Mica L. Anders is a professional genealogist from the Twin Cities with a passion for connecting families from all walks of life.
Anders, who holds an MFA in visual arts from the University of Minnesota, began her genealogy journey after doing research work about art as a form of storytelling, and ended up writing her master’s thesis about the genealogy of 11 mixed-race people. Her early genealogy clients were her friends who worked on the project.
“That moment when I was able to share with people things they didn’t know about was so affirming,” Anders said. “I began taking classes and I’ve done a lot of continuing education to this day to build up my skills and become a professional.”
Anders specifically works on uncovering the pasts of Black and brown people whose histories are often hidden or overlooked — she also holds a title of “artistic placemaker,” allowing her to use art to tell a story.
“For a lot of people in the African diaspora, history was just taken from them through the slave trade and all of the things that happened after that,” Anders said. “It’s really about telling those stories, uncovering them, and giving people their history back.”
Anders has been running her own business — Anders Genealogical Services — for over 15 years and serves families from all over the Twin Cities. She has a small team of consultants who assist her with research and design work.
“Oftentimes, there’s a hole that people are looking to fill,” Anders said. “There’s something about not having easy access to it that makes it more of a curiosity.”
Literacy struggles and Eurocentric approaches to history make it difficult for some families to access their history.
“Throughout history, we’ve seen many cultures pass down their cultural traditions through oral retelling of stories or written. But some families may not have access to ancestral information, either by not being informed by other family members or through how ancestral information is displayed culturally.”
“Sometimes people come to me when they have no access to one of their parents or grandparents,” Anders said. “Maybe they’re adopted. Maybe that person was never really a part of their upbringing, and they want me to try and find that person and then learn about them.”
She also works with the Minnesota Historical Society, county historical societies, and city governments to help maintain their archives to ensure they are telling the full story. For Anders, knowing who came before you is a big part of knowing who you are.
Whether it’s common musical interests or generational trauma, knowing this information is part of the puzzle pieces to feeling whole, Anders said.
“It’s these things that become this line that really tell the story of who we are and how we became,” Anders said. “There’s this hole that people are looking to fill and better understand who they are.”
She begins a session by talking with clients about what they know about their family history and their goals for researching their genealogy. Then, Anders and her team begin the research process and report their findings to the client.
The feeling of discovering someone’s family history is, as Anders described, like solving a 1,000-piece puzzle with similar colors.
“Sometimes it’s bittersweet, because I have to go to some pretty dark places to come out to the other side,” Anders said. “I’m so happy to put it together to give to somebody else and then they get to have that completed puzzle.”
Finding ancestral information is not as easy as television ads portray it to be, according to Anders. She said while it is possible to find information at a click of a button, people can also take classes centered around finding ancestral information, or hire someone like Anders to do the work.
“A lot of people don’t have interest until they get older,” Anders said. “They really start to reflect on who they are and who came before them because now they’re the elders that were looking up to elders when they were younger.”
She has one piece of advice for people interested in learning about their family history: Don’t wait.
“Even if you don’t feel interested right now, record those stories,” Anders said. “Talk to your elders who are still with you, because usually when you’re ready, they’re not around anymore.”
How to get started
For people who don’t have access to ancestral information, but want to start uncovering such information, Anders says to do one of two things: If you know the name of any relatives, seek out their records. If you don’t know the names of relatives, you can take a DNA test as a starting point.
Death certificates and census records are a good starting point. That can lead to newspaper clippings and other relevant records.
The University of Minnesota has a resource page for those starting their family research with links to many public databases. It includes specific tips for those with African American, Native American and East Asian ancestry.
