history
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Tracing Your Roots: Were Slaves’ Surnames Like Brands?
We made a surprising discovery while addressing a question about how slaves got their last names. Dear Professor Gates: Were the surnames of enslaved people changed when they were sold, or were they allowed to keep the surnames of their former slave owners? It would seem plausible that a slave’s name was like a brand…
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Tracing Your Roots: I Want to Post the Names of My Ancestors’ Slaves
Her ancestor’s will named 13 slaves, and she seeks help getting this information to their descendants. Dear Professor Gates: My ancestors were slave owners in Victoria County, Texas. My three-times great-grandfather John James named 13 enslaved people in his will, dated Sept. 3, 1863, in Victoria County. They included three boys, named Woodson, George and…
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Tracing Your Roots: My ‘Merikin’ Ancestor Escaped Slavery
Researching those who chose to fight for the British and emigrate to Trinidad in order to be free. Dear Professor Gates: I was wondering if you could help identify the parents of my five-times great-grandfather Ezekiel Loney, who was among the “Merikins” (formerly enslaved African-American soldiers who fought for the British) who settled in Trinidad. …
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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. Dear Professor Gates: I’ve discovered that my paternal great-grandmother, Leona July Blanks, was a descendant of the Black Seminoles who migrated with the Native American Seminoles from Florida all the way through Mexico. She was born in April 1900 in…
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Tracing Your Roots: Deciphering Illegible Genealogy Records
Use these pro tips for handling poorly reproduced images from microfilm or microfiche. Dear Professor Gates: You answered a question I had about one of my ancestors in the 2016 column “Was My Southern Ancestor Adopted?” I have since been able to get ahold of the medical records of Mary Ryman from Bryce Hospital. However,…
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Tracing Your Roots: The Black Side of My Family Is a Mystery!
A biracial woman yearns to know more about her African-American ancestors, about whom she has little information. It’s a good thing we found a lot of it. Dear Professor Gates: I am a 39-year-old biracial woman who was born in North Carolina. My father, George Newton Watson (Newton Watson Jr. on his birth certificate), was…
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Tracing Your Roots: Is Gunfighter Doc Holliday My Ancestor?
Legend has it that the Old West gambler learned his card skills from an uncle’s black servant girl, intriguing a reader whose ancestor shared Doc’s name. Dear Professor Gates: I’m writing you in reference to John Henry Holliday, better known as “Doc Holliday,” one of the gunfighters who survived the shootout at the O.K. Corral…
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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…
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Tracing Your Roots: Is Charleston, SC’s Famed Jack Primas My Ancestor?
A woman notices that her ancestors shared a surname with an 18th-century free black landowner after whom a road and historically black district were named. Dear Professor Gates: I recently came across an article that discusses the history of the Jack Primas neighborhood of Charleston, S.C. According to the article, John Primus (aka Jack Primas)…
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Tracing Your Roots: Is My Spouse Kin to a Man Who Freed 81 Slaves?
Sleuthing the tale of a “bachelor” slave owner who freed those enslaved at Virginia’s Tynes Plantation in his will. Dear Professor Gates: I have been trying to research the connection between the family of my father-in-law, Timothy George Tynes (April 13, 1927-November 1983), of Cambridge, Mass., and a slave listed in an 1802 will. The…