tracing your roots
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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 2000; however, she wouldn’t provide any information on who his father is. His aunt also has been reluctant in providing information, though she said my dad’s grandfather is Eutah/Utah Jones and his father is Alious or Delious…
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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 1900 that his parents were born in South Carolina. At the time of the census, he lived in Ascension Parish. According to oral history accounts given by older relatives in my family, Lucien changed his name…
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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 spellings of her name vary) was born around 1825 and died around 1915. Alex was born around 1820 and died around 1878. They had quite a few children, including my great-great-grandmother Sabre. I…
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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? He was listed in the 1880 census as mulatto, living in Brandywine Claiborne, Miss. I’m guessing he was probably a slave. —Tammy Robinson Tracking enslaved people before the end of the Civil War is tricky…
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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 see, my great-grandfather’s name was Wade Hampton Shields. Wade Hampton III was a Confederate general, U.S. senator and governor of South Carolina. He was one of the largest enslavers of people in the South…
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Tracing Your Roots: I Want to Find a Slave’s Descendants and Apologize
I’m Australian, and hoping to trace living relatives of a slave owned by a relative of my uncle in Trinidad. I want to apologize for my ancestor’s actions. What I know is as follows: William Preston Galloway (born May 30, 1798, in Edinburgh, Scotland) landed in Trinidad in 1821 and by 1825 was the owner…
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Is My Family’s ‘Slave Name’ the Wrong One?
I have been working on my family tree for years and cannot find anyone on my father’s side earlier than my great-grandparents Texas Williams, 1871-1951, and his wife, Nettie Howard Williams, 1875-1912. My father said that Texas always said that they were really “Dunns”—that the Dunn family sold them to the Williams family and they…
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My Family Is West Indian. How Did I Get Melanesian DNA?
I have been watching your show and cannot remember anyone having Melanesian in their DNA ethnicity results. I did the Ancestry.com DNA test and it showed 1 percent Pacific Islander-Trace Region: Melanesia. I just wondered how often this comes up in people from the West Indies. My mother is Trinidadian and my father is Jamaican. I will send you…
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Did My Black Ancestors Enter the US via Ellis Island?
My maternal grandparents immigrated from St. Kitts between 1899 and 1901. They are Albena Denham (Daveron), born on Oct. 17, 1872, and Alexander Taylor, born on March 7, 1879. Both were born in St. Kitts. I wonder how they entered the United States. They may have traveled on the S.S. Parima or S.S. Korona; however,…