Danville-based genealogist Karice Luck-Brimmer brings decades of experience breaking brick walls and amplifying community stories.
Karice Luck-Brimmer knows the complex genealogy of Pittsylvania County, Virginia like the back of her hand.
From identifying descendants of the historic Sharswood Plantation, to leading informative tours on Danville’s momentous civil rights movement, Luck-Brimmer has made a career out of helping people find their place in local history.
Luck-Brimmer has been a practicing genealogist for more than 20 years, and provides guided walking tours, historic preservation consulting, and genealogical services through her company, Our History Matters. In addition to running Our History Matters, Luck-Brimmer is working to open the first Danville Research Center for African American History & Culture.
Her accolades make her an all-star addition to the Getting Word African History Department, as it works on connecting Monticello’s enslaved community to descendants across Virginia and beyond.
Before joining Getting Word as a genealogical consultant, Luck-Brimmer worked at Virginia Humanities in several capacities for eight years. Luck-Brimmer began her consulting work with the team this spring. Luck-Brimmer and Tiana Woodard, a Getting Word research and oral historian, discussed her beginnings in genealogy and her hopes for her work at Monticello.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tiana Woodard: What’s your earliest memory of genealogy?
Karice Luck-Brimmer: My earliest memory is at about 7 or 8 years old. My maternal grandfather, the Rev. Bedford Luck, was considered the community historian in Camp Grove on the north side of Danville. My grandfather could tell you who everyone was related to. He was also my babysitter, and all he talked about was our ancestor Gardner Luck. He talked about how Gardner was so strong that he could knock the bark from a tree with his bare fist, along with other oral histories his elders passed down. My grandfather was an animated storyteller, too. So that’s how I got the genealogy bug, so to speak.
I really wanted to verify some of these stories that he passed down, but I had no idea how.
KLB: Then, when I was a teen, I went to a program at the local library by the Virginia-North Carolina Piedmont Genealogy Society. After I gained an understanding of what they did, I started going to the county courthouse. I’d look through all the history books and family genealogies people had donated. And during one of those visits, I found Gardner Luck in the 1870 US Federal Census. I think I cried, because up until that point, he was like a fable.
TW: That record made the story concrete. Hearing it was one thing, but seeing it is completely different.
KLB: Yeah, so after that, I became obsessed. Since then, I have found a record before that, and I’ve even connected with the descendants of the people who enslaved my ancestors.
TW: Was there a moment when you realized you wanted to make genealogy a career?
KLB: Genealogy has always been the basis for everything I do. Everybody calls me a public historian now, but I always tell them I didn’t go to school for that. My work is more than just saying, ‘This was Grandma, Grandpa, Great-Grandma, and so.’ What did Grandma do? Where did they live? Where did they work? I build stories and narratives. I’m a storyteller, an oral historian, a little bit of it all.
I dabble in historic preservation, too, with the house that I’m restoring in Danville’s Holbrook-Ross Historic District. I’m restoring the boyhood home of Claudius “C. B.” Claiborne, the first African American to play basketball at Duke University. The historic house will be the site for the future Danville Research Center for African American History & Culture, or DRC. The DRC won’t only serve as a genealogy research center, but it will also preserve the BIPOC history of the Dan River region.
Nevertheless, genealogy is the tool I’ve always used for all of these projects.
I’ve also been doing Danville Black history tours since 2017. They began as mobile teacher workshops through Virginia Humanities, but people enjoyed them so much that I packaged them up and started doing them myself. What separates my tours from others is that I incorporate genealogy into the stories I tell at each stop. The tours have become so popular that it quickly became overwhelming.
TW: What makes you most excited about joining Getting Word?
KLB: I’m just happy to be able to contribute to the department’s genealogical research. In every previous role I’ve held, genealogy was just a tool that I used but not the focus. I’m excited just to be around people who love doing the work as much as I do. Plus, it’s very seldom that I come across younger people that are interested in history. Y’all pep me up.
TW: Aww.
KLB: Also, I’ve just gotten to the point where I know so much about Pittsylvania County that I want to explore other places in Virginia.
TW: How has knowing your roots changed you?
KLB: It’s totally changed my life. Not only has it brought about a sense of pride, but… I think just knowing where my family has come from, I don’t know where I would be without genealogy. Even if you don’t have all those stories to go with it, it’s just about knowing your origins. A lot of us can’t trace our ancestors beyond 1870, but if you’re able to go a little further bit by bit, it makes it all worth it.
You can learn more about Karice’s work through the videos below:
