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I've been digging through genetic genealogy for a while now and I've shared some of my steps of progress in various threads here, recently I've made a few more distinct steps forward so I figured I'd start my own thread. It's great to have a place to share genealogy results and open thoughts and questions
To set the proper context I'm white with no legitimate knowledge of any other ancestry. My journey started like so many other Americans with stories of NA (Native American) ancestry. This is when I started doing serious genealogy myself and the tree I had was quite limited at the time. There were at least three different stories of NA ancestry. Digging further in I found no legitimate reason to believe any of those stories (like so many others).
So I submitted myself for an Ancestry DNA test. Figured I might find a little Native American (but wasn't holding my breath). I got my original results with Ancestry DNA ethnicity estimates 1.0, as others who did tests back with that version will know it was pretty much useless (they heavily overestimated Scandinavian, for example it estimated my wife at like 60-80% Scandinavian in 1.0 and in 2.0 it was around 15-20%). In fairness the whole field of admixture results on DNA was and has progressed a lot. I submitted to gedmatch but was still extremely new and didn't really know what I was looking at.
2.0 results came around and they were much better, I didn't see any Native American, but I saw < 1% Africa -> Senegal. That was a surprise. So I looked at gedmatch and found at least one moderate sized Sub-Saharan African DNA segment (on Chromosome 18), at least big enough to potentially not be noise. I had my mother tested on Ancestry DNA, she came up < 1% Ivory Coast/Ghana. I painted her results on gedmatch and on all datasets I saw the same segment though twice as big, now about 17-20 cM. I was also fortunate enough to catch the guy behind the Eurogenes blog (who provides the Eurogenes dataset to gedmatch) when he was taking paid genetic ancestry summaries or simple research work. He confirmed that she had multiple segments (that one being the biggest) that definitely were from legitimate ancestor(s) within 200-300 years ago.
So that was my first surprise, as a white person, I have at least one Sub-Saharan African ancestor within 200-300 years. Since then I've made a lot of progress on my genealogy. On my mothers side all ancestry I've traced (and all lines I can get back to at least 1800s) go back to colonial times, no immigrants later than the 1700s. Most of it being from the south as well, from pretty much every southern state/colony. Many were slave owners (most small time, but at lest 3-4 owned about 28 slaves, and one owned around 60-70 slaves). So given my ancestry it definitely is plausible, combined with DNA it means likely I have a slave ancestor somehwere back there and their descendant passed for white and assimilated.
So all of that was a bit ago, I've made some further progress now. I've tested my uncle and aunt (my mother's brother and sister) and I've tested my grandmother (their mother)... this helps me identify where that African ancestor came from up my tree (well at least eliminating one branch). I've actually had both my mother and grandmother tested on Ancestry DNA and 23andme (and imported into FTDNA), but I'm only going to show the 23andme results here as well as the gedmatch painting, I've found 23andme to easily be the most accurate ethnicity estimator of the three Autosomal DNA tests (Ancestry DNA, FTDNA, 23andme) and of course gedmatch is a great suite of tools and data to dig in further (but takes a bit of understanding to use it in any useful way). I've also tested my aunt on 23andme so I have all their results here. I identify by them by first name so here's a little legend
Edna = my grandmother (mother's mother)
Sharon = my mother
Linda = my aunt (my mother's sister)
Richard = my uncle (my mother's brother)
I've included both speculative and conservative, for context according to 23andme:
First here's my mom, basically where I truly took my first step. She comes up:
speculative:
0.5% Sub-Saharan African
conservative:
0.4% Sub-Saharan African
You can see the moderate size African segment on Chromosome 18. There's two other smaller segments that hold up to "conservative" on both chromosome 16 and 7 (with one that doesn't on 9).
Sharon Speculative
Sharon Conservative
Linda (my aunt). The biggest surprise here was finding a small potential Native American/East Asian (which I will refer to as NA from this point on since Native American DNA often comes up as East Asian) segment. This is the first hint that my ancestry stories might have some seed of truth.
speculative:
0.1% Sub-Saharan African
0.2% NA
conservative:
0.1% Sub-Saharan African
0.1% NA
She doesn't have the bigger 18 segment, but she does have the smaller 16 one, upon gedmatch painting (which I show below) you can see it's actually a bit bigger than my mother's segment on 16). The big surprise of course being a segment that holds up to conservative (though only at 0.1%) on chromosome 2. So my next step was to get my grandmother's results tested on 23andme as well to compare, if I see the same segment then it might be bigger and more likely to be legitimate and up her line, if not it might still be legitimate but would be up my grandfathers line.
