free black people

  • Tracing Your Roots: Where Did My Ancestor’s Freed Slaves Go?

    A forebear emancipates his slaves in the 1840s, but “freedom” was a relative term in 1840s Kentucky. Dear Professor Gates: I’m trying to trace a family who was owned by my sixth great-grandfather the Rev. John Holland Owen. Their names were Christopher and Winney Owens and Winney’s children—Fanny, Edwin, Elijah, Andrew Jackson, Charles, America, Mary…

  • Tracing Your Roots: Our Family Matriarch Was a White Indentured Servant

    Untangling the origins of Virginian ancestors whose lives crossed boundaries of race, freedom and the law. Dear Professor Gates: I am a descendant of Catherine Donathan, who was a white servant to Robert Bristow of Virginia. She had a relationship with a black slave from another plantation. She had a child, William. She has been…