Patrice,

Lots of advice could be dispensed as to your request, but much of it may be information that you already have. It would be helpful if you were more precise in your query, such as providing what sources you have consulted, the names of any of the siblings you have knowledge of, etc.

Newspapers can be very helpful to you, but if the paper is not indexed, the research can be very time consuming and tedious. There is a black newspaper that covered a large segment of the period you are interested in and it is available on microfilm. It is the Nashville Globe. A woman by the name of Taneya is very familiar with the paper and has a blog. You should consult her and get details on the types of info found in it and some search strategies.

Here are a few newspaper related recommendations to make the search potentially more fruitful:

1. Use dates of key events (birth, marriage, death, etc) as entry points to search in the Globe. A good one would be a major milestone of the marriage of Ed & Bettie Abernathy, as any write up of it will likely have the names of their children that are part of the celebration and/or still alive.

2. Find an institution that is relatively close to you that has some or all of the newspapers that are part of the Proquest Historical Black Newspapers Collection. Using keywords searches that include the words Abernathy, Nashville, Longstreet, anniversary, etc may pay huge dividends.

Good luck!