Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Just as a note, the Cherokee Freedmen descendants are still involved in a battle with the Cherokee Nation to be recognized as actually members of the tribe to this day, in fact there should be a US District court ruling this year
After the American Civil War, the Cherokee Freedmen became citizens of the Cherokee Nation in accordance with a reconstruction treaty made with the United States in 1866.
In the early 1980s, the Cherokee Nation administration amended citizenship rules to require direct descent from an ancestor listed on the "Cherokee By Blood" section of the Dawes Rolls. The change stripped descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen of citizenship and voting rights unless they satisfied this new criterion. On March 7, 2006, the Cherokee Supreme Court ruled that the descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen were unconstitutionally kept from enrolling as citizens and were allowed to enroll in the Cherokee Nation. Chad "Corntassel" Smith, then-Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, called for an emergency election to amend the constitution in response to the ruling.[1] After a petition was circulated, a special election held on March 3, 2007 resulted in a constitutional amendment that disenrolled the Cherokee Freedmen descendants. This led to several legal proceedings in United States and Cherokee Nation courts in which the Freedmen descendants continued to press for their treaty rights and recognition as Cherokee Nation members.[2]
The 2007 constitutional amendment was voided in Cherokee Nation district court on January 14, 2011, but was overturned by a 4-1 ruling in Cherokee Nation Supreme Court on August 22, 2011. The ruling excluded the Cherokee Freedmen descendants from voting in the special run-off election for Principal Chief. After the freezing of $33 million in funds by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a letter from the Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in response to the ruling, an agreement was made in federal court between the Cherokee Nation, the Freedmen descendants and the US government. This allowed the Freedmen descendants to vote in the special election.
Both sides filed complaints in federal court in Tulsa, Oklahoma in July 2012; the Cherokee say the 1866 treaty does not require them to give full citizenship to the Freedmen. The Freedmen continue to seek full rights.[3] The US Appeals Court upheld tribal sovereignty but said the cases had to be combined, because they involved the same parties. It suggested that the 1866 treaty limited the right of the tribe to exclude Cherokee Freedmen descendants from citizenship and sent it back to the US District Court. On May 5, 2014 in Washington, DC, oral arguments were made in the first hearing on the merits of the case. The US District Court has stated it will issue a ruling in 2016.[4]
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
11,974 posts, read 25,462,489 times
Reputation: 12187
Tribe membership seems odd to me that it is based on a paper trail to a recent "full blood" ancestor, so you could be 5% Cherokee but be a tribal member while Snoop Dawg is 23% Native American but probably has no tribal membership. (Yes, Snoop Dawg is that much NA)
Last edited by censusdata; 06-01-2016 at 02:58 PM..
Tribe membership seems odd to me that it is based on a paper trail to a recent "full blood" ancestor, so you could be 5% Cherokee but be a tribal member while Snoop Dawg is 23% Native American but probably has no tribal membership. (Yes, Snoop Dawg is that much NA)
A broad answer is that it's more about culture than DNA, at least for the Cherokee. The Cherokee Nation is one of the exceptions, most other tribes require a minimum blood quantum, many require at least 1/8 or 1/16.
Regarding the Cherokee, I think its two three fold:
1) We can't yet identify a specific tribes DNA. So someone can be 20% NA but that doesn't mean they are 20% Cherokee. So without a paper trail it means nothing regarding specific tribes. There were many many tribes that existed, far more than the five "civilized" tribes.
2) It's whether or not you more recently belong to the culture. It's not just a paper trial but a trial to an ancestor who are on specific rolls, primarily the Dawes rolls. So basically if you ancestor walked the trail of tears you can join. That traumatic event both destroyed the tribe as it existed before and united the tribe together in it's form after that. People who left the tribe before that opted out, so I think those who descend from those that walked the trail of tears and had more recent ancestors who embraced the tribe through the hard times are less sympathetic of those that broke away before then (this last part is just speculation of course).
