and Uncle Root
Dear Pearl is Ailey’s great-grandmother, not her grandmother. The publisher’s description calls her Ailey’s great grandmother, and in the novel Lydia tells her sisters the same.43
Uncle Root is Dear Pearl’s younger brother. The prologue makes him the second child of Lil’ May, and Jeffers, in an interview with Electric Literature, calls Dear Pearl his big sister.16 NPR and Wikipedia call him Ailey’s great-uncle, while by the prologue’s line he is her great-great-uncle.1017 The prologue gives his given name as Jason. Only a user-drawn chart on Wikimedia Commons gives him the surname Freeman, so the chart writes him as Uncle Root.116
The Songs, from Micco to the twins Eliza Two and Rabbit
Between the chapters of Ailey’s life the novel sets sections labelled Song, which go back before the prologue.7 PLOS names their first family. A Creek woman, Nila, had a son with the Scottish deerskin trader Dylan Cornell, and Ailey’s family begins with that son, Micco. PLOS also names Kiné, a Wolof-speaking woman from West Africa, as an ancestor, but no source opened for this page joins her to a child the chart could draw.7
The rest rests on study guides and a blog review. The blog says Micco married Mahala and that the plantation owner Samuel Pinchard married their daughter Lady.15 BookRags names their children Victor and Gloria, and the Commons chart calls the daughter Eugenia, so the chart writes Gloria or Eugenia.1316 BookRags also says Samuel raped Mamie, a young enslaved woman, who bore his son, and that Tess married Nick and had the twins Eliza Two and Rabbit.13 PLOS agrees from the other end, calling Samuel Eliza Two’s white grandfather.7
Where the sources disagree about the middle generations
PLOS and BookRags make Samuel Pinchard the great-grandfather of Uncle Root, which holds only through a Pinchard father of Root and Pearl. Only the Commons chart supplies one, so the chart draws Samuel’s descent through the twins alone.71316
| Question | One reading | Another reading | The chart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eliza Two to Uncle Root | Grandmother, PLOS | Great-grandmother, the prologue | The prologue |
| Samuel Pinchard to Uncle Root | Great-grandfather, PLOS and BookRags | Further back, through the twins | The twins’ line |
| Father of Pearl and Root | A grandson of Samuel, Commons chart only | Unnamed in the prologue | No father |
| Daughter of Samuel and Lady | Gloria, BookRags | Eugenia, Commons chart | Both names |
| Aunt Pauline | Annie Mae’s daughter, the prologue | Miss Rose’s sister, Ailey as a child | The prologue |
| Uncle Root to Ailey | Great-uncle, NPR and Wikipedia | Great-great-uncle, the prologue’s line | The line only |
Each line on the chart and its source
Community sources come last, and the chart draws their lines broken.
| Line | How it is told |
|---|---|
| Eliza Two to Sheba, Lil’ May, Pearl and Root | Novel text, the prologue |
| Pearl and Henry to Miss Rose, Huck and Annie Mae, and on to Pauline | Novel text, the prologue |
| Miss Rose and Hosea to Belle | Novel text, the prologue |
| Belle and Geoff to Lydia, Carol and Ailey | Novel text, NPR, Publishers Weekly |
| Uncle Root, Dear Pearl’s younger brother | Novel text, the author’s interview |
| Nila and Dylan Cornell to Micco, and the twins | Review, PLOS |
| Claire and Zachary to Geoff | Community source only, BookRags |
| Micco and Mahala to Lady | Community source only, a blog review |
| Samuel and Lady to Victor and Gloria or Eugenia | Community source only |
| Samuel and Mamie to Nick, Nick and Tess to the twins | Community source only, BookRags |
How to read the chart and its files
A square is a man and a circle is a woman, and Ailey carries the double outline. A line between two symbols is a couple, and lines down from it lead to the children. A line from one symbol alone is a child whose father the prologue leaves unnamed, and two lines from one point mark twins. A broken line rests on a community source only.
A cross marks a death the sources tell, as for Eliza Two, Red Benjamin and Sheba, or one long before the novel’s present, as for the ancestors of the Songs. Dear Pearl dies in the course of the novel, as the author says, but the chart shows the family as the prologue names it.176 To keep notes on your own reading, open the chart in the editor, or start from the other story charts.
Questions about the Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois family tree
Is there an official PDF of the family tree
No official file is online. The novel prints its tree as four bulleted lists in its front matter, and the author’s page Family Trees says it is coming soon. The chart on this page saves as a PNG or a PDF.75
People and sources
A page of its own lists all 31 characters on the chart, each with a short note and the sources for it, and the 17 numbered sources this article cites. It also gives this page as a reference in the APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles, ready to copy.