Elyria Black Legacy Connection traces man's ancestry from Northeast Ohio to Alabama

Editor's note: The Chronicle-Telegram is partnering with the Elyria Black Legacy Connection to publish stories researched by the group throughout Black History Month. ELYRIA – This old McDonald had a farm in Crenshaw County, Alabama. Elyria native Stephen McDonald can trace his family's roots to south-central Alabama, where Stephen's great-grandfather John Lem McDonald was born less than 20 years after the end of the Civil War. At 27, John Lem McDonald married Mariah Wingard in nearby Pike County, Alabama. The pair had nine children, including Sam "SD" McDonald. SD McDonald grew up on a sharecropping farm in Pike County. He later returned to Crenshaw County and married Claudia Mae Dowling in 1938. SD and Claudia's son, LD, born on Sept. 22, 1940, moved north to Ohio with his sister, Jeralean and her husband, Mervyn Oliver. LD McDonald eventually got his own place and worked at a gas station, then Ford Motor Company in 1966. He married Georgia native Shirley Carter, a graduate of Elyria High School class of 1963. The couple built their life in Elyria. Their oldest child, Stephen Bernard McDonald, was born Aug. 3, 1967, at Elyria Memorial Hospital. He grew up in a house on High Street on the city's west side, with a younger sister, Stephanie, born in 1976. Stephanie went on to marry Will Hopkins. She died just after Easter Sunday 2009 of brain cancer. She was 32 years old. Stephen attended Elyria's Oakwood Elementary, Westwood Junior High and Elyria West High School, graduating in 1985. He attended The Ohio State University on a partial scholarship to study accounting. While at OSU, Stephen frequently drove the two-and-a-half hours home from Columbus to visit his cousin, Reggie. When Stephen moved back to Elyria after graduating in 1990, he and Reggie formed a dance group, "Reggie and Steve." The two entered local dance contests, once winning an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. After working at a bank, Stephen McDonald followed in his grandfather's footsteps and worked at Ford Motor Company. He started at the Lorain County plant in 1992 spent four years on the assembly line before taking the apprenticeship test to become an electrician. He tested sixth out of 900, and graduated his apprenticeship in 1999 as a journeyman electrician. Stephen McDonald met his wife, Nora, while working at Sears. The couple has three children. Stephen McDonald stressed the importance of education and took pride in Elyria's west side, as well as his membership in the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. *** The Elyria Black Legacy Connection, founded by Ethan West, researches Elyria residents' personal histories, tracing them through public records, online ancestry databases and local interviews. Often, West and his fellow volunteers are able to trace Elyria's Black community through the decades to uncover unexpected stories lost to time. Stacey Balmuta, Amanda Coleman and Isaac Johnson contributed to this story.