3) The Dawes rolls were used to account for things like land grants and the promised payments by the federal government for the land they removed them from. Many people came out of the woodwork with stories of supposed "Cherokee" ancestry when they heard people could get money or land from it. There is a collection of Easter Cherokee Claims (fold3.com has a digitized version of it). There are *many* rejected claims where people had very weak claims that they were supposedly Cherokee.
So partially it's to protect their tribe from being infiltrated by imposters who can't back up the claims. Those who want to leach benefits (back then and now) or those that just find it fashionable.
There was a period in the 1880s or so where the Cherokee Nation actually reviewed a lot of the admissions that weren't based on rolls like the Dawes roll and kicked out many members who had weak claims. Some of the paperwork that survive (and Cherokee newspapers) suggest their was corruption and bribing involved with admitting some people to the tribe. This exact case happened with a cousin line of my Bryant ancestry which is my mothers paternal line. I had my uncle Y DNA tested and he matches descendants of people who were admitted into the Cherokee Nation some moved there, and then were removed from it due to weak original claims and claims of bribery and corruptions. Not sure what's true or not, the first admittance could of been politics etc, the removal could be the same, I do find the evidence of the admittance fairly weak though, even if it seems plausible.
In the end the tribe chose to restrict membership to people who descend from concrete specific rolls.
I don't think we posted about the Boston episode (2 weeks ago). Last week was kind of a "greatest hits" montage episode.
I just re-watched the Boston episode, and there were lots of great stories there. The 1872 smallpox outbreak in Boston, and how people were quarantined in a small island in Boston Harbor. The early founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony (I loved how the genealogist Joshua Taylor ended up being a cousin of the guest!) More Salem witch trial stories. Some explanations of why Irish records often suck (another big fire that destroyed census records like our 1890 debacle, civil birth/death/marriage records didn't start until 1864, after my ancestors already left--that explains it!)
I was interested in the brief visit they did to NEHGS. I signed up for e-mail newsletter from them a while back, but never joined. I had no idea how many records they have in their Boston headquarters, and how they have genealogists just walking around there waiting to help you. Might have to take a closer look.
Again the little "filler" snippets they do could really go away in my opinion. Like I said before, if they get rid of the snippets, they might have time for a whole other sit-down guest. The one woman was interested in a contested will that was in her family history, and the genealogist said she needed to look into what they call "probate records." Oh great idea! Thanks so much! What a huge help that was!
The one African-American woman found out that her black ancestor owned 88 slaves. She was shocked, but then Kenyatta Berry reminded her that many free blacks bought family members in order to protect them. The woman was like, oh, okay. But do you really think the guy bought 88 family members? No, if people bought family members, it would be a few people, not 88. Just face it, he really did own slaves for the labor. It doesn't reflect on you; it's just how it was.
It looks like next week is the last episode of the season. Damn, that went too fast, especially with a re-run "greatest hits" episode last week, which kind of doesn't count.
Now how long do we have to go before the next semi-season of WDYTYA?
I don't think we posted about the Boston episode (2 weeks ago). Last week was kind of a "greatest hits" montage episode.
I just re-watched the Boston episode, and there were lots of great stories there. The 1872 smallpox outbreak in Boston, and how people were quarantined in a small island in Boston Harbor. The early founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony (I loved how the genealogist Joshua Taylor ended up being a cousin of the guest!) More Salem witch trial stories. Some explanations of why Irish records often suck (another big fire that destroyed census records like our 1890 debacle, civil birth/death/marriage records didn't start until 1864, after my ancestors already left--that explains it!)
I was interested in the brief visit they did to NEHGS. I signed up for e-mail newsletter from them a while back, but never joined. I had no idea how many records they have in their Boston headquarters, and how they have genealogists just walking around there waiting to help you. Might have to take a closer look.
Again the little "filler" snippets they do could really go away in my opinion. Like I said before, if they get rid of the snippets, they might have time for a whole other sit-down guest. The one woman was interested in a contested will that was in her family history, and the genealogist said she needed to look into what they call "probate records." Oh great idea! Thanks so much! What a huge help that was!
