Tracing
Your Roots: Did My Ancestor Work in a Prior Enslaver’s Home?
Repeating patterns in Reconstruction-era census records point to possible connections during slavery.
Tracing Your Roots: How Did My Black Ancestor Come to Own Land?
Finding out how a great-grandfather came to own 300 acres of land in post-Civil War South Carolina.
Tracing
Your Roots: What Did Freedom Bring for My Ancestor?
Post-Civil War records point to a common fate for many African Americans after emancipation.
Tracing
Your Roots: Have I Found My Ancestor’s Plantation?
She found a photo of her great-grandmother in the records of a historic plantation house in Georgia, but little…
Tracing Your Roots:
Who Were My Granddad’s Enslaved Parents?
A reader encounters the proverbial brick wall that African Americans encounter in antebellum genealogy research.
Tracing Your Roots: Did a White Lawyer Adopt My
Granddad?
A family legend points to a turn-of-the-20th-century transracial adoption. Could that have actually happened?
Tracing Your Roots: Was My Ancestor Deported to
Ghana?
A series of run-ins with law enforcement in the United Kingdom splits a family apart. Now the family is seeking answers.
Tracing Your Roots: How Did My Ancestor Escape
Slavery?
In revisiting the story of black refugees to Trinidad, we came across the tale of a foiled slave rebellion in Maryland.
Tracing Your Roots: Is My
Family’s Big Secret Presidential?
A reader wonders if she could be related to Andrew Jackson through one of his slaves.
Tracing Your Roots: Were Slaves’ Surnames Like Brands?
We made a surprising discovery while addressing a question about how slaves got their last names.
Tracing
Your Roots: My Black Ancestors Were Indian Scouts
Research reveals a Black Seminole family’s continent-crossing migration in search of freedom and battlefield glory.
Tracing Your Roots: Was My Black Kin’s Land a Gift from a White Man?
Dear Professor Gates:
What’s the Story of a Portrait of My Slave Ancestor?
I am seeking help to learn more about my third great-grandmother Elizabeth Bettie Lane Dickey. She was raised on…
How Far Back Can You Trace My Black Family?
I have a lot of questions regarding my family's history. With my grandfather's recent passing, I was compelled to…
Do Freedmen’s Bureau Records Show the Marriage of My Kin?
Many years ago, I located my maternal great-great-grandparents, Lucy Hoffman and Ben Hoffman, in census records for…
Can You Help My Dad Find His Father?
I've been trying to help my dad, Samuel D. Jones, locate his father. His mother, Amolene Hughes Jackson, passed in…
Did My Black Ancestor Move Farther South During Slavery?
I am trying to trace the roots of my paternal great-great-grandfather, Lucien Joshua. He relayed to the census taker in…
I Know Who Owned My Ancestors. What Now?
I’ve managed to trace my family ancestry back to an Adalin and Alex Vinson. The records I have state that Adalin (the…
Who Were My Enslaved Ancestor’s Parents?
How do I go about finding the parents of my maternal second great-grandfather Spencer Mott, born about 1820 in Georgia?…
Was My Black Ancestor Named After a Confederate General?
I visited Charleston, S.C., last week and walked past a statue of Wade Hampton III and stopped dead in my tracks. You…