OUR STORY

Back to Our Roots

Our mission is to focus on the things that shape us, rather than the circumstances that divide us; to strengthen and preserve our family as God intended with love from the roots of which we came. Our family has many extraordinary members with a multitude of skills, talents, wisdom, and perseverance.

Our true history began in Africa long before slavery took place in the United States. However, for the sake of telling this family’s history, this story will begin with Harkless McDougle, former slave born in North Carolina and slave to Thomas McDougal of Tippah, Mississippi as noted on the 1860 Slaveholders Census. Harkless was a blacksmith as a slave and a farmer as a freeman.

 

Mariah McDougle, daughter of Harkless McDougle, born a slave in 1852, never married but she gave birth to four (4) children.

 

Baron McDougle, Mariah’s son and biological father to Henry E. Royal, Sr. He was very self-relaying and had a vast knowledge of herbs including their medicinal use. For that, he never had a need to visit a doctor, was able to self-diagnose, and treated himself.

Baron was a modern-day holistic doctor to many in his community. He believed in the healing power from any ailment by God’s earthly medicines. Because Baron helped heal and treat so many in his community, many white doctors were against it and even had him jailed for practicing medicine. Yet some doctors still visited him in spite of those charges.

 

 

 

 

Baron "Bam" McDougle,

Father of Henry E. Royal, Sr.

Born Dec. 25, 1859 (est.) - Death 1974

Exert from The Diary of a Country Doctor by W.W. Walley, M.D. 1991 (page 19)

 

 

 

 

 

Willie "Bigmama" West Royal

Mother of Henry E. Royal Sr.

Born 1896 - Death 1984