Linda Speculative
Linda Conservative
Edna (my grandmother).
speculative:
0.1% Sub-Saharan African
0.4% NA
conservative:
0.1% Sub-Saharan African
0.3% NA
So looking at the chromosomes you can see she doesn't have the 18th segment that was by far the largest one on my moms DNA, so that definitely came from my grandfathers line. Interestingly she does have a different SSA (Sub-Saharan African) segment that holds up to conservative (though only at 0.1%) on chromosome 7 (which my mom inherited and it shows up as SSA on her too), if this is legitimate then I likely have an African ancestor up both of my mother's lines, that was a big surprise. Secondly she comes up 0.4% NA that holds up at 0.3% under conservative. This definitely lends much stronger evidence that it's very likely I have Native American ancestry up my grandmother's line, but like the African DNA it's far back, 200-300 years, maybe more... This could fit with my ancestry since all my lines go back to colonial times and multiple lines go back to the frontiers, including some that go up to very early norther Georgia on land that was freshly taken from the Cherokee (and I've founded intermarried lines that mixed with Native Americans).
Edna Speculative
Edna Conservative
Here's more images I used to dissect the data further on gedmatch, all against Eurogenes K=15V2. It gives a much larger look at what was shown above.
So after all of this I feel confident enough (unless/until I find something to suggest otherwise) to say a few things. Of course these could be wrong, but so can paper trails due to adoption etc... but based off my digging I feel comfortable enough to make the following assumptions now
1) I have a Sub-Saharan African ancestor up my grandfathers line, probably 200-300 years ago or so, considering my ancestry this makes it likely a slave ancestor, though could be a free person of color too (though many of them descend from slaves themselves)
2) I have a Native American ancestor up my grandmothers line probably in the same timeframe
3) I -might- have a Sub-Saharan ancestor up my grandmothers like as well
What's interesting is I've found 3 DNA matches on that larger SSA segment on chr. 18. They all paint the same SSA on gedmatch (one actually has as segment about twice the size as my mothers even and comes up about 2% total SSA DNA on gedmatch) One person is adopted so no tree, the other tree I haven't found overlap, though lines that go back to early Georgia, Carolinas, and Virginia, so somewhere we match. If I can every figure out where we overlap that will be the first step in finding my African ancestor. I feel confident I'll get a rough idea one day, the more people who test the more my odds increase.
I've found 2 other people who share that larger Native American segment in my grandmother, one I've found two ancestral couples we match in the early 1800s. The second one I found one couple, which was one of the same as the first. So unless we all three share another ancestral couple none of us have mapped, or the second match actually shares the other match the first one has but hasn't mapped (though based on their tree seems unlikely) I've found where the NA DNA comes from, at least one of those people had some sort of reasonable NA DNA in them to pass it down.
That ancestral couple turns out to be an Andrew M Russell m. Polly Stuart, both born around 1780, and my earliest record for them is a marriage record in Jackson County, Georgia. This is Northern Georgia, a county (one of many in Northern Georgia) created from former Cherokee land. Ironically in a nearby county on my grandfather's line I've found a many times great uncle who married a NA woman and was registered on the Cherokee lands (years after being married) as a white man married to a NA women with NA children... so I know on these lands that were freshly taken from the Cherokee there were intermixing and it seems one of those two ancestors of mine were some part NA themselves (or likely).
Unfortunately I dead end on that couple. Polly Stuart might trace back to South Carolina based on her census records and childrens census records (1880+ they list mother and father's birth state, though often inaccurate). Unfortunately Andrew died in 1848 so no 1850+ census to get his listed birth state. His eldest child with Polly Stuart lived until 1909 though (my ancestor) and she listed her father's birth state as Georgia in both 1880 and 1900. If so then he definitely was born in Georgia very early on (1780-ish) when there was heavy intermingling with Native Americans. Either way this is where the trail runs cold, for now.