The one African-American woman found out that her black ancestor owned 88 slaves. She was shocked, but then Kenyatta Berry reminded her that many free blacks bought family members in order to protect them. The woman was like, oh, okay. But do you really think the guy bought 88 family members? No, if people bought family members, it would be a few people, not 88. Just face it, he really did own slaves for the labor. It doesn't reflect on you; it's just how it was.
It looks like next week is the last episode of the season. Damn, that went too fast, especially with a re-run "greatest hits" episode last week, which kind of doesn't count.
Now how long do we have to go before the next semi-season of WDYTYA?
I have YET to see Genealogy Roadshow on Massachusetts and that episode would interest me more than anything else they could possibly do. NEHGS is an amazing place that I have never even been to. I HATE Boston but since I now live a train ride away, I could get to the city. How to get to the NEHGS is another story though. I know I would get lost--and there is no one to go with me.
I do subscribe to their newsletter and I have written to them once about one of my brick walls. But even though they have EVERYTHING, I doubt they have the record I need. The person did write back and tried to be helpful. I think the record I am missing could be in some tiny archive in CT and a trip to a little town in CT is on my bucket list. Or maybe no record even exists.
I've got to see if that episode is available somewhere. Probably they just concentrate on Boston with some on Salem, but the Mass Bay Colony included a lot more than that. And it's THOSE areas that I would be most intrigued by. The early settlers who stayed in the Boston area often went on to become the Boston brahmins and other rich and influential people. The early settlers who strayed and settled the outlying towns are more likely to be our own ordinary ancestors who fought in the early wars, tamed the wilderness, and settled the country.
I have YET to see Genealogy Roadshow on Massachusetts and that episode would interest me more than anything else they could possibly do. NEHGS is an amazing place that I have never even been to. I HATE Boston but since I now live a train ride away, I could get to the city. How to get to the NEHGS is another story though. I know I would get lost--and there is no one to go with me.
I do subscribe to their newsletter and I have written to them once about one of my brick walls. But even though they have EVERYTHING, I doubt they have the record I need. The person did write back and tried to be helpful. I think the record I am missing could be in some tiny archive in CT and a trip to a little town in CT is on my bucket list. Or maybe no record even exists.
I've got to see if that episode is available somewhere. Probably they just concentrate on Boston with some on Salem, but the Mass Bay Colony included a lot more than that. And it's THOSE areas that I would be most intrigued by. The early settlers who stayed in the Boston area often went on to become the Boston brahmins and other rich and influential people. The early settlers who strayed and settled the outlying towns are more likely to be our own ordinary ancestors who fought in the early wars, tamed the wilderness, and settled the country.
I think I had the idea in bold above too, but the guest on the show was a good example of what's more common: the descendants of the early settlers and even founders often ended up just ordinary poor/blue collar people too. I think I have the over-generalized idea that if you descend from Mayflower passengers or original founders of Massachusetts Bay, you are a wealthy person in a still-elite family. But I guess statistically, you're more likely to be ordinary, and much father down the food chain. The guest on the show said he grew up very poor in Boston, and in adulthood, he's not very well-off (a director of a local Salvation Army). And his family stayed within a small radius of Boston for hundreds of years.
Haha, my New England brick walls are in Connecticut too (New London County). Some day I'll get up to Boston and NEHGS and maybe over to Norwich CT and break through.
I think I had the idea in bold above too, but the guest on the show was a good example of what's more common: the descendants of the early settlers and even founders often ended up just ordinary poor/blue collar people too. I think I have the over-generalized idea that if you descend from Mayflower passengers or original founders of Massachusetts Bay, you are a wealthy person in a still-elite family. But I guess statistically, you're more likely to be ordinary, and much father down the food chain. The guest on the show said he grew up very poor in Boston, and in adulthood, he's not very well-off (a director of a local Salvation Army). And his family stayed within a small radius of Boston for hundreds of years.
Haha, my New England brick walls are in Connecticut too (New London County). Some day I'll get up to Boston and NEHGS and maybe over to Norwich CT and break through.
