My family oral history is adamant about my great-great-great-grandfather Joe Wheaton (also spelled Weeden, Whedon, Wheedon and Wheadon) being one-half Blackfeet Indian and never enslaved. Joe Wheaton (born circa 1833) and his brothers, Monday, John and Henry, arrived in Midway, Madison County, Texas, in 1848, per the 1867 voter-registration list for Madison County. It may…

I have been working on my family tree for the past two years and have become stuck. My great-great-grandfather William Prue was born in 1840 in Virginia and married Anne Upshur Prue, who was born there in 1845. Their children included my great-grandfather James Prue, who was born in 1885 and married Lucy Fractious Prue (1884-1980). The Prues have been in…

My third-great-grandfather Hypolite LaFargue Jr. (born 1819) shows up in the 1850 census in New Orleans as a mulatto tailor with his family. It also appears that his father, Hypolite LaFargue Sr., fought in the War of 1812 in the 2nd Battalion of the Louisiana Infantry led by d’Aquin. How do I find out when…

I’m 28 years old and on a mission to find out more about my roots, particularly on my mother’s side of the family. Unfortunately, everyone who could help me find answers is now deceased. Where can I look for answers, given that I really have no budget for this search? My mother’s family was from…

My great-grandfather William Elijah Gantt was allegedly born in Charles County, Md., Feb. 4, 1886. He was a light-skinned black man who might have been called “mulatto” in his day. He only exists from the 1910 census to his death, married to my great-grandmother Ruth Folsom Jackson.  The family story is that he was never…

I found my maternal great-great-great-grandmother, Eliza Simpson, on an 1840 Free Persons Census list, living in Washington, D.C., as head of household with, presumably, her son, Marshall (who was born in 1835), and her mother. She was a free single, unmarried mother, all of which surprised me. I found them again in the 1850 census,…

This week, we decided to tackle a common question that we get from people researching their roots: What are the best resources for finding records on African-American veterans of the 19th and 20th centuries?  Military draft, enrollment and service records can provide a gold mine of information about an ancestor. In the case of African-American…

Dear Professor Gates: I am a first-generation American whose family hails from Guyana (and, further back, Germany). My father has a German last name: Rohlehr (pronounced “Rohlair”). I would like to know more about my ancestors in that line who first came to Guyana from either Germany or the Netherlands. The story goes that during…

Dear Professor Gates: For example, George Marshall Christian’s brother, Charles Monroe Christian, appears to have also used his first and middle name interchangeably. His full name is recorded on his World War I draft registration card, which we pulled up on Ancestry.com (subscription required), but in the 1920 census (also available on Ancestry.com), his name…

Recently I came across an amended birth certificate, which I am sending to you, that my great-grandfather Governor Burnett Crossing filed in Nashville, Tenn., in 1944. It says that my great-grandfather was born in 1879 in Martin, Dyer County, Tenn. The certificate states that his father, Zonnie Crossing, was from Tennessee and his mother, Hettie…