So like every genealogical discovery it always leaves more questions than it answers... and any answers are always open to further investigation... In any case I figured I'd share my journey so far
Interesting results but I wanted to put out there that for the most part your 200-300 year old African ancestor was probably not a slave but more likely an African indentured servant. Slavery wasn't as solidified in the USA in particular until the 1700s, even in the south and especially in VA of which you mentioned above.
Not sure if you have researched "black codes" and "black laws" in regards to early colonial times, but in the colonies, starting in the late 1600s Europeans were concerned with the intermingling of poor Europeans and African indentured servants. That is why slavery was established based on color and why slavery was passed down by the condition of the mother - it was to make all children born by black women to be slaves. In the mid 1600s in some colonies (PA and VA I know for sure as I have family lines in those states and have done extensive research into their black codes/laws and miscegenation laws) relationships between black men and white women were outlawed due to the "growing mulatto population" in those areas. Many free persons of color were born of white women and many of those children, especially grandchildren "passed" into white society after more and more black laws/codes were passed to restrict the freedom of colored individuals.
President Obama's mother is descendant from such a pairing - black man/white woman, both indentured servants. The comedienne Wanda Sykes is also descendant from such a pairing and many of the persons who deem themselves "melungeon" have similar ancestry even though many dont' want to admit it.
On a side note, I have heard that Scandinavians kept excellent records of their population. Have you done any sort of genealogical research into that side?
I know many white Americans find other ancestry other than European interesting, but being black and having so many issues with tracing my own ancestry (I am currently going through the entire black population of "Jones/Johns'" in the state of MD in the 1830s - ugh!!!) I am always intrigued by what is available in Europe and how easy information is able to be found from one's ancestral homeland.
I am paranoid about selling my DNA and the more I think about it, I don't think I will ever do sites like 23andMe so I am just doing the traditional route so far, which is why I hope to finally find one of my white ancestors so I can do some European research. We have a lot of "mulattos" (I had quite a few "free persons of color" in my ancestry, they are the Jones' I'm searching in MD) but I have yet to link them with a specific European ancestor.
Interesting results but I wanted to put out there that for the most part your 200-300 year old African ancestor was probably not a slave but more likely an African indentured servant. Slavery wasn't as solidified in the USA in particular until the 1700s, even in the south and especially in VA of which you mentioned above.
Not sure if you have researched "black codes" and "black laws" in regards to early colonial times, but in the colonies, starting in the late 1600s Europeans were concerned with the intermingling of poor Europeans and African indentured servants. That is why slavery was established based on color and why slavery was passed down by the condition of the mother - it was to make all children born by black women to be slaves. In the mid 1600s in some colonies (PA and VA I know for sure as I have family lines in those states and have done extensive research into their black codes/laws and miscegenation laws) relationships between black men and white women were outlawed due to the "growing mulatto population" in those areas. Many free persons of color were born of white women and many of those children, especially grandchildren "passed" into white society after more and more black laws/codes were passed to restrict the freedom of colored individuals.
That's entirely possible. Part of the problem is since DNA inheritence is random I really don't know. All I know is that it is at least a good 100+ years back otherwise I'd have inherited more DNA. One reference point is my mother has a match on the biggest African segment and that person has a segment twice as large as hers. His total African DNA is about 2% on gedmatch, while on gedmatch my mom's total SSA typically comes in about 0.8%-1.2% or so (it's picking up every potential fragment, while 23andme is filtering out a lot of the very small bits). I'll round to 1% for simplicity, then my SSA comes in at about 0.5%. The person she matches with 2% is about a generation above her (though this is the only segment they share so a fairly distant cousin). But ironically that works to each generation back the DNA doubles, now that may and probably doesn't follow that rule backwards, but statistically it would average more or less like that so as an exercise I can follow it back. Basically it takes about 7 generations of doubling until it hit an ancestor with 64% African DNA (meaning 8th and above 100%), someone who likely wouldn't be able to pass. 7 generations would put it back to an ancestor born around 1780 or so.
In reality I don't know if my African ancestor up that line was from 1600s or 1700s, though due to the above and the fact that the single segment is even larger on my mother's match I think it suggests 1700s is a more likely bet and though it could be from an indentured black person or a freed person of color, coming from the 1700s I would say most likely it was a slave, though until I find out who it was I really just don't know.