Well, let me know when you're coming, lol. First I want to visit Deep River, CT to check out the possibility that this is really where the record would be. The family was in Saybrook but then this guy vanishes. The CT SAR suggested that it could have been Deep River, not Saybrook. But if it's not there and I get truly desperate, I might finally venture out to Boston to the NEHGS.
I already checked Norwich and the entire area--why is that area so difficult? Years ago I made a phone call to the Old Saybrook Historical Society but they had no record (this was before very much was online.)
The significance: IF I can find this ONE guy, I will have my mother's unbroken line from Newbury, MA (Mass Bay Colony) to Rhode Island to Saybrook CT in 1700 and then onward to my mother.
But I guess statistically, you're more likely to be ordinary, and much father down the food chain.
I don't think we posted about the Boston episode (2 weeks ago). Last week was kind of a "greatest hits" montage episode.
I just re-watched the Boston episode, and there were lots of great stories there. The 1872 smallpox outbreak in Boston, and how people were quarantined in a small island in Boston Harbor. The early founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony (I loved how the genealogist Joshua Taylor ended up being a cousin of the guest!) More Salem witch trial stories. Some explanations of why Irish records often suck (another big fire that destroyed census records like our 1890 debacle, civil birth/death/marriage records didn't start until 1864, after my ancestors already left--that explains it!)
I was interested in the brief visit they did to NEHGS. I signed up for e-mail newsletter from them a while back, but never joined. I had no idea how many records they have in their Boston headquarters, and how they have genealogists just walking around there waiting to help you. Might have to take a closer look.
Again the little "filler" snippets they do could really go away in my opinion. Like I said before, if they get rid of the snippets, they might have time for a whole other sit-down guest. The one woman was interested in a contested will that was in her family history, and the genealogist said she needed to look into what they call "probate records." Oh great idea! Thanks so much! What a huge help that was!
The one African-American woman found out that her black ancestor owned 88 slaves. She was shocked, but then Kenyatta Berry reminded her that many free blacks bought family members in order to protect them. The woman was like, oh, okay. But do you really think the guy bought 88 family members? No, if people bought family members, it would be a few people, not 88. Just face it, he really did own slaves for the labor. It doesn't reflect on you; it's just how it was.
It looks like next week is the last episode of the season. Damn, that went too fast, especially with a re-run "greatest hits" episode last week, which kind of doesn't count.
Now how long do we have to go before the next semi-season of WDYTYA?
I love PBS. I really do. I watch their mysteries, and some dramas and crafting shows...and I figured it out via the crafting shows.... A lot of PBS is marketing. The knitting shows are sponsored by magazine publishers, with other money coming from yarn manufacturers. The sewing shows are sponsored by magazine publishers, too...
So Ancestry is funding Genealogy Roadshow. So yes, they are going to have a lot of beginner hints, and don't forget...the probate records are kinda new.... I take all this as it comes. I'm just happy they another show about a favorite avocation.
Last night's was pretty good. They do go kind of fast and there isn't much in depth but I think one part that I enjoyed was the Italian woman and her dad who had the story about the macaroni business. Typical immigrants who were entrepreneurs. She wanted to know if her family had been selling macaroni back in Italy too. No, they were not. They had been carpenters. But I loved the look on the old man's face when he learned that his ancestor had his name: wasn't it Romeo?
It's good to see more genealogy programs on tv even though we all yearn for something more in depth and realistic. Take one person and really, truly delve into their past, warts and all. Take more time, follow leads, get excited, get discouraged, follow a trail, find the answer. Maybe even a reunion with new relatives. Well, we can keep dreaming...maybe someday.
I love PBS. I really do. I watch their mysteries, and some dramas and crafting shows...and I figured it out via the crafting shows.... A lot of PBS is marketing. The knitting shows are sponsored by magazine publishers, with other money coming from yarn manufacturers. The sewing shows are sponsored by magazine publishers, too...
So Ancestry is funding Genealogy Roadshow. So yes, they are going to have a lot of beginner hints, and don't forget...the probate records are kinda new.... I take all this as it comes. I'm just happy they another show about a favorite avocation.
Agreed 100%. I'll take any more of these shows.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Boston to the NEHGS. 
