"God's Amazing Grace: Reconciling Four Centuries of African American Marriages and Families" should be on every bookshelf in America!
The Author
Dr. Terry M. Turner Compassionate Genealogist
Terry M. Turner is a native of Guthrie, Oklahoma, and has made Dallas County his home for over thirty years. He and his wife Nancy have been married for thirty-nine years and are parents to four adult children and twelve grandchildren.
Most of his family research is in the states of Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas. His research has allowed him to make solidified family connections as far back as 1770 in Georgia. Dr. Turner has been able to find several of his great-grandparents beyond the 1870 brick wall before the Emancipation Proclamation.
He is a member of the National Genealogy Society, National African American Genealogy Society, Texas State Genealogical Society, Dallas Genealogical Society, Dallas African American Genealogical Society, Georgia Genealogical Society, Oklahoma Genealogical Society, and Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).
In 2014, he earned a DMin from Dallas Theological Seminary, emphasizing marriage and family that explores the impact of slavery on the African American family compared to other ethnicities. In addition, he is a certified PREPARE/ENRICH Marriage and Family Counselor and Facilitator.
In 2018, he authored a Christian historical and genealogy book titled God's Amazing Grace: Reconciling Four Centuries of African American Marriages and Families. This book traces the ways Christianity and the governmental regulations in the American slave system impacted the marriages and families of enslaved people.
He launched a Youtube website, “Embracing our Ancestors,” to teach African Americans how to perform family research and find lost ancestors. This website introduces a new book When Grace Flows Backward: Embracing Our Ancestors, to be released this year.
For thirty-one years, Dr. Turner organized and pastored the Mesquite Friendship Baptist Church in Mesquite, Texas. In his semi-retirement years, he has joined Dancestors Genealogy Services as a genealogy researcher specializing in researching African Americans during the years of slavery.
Dr. Turner is a speaker on several Genealogical subjects to help researchers develop methods for discovering their African American family in past generations.