A lot of my lines up my grandfather's branch dead end around that time period, basically late 1700s and early 1800s... though not uncommon due to records becoming even more scarce that far back.
As you mention one of the more complex cases comes from mulatto children born to a white woman. I have done some research along these lines as well. A lot of the areas would "bind" the child out as an apprentice/ward to a household. Depending on the intention of the person they were bound to this could be a more of an adoption situation or little better than slavery. One potential connection I've found was a man in North Carolina who not only vouched for an African American who served in the Revolution with him, but also had many mulatto bastard children bound to him (and due to him supporting the black war vet I'd guess he was probably doing it to take care of them vs exploiting as much of the mulatto bastard "bound" cases were).
This is my grandfather's paternal line actually (Bryant/Bryan), I've submitted a Y DNA test for him so when the results come in I'll see if that's the correct line or not. Some references to that person in particular, a William Bryan of North Carolina:
Here are various genealogies mentioning mulatto children bound to William Bryan Abel-Angus
This service alongside whites established long lasting friendships. William Bryan, a Justice of
the Peace for Johnston County, testified in court for Holiday Haithcock in support of his
application for a Revolutionary War pension on 21 September 1834 explaining that
Another line is a Higginbotham line that goes back to Virginia, one branch of that family emancipated a slave and there's a lot of documentation of that person: Vondaleeera-Ann-Artis - User Trees - Genealogy.com
His former owner submitted a letter to support him when he didn't want to leave the state (which was required by Virginia law for freed slaves):
Quote:
Dear Sir, In reply to yours of this date
regarding the character of Archy Carey (a free man of color) I have to
say that I purchased him when he was about 8 or 10 years of age; and
that I owned him for many years, during which time he behaved himself
much properly, and finding him to be an honest, and faithful servant.
I was induced to set him free, since which time I have heard no
complaints against him for misconduct. If this alone will avail Archy
any thing before the Legislature you are at liberty to use it. With
respect, signed Tho Higginbotham
Though is petition to stay was rejected he had 135 people sign the petition in supporting him.
Now this line specifically is too recent to likely be connected to me, but it does show how complex and grey many areas are and potential lines of mine that were involved in those grey areas.
Quote:
On a side note, I have heard that Scandinavians kept excellent records of their population. Have you done any sort of genealogical research into that side?
I haven't found a relatively recent direct Scandinavian ancestry for me. The closest I have is some Dutch immigrants that came over to New Amseterdam and thereabouts. So the only genealogy I have on Scandinavian goes through the single British royal line I've found which then connects far back to Vikings etc.
My wife does have a lot of relatively recent Scandinavian immigrants though, she's was raised Mormon born in Utah, and most of her ancestry immigrated to the US from Europe in the 1850s-1860s. Her mothers line is probably at least 50-70% of direct immigrants from Denmark. She isn't as interested in genealogy as me however and hasn't dug up those lines oversees however. Maybe I'll have to dig into that myself since I haven't looked at their records before.
Quote:
I know many white Americans find other ancestry other than European interesting, but being black and having so many issues with tracing my own ancestry (I am currently going through the entire black population of "Jones/Johns'" in the state of MD in the 1830s - ugh!!!) I am always intrigued by what is available in Europe and how easy information is able to be found from one's ancestral homeland.
I can't relate but I can definitely sympathize with that. Black genealogy is full of more brick walls than any other type of genealogy in the US. Though European genealogy is relative better it's often full of more brick walls than not, that includes the states. Tracing ancestry before the 1850s is very difficult due to the census records not including full family breakdowns. It takes finding a massive amount of land records, tax records, bible records, etc... and then you *might* be able to make an educated *guess* on where the line comes.
Some lines however are much easier to follow. I have found multiple lines back to an immigrant ancestor, though that's still probably less than 5% of my whole tree. Oversees European records are actually not very useful. If your lucky enough to have an immigrant ancestor who left records in colonial US about where and when they were born you *might* find a baptismal or christening record back in Europe, if it's a common name however you can only guess which ancestor is yours. Beyond that often is impossible and usually that doesn't even happen.
