Pearl Duncan

She was born on February 24, 1947 in Jamaica, WI and spent her childhood years in the Bronx, New York. As an adult, she was a longtime resident of her beloved Tribeca neighborhood in lower Manhattan, and in her later years relocated to Florida.

Pearl attended high school at Ben Franklin High School in East Harlem. She was awarded a scholarship to Bryan Mawr College, where she earned a BA in literature. She then earned a Master’s degree in English at Newton College in Massachusetts. After college, Pearl enjoyed a successful career at the Manhattan location of the College of New Rochelle, where she developed adult college educational programs, coordinated adjunct faculty and taught college classes.

Outside of her gainful employment, Pearl pursued her love of writing by working as an independent author, focusing on topics of travel and genealogy. She published a book of fictional short stories called "Water Dancing," loosely based on her travel adventures. While focused on intellectual pursuits, Pearl was also always charitable towards others. While she had no children of her own, she was attentive to her nieces and nephews and also supported and encouraged them in their academic endeavors as she was a big proponent of maximizing educational opportunities for success.

As a researcher and author, Pearl developed an interest in genealogy. In the 1990s, at a time before genealogical research not as trendy and widespread as it is now, Pearl located authentic original documents dating back hundreds of years, which allowed her to trace her ancestors back to the 1700s in Jamaica, the 1600s in colonial America, the 1600s in Ghana, and the 1300s in Scotland and England. She learned that these ancestors spanned numerous cultures and geographies, including nobles in Scotland, farmers in Ghana, and former slaves who escaped and became Maroon rebels in British Colonial Jamaica. In 1998, Pearl worked with university geneticists to compare her father’s DNA to that of Ghanain tribes, with the main clues being the surnames of her Ghanaian ancestors which survived as nicknames passed down 400 years to her father. Through extensive travels and interviews, Pearl discovered that words she grew up with came from a language spoken by a Ghanian tribe which is now part of the Akan people in present-day Ghana. Her father’s nickname, Paparie, for example, was derived from“Pari,” a shortened form of the Ghanian family surname Opare. Through coordination with university researchers, Pearl collected numerous cheek-swab samples on her father and surviving Ghanians. Those lab results ultimately showed that DNA from male Ghanians matched up with Pearl’s father. This was among the first such experiment that used cheek swabs to successfully trace DNA.

Pearl was always fascinated by the complex, four-century saga of her family. She has said: “Though they arrived in Jamaica as slaves, they ultimately rebelled and lived as free people. It’s not the narrative that they were victims. Instead, they were the workers. They were the builders. And that’s a very empowering feeling.” She strongly believed this is a message that could be drawn from the saga of other families in the American diaspora.

In the last decade of her life, Pearl while residing just blocks from the World Trade Center lived through the devastation caused by the 9/11, including the impact on her health. While due to her declining health she has been unable to complete her manuscripts about her ancestral research, she has drawn on the strength, resilience and pride she gained from her scholarly pursuits and research and her charitable contributions to others. She is survived by five sisters, two brothers, numerous nieces, nephews, grand nephews and nieces.