Family excited for first baby girl in family line in over a century

The "gender reveal" for a preborn child may be exciting for the immediate family, but it wouldn't make national headlines — except for one very special family who had not welcomed a baby girl in over a century.

Key Takeaways:

• It has been 108 years since the Sherman family has welcomed a baby girl, but now Michael Sherman and his wife Joacquia are welcoming a daughter.

• After Joacquia discovered they were having a girl, she invited the entire family for a gender reveal party, but didn't tell Michael.

• Then Joacquia's mother invited the local news station and their story went national, with the family appearing on Good Morning America.

• The last baby girl to be born in the Sherman family was Orah Belle Sherman in 1917.

The Details:

Michael Sherman, 34, and his wife, Joacquia Sherman, 32, recently discovered that their second child is a girl, due in March of next year. Their historic gender reveal party had camera crews and family from all across the country making an appearance. That's because their daughter is the first girl in the Sherman family line in over 100 years of Sherman sons. ABC News and Good Morning America (GMA)  broke the story.

"We didn't think it was quite possible for us to even have a girl, so, I just knew if we had another child, it was going to be a boy, so I was very surprised," Joacquia said.

Joacquia and her mother decided to throw a huge party, and Joacquia planned to surprise her husband with the news.

“Once I found it was a girl, I just decided we no longer needed to have a small, intimate family gathering… I just needed to have everybody here. I wanted him to be very, very surprised,” Joacquia said.

The day before the reveal, Joacquia's mother let her know that she had contacted ABC 13. 

Joacquia told her husband that the gender reveal party was going to be a small gathering, until she removed his blindfold during the event.

“I took the blindfold off and there's a camera crew, and there's family from all over the United States," Michael recalled. "It was a huge surprise on top of me finding out that it's a girl. So it was pretty amazing."

Michael said he and his wife are honored that they get to bring a baby girl into the world. The Shermans’ five-year-old son, Mekhai, is excited to welcome his little sister.

The History:

It has been 108 years since the Sherman family welcomed a baby girl. The last Sherman daughter, born in 1917, was Orah Belle Sherman, Michael’s late great-aunt.

Orah Belle Sherman was a part of the civil rights movement in Atlanta and met a lot of civil rights leaders, according to one of her relatives, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In an interview with The New York Times in 1996, Orah Belle said that she did her part for integration by seating whites and blacks at the same tables when musicians Ramsey Lewis and Aretha Franklin came to Paschal's La Carousel lounge, the restaurant where she worked.

She was quoted as saying, "The next thing I'd know they'd be buying each other rounds."

"It was pretty incredible finding out that we're expecting a girl and we get to honor my great-aunt," Michael said. "She's a pretty pivotal person in the Civil Rights [movement] in Atlanta … she just had an incredible personality."