The only real European lines that can trace back concretely (minus the very rare exception) are those who connect to afluent families, back up to nobility and royalty. These are the "gateway ancestors" and though *many* online trees of Americans connect to them the vast majority I've found are false. When first digging into genealogy I found and copied so many false lines here in the states it was kind of ridiculous. Since then I've pruned most of them and have only found a single gateway line that I can confidently trace to here in the states.
White US genealogy is much easier then black genealogy, but the extra info mostly gives you a lot of possibilities. Often your stuck with is this person of the same name or surname related or not game... DNA here has helped a lot though and will continual to help.
My mother's ancestry I've been able to go back quite far on most lines, ironically my fathers tree I've mapped doesn't go much further back than most african american trees.
Quote:
I am paranoid about selling my DNA and the more I think about it, I don't think I will ever do sites like 23andMe so I am just doing the traditional route so far, which is why I hope to finally find one of my white ancestors so I can do some European research. We have a lot of "mulattos" (I had quite a few "free persons of color" in my ancestry, they are the Jones' I'm searching in MD) but I have yet to link them with a specific European ancestor.
Very good work here (as you discussed in your other post). You've made a compelling argument. Those segments with the W African and East Asian are probably real.
Edit: They are inherited with other family members, those segments. I've seen cases where an African/East Asian/Native American show up in a child but not in parents.
Thanks... Yeah, all of those reasons have lead me to feel it's more likely legitimate than not (the SSA I'm much more confident in due to the Eurogenes author taking a look at that part of my mothers DNA and being quite confident on that).
I'm less confident on Native American segments, but if 23andme feels it's 90% confident and as you say I can see those segments paint across close family as well as two distant cousin relations (who paint the same NA ethnicity) I'm now in the "more likely than not" situation.
Fortunately I've been able to likely trace that NA segment two a specific ancestral couple... They were married in Northern Georgia, which means the NA could be Cherokee. Also Andrew Russell might have previously resided in Baldwin County, Georgia which is right on former Creek land, so those are my two most likely tribes right now. Of course it could still be a couple generations back from them so who knows.
I've been very fortunate that I actually have some early pictures of this family line... of Mary/Polly Stewart and some of her daughters. Pictures and guessing physical traits are a horrible way to try and identify any ethnicity, especially Native American, but part of me posting this is purely just to share with others all the data I've been gathering and seeing, gather input, and hopefully this progression of my own might help others (if nothing else to see someone else trying to look at the same things they are), so here are some pictures up that line.
Attached are some pictures of Mary Stewart and three of her daughters, ironically only pictures of the women survive. Also, to be completely honest the women of this line (most of them at least) have very sharp and distinct features. If the NA DNA is true and I have it right then her three daughters should have a moderate amount of NA DNA (no way to tell how much since going that far the DNA would start making big jumps, so her daughters could be 10-20% NA while Mary might be 40-50%, the percentages could be higher).
I don't know if Andrew or Mary had the NA DNA (theoretically they both could actually) but some of her daughters definitely inherited some of her features. Here is a list of the people in the pictures attached:
* Mary Stewart - There is one picture of her, the mother of the following women
* Alpha Russell - This was my ancestor, a daughter of Andrew Russell and Mary Stewart, I have three pictures of her (including a fairly creepy one like some old pictures can be, with light reflecting off the eyes adding a glow lol), Alpha definitely had some very distinct features, she was married to Gabriel Pool (who is in one of those pictures, ironically he seems very pale compared to her and he's almost white washed in a picture lol, so very white)
* Mildred Russell - a daughter of Mary and sister of Alpha
* Lucinda Russell - a daughter of Mary and sister of Alpha
Interesting results but I wanted to put out there that for the most part your 200-300 year old African ancestor was probably not a slave but more likely an African indentured servant. Slavery wasn't as solidified in the USA in particular until the 1700s, even in the south and especially in VA of which you mentioned above.
Not sure if you have researched "black codes" and "black laws" in regards to early colonial times, but in the colonies, starting in the late 1600s Europeans were concerned with the intermingling of poor Europeans and African indentured servants. That is why slavery was established based on color and why slavery was passed down by the condition of the mother - it was to make all children born by black women to be slaves. In the mid 1600s in some colonies (PA and VA I know for sure as I have family lines in those states and have done extensive research into their black codes/laws and miscegenation laws) relationships between black men and white women were outlawed due to the "growing mulatto population" in those areas. Many free persons of color were born of white women and many of those children, especially grandchildren "passed" into white society after more and more black laws/codes were passed to restrict the freedom of colored individuals.
