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This may have already been said, but what I'd guess your whole explanation boils down to is that A) the names aren't that common and B) the people with the names happened to have a lot of slaves. Pretty simple. We know the Founding Fathers were extremely wealthy and owned a lot of slaves, and I imagine their children and extended/immediate family did also. Jefferson owned 600, Jackson 161, and Washington 123.
Forgive the analogy, but imagine that their slaves were their children, and then recall that black people at that point in time tended to have a lot of children. If you have 600 children, you're going to have a hell of a lot of grandchildren, great grandchildren, etc. on the books.
Between the others in the presidents' families who owned slaves, you can probably double that number right off the bat. It could even quadruple or quintuple quickly if the slaves remained under people of that surname through generations. That's one massive 'family' all stemming from one man or a few men. Again, forgive the analogy. Washington had five brothers who lived to adulthood and they were all wealthy planters in Virginia who owned slaves.
Personally I know of at least one white Jackson family, and I think more than that. No Jeffersons or Washingtons though, but I'd guess they're way less common in the UK than Jackson is. Washington is the name of one town in the UK, and I'd guess most Jeffersons are Jeffries/Jeffreys/Geoffreys, which means the same thing. There are only about 5-6 famous white Jeffersons on Wikipedia who are not closely related to Thomas and only a couple white Washingtons not related to George, suggesting they're not a very common name to begin with.
This may have already been said, but what I'd guess your whole explanation boils down to is that A) the names aren't that common and B) the people with the names happened to have a lot of slaves. Pretty simple. We know the Founding Fathers were extremely wealthy and owned a lot of slaves, and I imagine their children and extended/immediate family did also. Jefferson owned 600, Jackson 161, and Washington 123.
Not quite, neither Washington or Jefferson died with male heirs...TJ was deeply in debt at the time of his death and his estate was auctioned off to satisfy his creditors.
Going by records, there isn't as much correlation between large slaveholders and surnames as one would think. Some estimates indicate as many as 75% of the newly freed chose other names. And they chose them for a lot of reasons. It might be their profession (Tailor, Cook, Porter, Farmer.) It might be the name of their parent or grandparent.
FWIW, and I'm ignorant on the subject, I thought it wasn't uncommon for the newly emancipated to chose names in reference to a geography. IE, in the Carolinas, a LOT of places have sottish Clan names. And all over, a lot of places were named for people.
My people were in Texas at that point and there aren't any towns/cities that align with our family names. A lot of ex-slaves kept their names because it made it easier to find family members that lived on other plantations or had been sold off to distant places.
There's a surname among my mother's relatives that I know came from a slaveowner because there's a copy of a will on ancestry.com where the owner bequeathed my 7x great-grandparents to his son They were in Jasper County, Georgia at this point but ended up in Texas a couple of generations later...well my family did. Not sure what happened to the slaveowners. Now, most of those cousins are in California. It's a common (sorta) name but with an uncommon spelling.
Not quite, neither Washington or Jefferson died with male heirs...TJ was deeply in debt at the time of his death and his estate was auctioned off to satisfy his creditors.
Going by records, there isn't as much correlation between large slaveholders and surnames as one would think. Some estimates indicate as many as 75% of the newly freed chose other names. And they chose them for a lot of reasons. It might be their profession (Tailor, Cook, Porter, Farmer.) It might be the name of their parent or grandparent.
It may not have mattered if they died with heirs or not. I was aware some slaves chose names for other reasons (including connections to blacks/Indians who were never slaves) but didn't know the percentages. But even if a majority of the 600 or 123 who had surnames chose a different name, that's still a hell of a lot of people continuing with the name and then growing exponentially, at a very early point in history. Also, if you decide to take the name of your owner, and say you've had two owners in your lifetime, in most cases you're probably going to take the name of a major president and founder of the country (whose names don't sound too bad) rather than that of a relative nobody. And again, Washington had five wealthy slave-owning brothers with his surname, and Jefferson had a brother who was a large planter. I still think my points are correct in the final analysis.
Odd that you picked that specific point to counter........I would have gone with the obvious like Michael Jackson wasn't white! My earlier post was clearly sarcastic.........
Jackson is a pretty common name amongst white Americans (and all over the "Anglosphere"). My white grandmother's maiden name was Jackson. But yeah, Washington and Jefferson - I've never seen a white person with those surnames.
I don't know why this question as asked. I know white people with each of those three names. Besides, people don't generally just quit using surnames because they don't like them.
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They were in Jasper County, Georgia at this point but ended up in Texas a couple of generations later...well my family did. Not sure what happened to the slaveowners. Now, most of those cousins are in California. It's a common (sorta) name but with an uncommon spelling.
