history
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Tracing Your Roots: Where Were My Black Homeowning Ancestors From?
Records reveal a proud legacy in Mississippi, yet data shows why we should not be all that surprised. Dear Professor Gates: My great-great-grandparents were George Derden (or Durton) and Beatrice Derden. My great-grandmother Christine was one of their daughters. I was told by my grandmother that my great-great-grandfather owned land or his own house in…
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Tracing Your Roots: Help! My Great-Granddad’s Trail Ran Cold
Sometimes, following the paper trail left by a close relative of the person you’re tracing will yield better results. Dear Professor Gates: I have been looking for the father of my great-grandfather George Washington Bridges, born in 1875 in Georgia. I have located records placing him in Butts County, Ga. One of the census records…
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Tracing Your Roots: Why Did My Family Bury the Past?
Silence shrouded information about a family’s past, and those who could provide answers are deceased. Fortunately, there’s a paper trail. Dear Professor Gates: No one in my family would talk about our past, so it basically died with my great-great-aunts. Our family is from Robeson County, N.C.—mainly St. Pauls, in the Kintuck area—and my ancestors…
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Tracing Your Roots: My Ancestor Was in Her Half Sister’s Dowry
Families intertwine and seemingly pass back and forth over the color line, complicating efforts to trace their origins. Dear Professor Gates: I would like to know more about my great-great-great-grandmother Melinda Day (1824-1890), who was born into slavery and became part of the dowry of her half sister Susannah Whittington from Georgia. One of Melinda’s…
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Tracing Your Roots: Who Were Our Kin Before Tragedy Struck the Family?
Needing answers after a family was torn asunder by fatal acts of domestic violence. Dear Professor Gates: My sister Yahnique Sparks and I are having trouble finding information on our parents, Joseph Shirley Sparks and Ruby Lee Sparks (maiden name Johnson). They both died in 1981 when I was a child. Our mother perished at…
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Tracing Your Roots: My Adopted Black Daughter Wants to Know Her Origins
A white mother and black daughter encounter the genealogical “brick wall” so many people face while researching African-American families during slavery. Dear Professor Gates: I have worked very hard to trace back the ancestry of my adopted daughter Rasa Braswell, who is African American. (I am Caucasian.) However, I hit a snag once I got…
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Tracing Your Roots: Did Racism Force My Ancestors to Hide Their Love?
Family lore about a great-grandparent’s interracial relationship lines up with clues in census records. Dear Professor Gates: My paternal grandmother, Caroline “Carrie” Fogg Farrar, was from Raleigh, N.C. She was a product of a relationship between her mother, Mary Elizabeth Fogg (who we had been told was 100 percent Cherokee), and a white landowner named…
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Tracing Your Roots: When Was My ‘Freedman’ Ancestor Freed?
A message board posting listing “freedmen” kin raises questions. Dear Professor Gates: My parents are no longer around to provide answers that will help me to trace my roots, so I hope you can help me. I have traced my father all the way back to my great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother, Hilliard (Hill) and Angaline (Angeline)…
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Tracing Your Roots: My Confederate Ancestor Is on Monuments; Who Did He Own?
The debate over Confederate monuments inspires one woman to find the descendants of people her memorialized ancestor enslaved. Dear Professor Gates: I just read your previous column regarding the Confederate general Wade Hampton III, of whom I am a direct descendant. In it, you addressed whether there was a connection between Gen. Hampton and a…
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Tracing Your Roots: Why Free Virginia Blacks Looked Over Their Shoulders
Finding Virginia forebears who lived uncertain lives in the shadow of the Nat Turner rebellion. Dear Professor Gates: I believe I have just about every record and newspaper clipping on my fourth great-grandmother Rebecca Howlett of Chesterfield County, Va. However, I haven’t been able to find out who her parents were. She was born in…