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One of my ansestors who lived in Va owned slaves and must have gotten some black women pregnant because in some of the late 1800 census, my family name has blacks listed in Campbell County and Lynchburg, Va. This means that there are blacks in the US that I am related to. More white people have great great great great grandfathers that impregnated black women than they are aware of. Meaning more black Americans and white Americans have the same great great great great grandfather than they know about.
Does anyone have information about their ansesters owning slaves? What about possibly the fact that you could be a distant cousin of several American Blacks?
I wouldn't be so quick to make that assumption. For starters, a lot of slaves took the last name of their slave owners, it doesn't mean they were the owner's children or descendents. Secondly, unless it's an extremely unusual surname, you have no way of knowing that there is any connection at all. Those blacks with your family name could have moved there from a different area, having come from a different white family with the same name somewhere else. You have a lead to look into but until you find a record that connects those people directly to your family, nothing is confirmed and nothing should be assumed. Lastly, though less likely, even if it turns out that those black families are indeed related to your ancestors, their lines could have died out, leaving no living descendents and thus no living relatives of yours.
One of my ancestors was a slave owner and I did find a death record of a black man, named only as "Mat" whose father was listed as my ancestor. To further confirm it, there were other family members from my tree also listed on the same record (it was a list of deaths) so I know it's right family. I don't know if Mat had children before he died or not. The 1850 Slave Schedule shows my ancestor owned several "mulatto" slaves who were young enough to be his children so it's possible "Mat" was not the only one but I can't know that until I find the right records.
I don't think my ancestors owned slaves. My greatgrandparents all seemed to be fairly poor except for one greatgrandfather who was a blacksmith, and even he was just middle class not really rich as I understand it. So you go back a few generations before that, and I doubt the family had the money to be slaveowners. Plus while family lore has us always living the South my branch lived in more mountainous places where slavery was never really big. I could be wrong though.
As for the second question something like 15% of white Southerners in the US have black ancestors if I remember correctly. The place where you had the most intermarriage were Southern cities. Disease and the frontier nature the South maintained into the 1800s meant white men greatly outnumbered white women in the cities. Meanwhile the low demand for slaves aside from household servants in the cities meant black women greatly outnumbered black men.
Some interesting books on the subject are Slaves in the Family, Ball; The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White, Wiencek; and Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege: Amanda America Dickson, 1849-1893, Leslie.
All of these are historical investigations of American families.
There was plenty of mixing between the races, Most African Americans aren't anywhere as dark as Africans....
Well I read an book about an Black guy who studied his desendants and went to his ansestor village in Africa and he noticed the inhabbitants were coal black, but he was not as dark as them.
Very funny you mention this topic, as I have traced my European ancestors on my father's side back to England and Germany chiefly. While doing this on Ancestry.com, I ran into a woman I went to high school with whom I shared a common set of fifth great-grandparents. She is, I believe, totally or overwhelmingly of German ancestry. The combining of black and white in my father's family happened, at least on a couple of his lines, at the great- or great-great-grandfather level. The white girl I am related to may have more black relatives, but so far I am the only one we have traced. I also did my DNA test and found that I was 57% African, the rest European and Native American/Asian.
Guess where? Virginia.
My father's family, including my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, are all "black," but in complexion they range from pasty off white to coal black. I share LOTS of common ancestors with lots of "white" folks here in America.
My mother's side, which is Caribbean Latino, is extremely mixed. She is most likely more European than she is African.
I also did my DNA test and found that I was 57% African, the rest European and Native American/Asian.
Guess where? Virginia.
My father's family, including my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, are all "black," but in complexion they range from pasty off white to coal black. I share LOTS of common ancestors with lots of "white" folks here in America.
My mother's side, which is Caribbean Latino, is extremely mixed. She is most likely more European than she is African.
LOL...My dad took one of those recently and he found out that he was only 43% African and the rest European with a small bit of Native American mixed in there. Needless to say for my pops, as someone who was a Black Panther back when he was in college, he was pretty shocked and honestly a little pissed off, and he isnt even really light skinned. My dad is like a medium brown complexion. I wasn't surprised however, a good friend of mine growing up was from Senegal, and spending time with his family I could easily see the difference in his family members who had just immigrated from Africa, and the average black person in America today. The facial structure, the incline of the forehead, even the overall shape of the head is much different from African Americans. I've always thought that African Americans have allot more European blood than both most whites and blacks would like to admit. Skin tone aside, because allot of native African vary widely in skin complexion, the facial and head structure, of peope from Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Mali and Ghana is nothing like African Americans. Anyone who spends any amount of time in West Africa can see this.
LOL...My dad took one of those recently and he found out that he was only 43% African and the rest European with a small bit of Native American mixed in there. Needless to say for my pops, as someone who was a Black Panther back when he was in college, he was pretty shocked and honestly a little pissed off, and he isnt even really light skinned. My dad is like a medium brown complexion.
Yes, I was shocked. I figured I was about 80% African. I am medium brown as well, but my dad is pretty dark, and a couple of his brothers look pretty much pure African. They aren't. I hate to say it as well, but I was po'd a bit too. Only because I had spent my whole life studying Africa and Africans and have always seen myself as an African. I remember NFL star Emmitt Smith's DNA being tested and finding that he was only 81% African. Don Cheadle was also about 80 percent African. T.D. Jakes is the only African American I have seen who has tested out as 100% African. These three I mentioned pretty much do look like Africans.
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I wasn't surprised however, a good friend of mine growing up was from Senegal, and spending time with his family I could easily see the difference in his family members who had just immigrated from Africa, and the average black person in America today. The facial structure, the incline of the forehead, even the overall shape of the head is much different from African Americans.
All of this is true too. When I look at some Caribbean populations (Haitians, Bahamians, Jamaicans, etc) I see some individuals who are much more African in appearance than American blacks, and closer to Senegalese and Ghanaians, for example, than the African American population.
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I've always thought that African Americans have allot more European blood than both most whites and blacks would like to admit. Skin tone aside, because allot of native African vary widely in skin complexion, the facial and head structure, of peope from Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, Mali and Ghana is nothing like African Americans. Anyone who spends any amount of time in West Africa can see this.
African Americans, and Caribbean Latins, and Caribbeans in general, are new people, hybrids, which makes blacks and whites, natives and Asians in North America and the other Americas all related to each other. Remember that John McCain has a boatload of black cousins in Mississippi. There are plenty of other examples in our history.
I always wondered why my physical build and that of my mom's family was nothing like the African people I have seen or knew. My DNA test came out about 15% Native American or Asian. When I lived in Hawaii and Japan, a couple times Asian people I knew asked me if I was part Asian. I really did not think I look Asian at all - my maternal grandfather was said to be part Chinese - but the Asian people said there was something about my appearance that made them think I was mixed with Asian. Two Chinese friends told me they thought I was part Chinese. They are pretty much right.
I remember NFL star Emmitt Smith's DNA being tested and finding that he was only 81% African.
I saw that episode of Who Do You Think You Are? I remember the woman who gave him the DNA info said that was one of the highest percentages she'd seen in African Americans - maybe she'd even said THE highest percentage, I can't remember. But I was surprised because even though I knew many or most African Americans had some white ancestry, I didn't realize the norm was for it to be that high in percentage and that possibly it's safe to say ALL African Americans have some white ancestry. I would love to find out if I definitely have some black living relatives but it's very difficult to trace.
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