President Obama's mother is descendant from such a pairing - black man/white woman, both indentured servants. The comedienne Wanda Sykes is also descendant from such a pairing and many of the persons who deem themselves "melungeon" have similar ancestry even though many dont' want to admit it.
On a side note, I have heard that Scandinavians kept excellent records of their population. Have you done any sort of genealogical research into that side?
I know many white Americans find other ancestry other than European interesting, but being black and having so many issues with tracing my own ancestry (I am currently going through the entire black population of "Jones/Johns'" in the state of MD in the 1830s - ugh!!!) I am always intrigued by what is available in Europe and how easy information is able to be found from one's ancestral homeland.
I am paranoid about selling my DNA and the more I think about it, I don't think I will ever do sites like 23andMe so I am just doing the traditional route so far, which is why I hope to finally find one of my white ancestors so I can do some European research. We have a lot of "mulattos" (I had quite a few "free persons of color" in my ancestry, they are the Jones' I'm searching in MD) but I have yet to link them with a specific European ancestor.
I'm actually very skeptical of that. Yes, that's what the "paper research" shows us (and, acknowledging that the paper research in this instance is far from being conclusive), but I need to see some DNA confirmation from Obama's white relatives that confirms this before accepting that story.
To the OP: good work! I love reading about others finding as much joy learning about their ancestry as I do.
Additionally I'll add that running my grandmother's DNA on gedmatch against Eurogenes K13 she comes up the following percentages of ethnicities that often proxy for Native American:
Lots of people in your situation have been able to trace their "hidden" african ancestry in this well researched book. Look for distinctive surnames, and you may be able to find it.
So recently I made a pretty signficant discover in regards to this DNA of mine. I am very fortunate that paper trail research and DNA research for an ancestor of mine has already been done fairly in-depth by others.
Ironically I made a discovery regarding African ancestry on my grandmother's (mother's mother, Edna in the original data set) ancestry, even though her African DNA was the much lesser compared to my grandmother (SSA dna that shows up in my mother and her siblings but not my grandmother).
I have been verifying some of my grandmother's paper trail ancestry, codifying it, and being a bit more thorough in some branches. That lead me to verify an ancestral line I hadn't looked much into before. I had been doing some of my paternal Langley research in the Newberry/Orangeburg/Edgefield district regions of South Carolina in the 1700s-1800s and realized a few lines up my mother's ancestry lead to that same reagion. Specifically I was researching the surnames of Pool, Peterson, and Busby that lead back. That lead me to a very interesting ancestor named Jacob Busby. My grandmother's line is as such:
Edna Jean Pool daughter of
Willie Albert Pool son of
Odker Elisha Pool son of
Louisa Frances May daughter of
Elisah Francis M May son of
Jane "Jincy" Busby (alternate spelling Buzbee)
daughter of Jacob Busby
Jacob Busby was born around 1760 near or in Orangeburg South Carolina. He served in the American Revolution (he left an interesting account when applying and recieving his pension, including that he was captured as a younger man by loyalists, escaped, and then joined the rebel army). He went to St. Clair, Alabama before 1830 and died 1839.
What's extremely interesting is two male descendants of Jacob Busby have been Y DNA tested. They come up with the haplogroup E1b1a8a or via other nomenclature V38 > M2 > U175 > U209.
This is interesting since E1b1a is the the most common Sub-Saharan African haplogroup as well as the most common haplogroup among African Americans. Here's a map of E1b1a's distribution in Africa:
Even more though Jacob Busby never identified as anything other than white, likley Busby relatives in South Carolina were possibly considered not white (Jacob's father John was a witness proclaiming propable nephews were "white" despite what others might have said) and nearby Busbys that may or may not be related were listed as mulatto and free persons of color.
Of course the Y DNA proves that somewhere up this Busby line leads to an African ancestor exported out of SSA.
The sub-branch of U209 specifically has some intersting West African coast frequencies:
Quote:
This subclade has very high frequencies of over fifty percentages in Cameroonian populations of Bassa and Bakaka, possibly indicating place of origin. However, E-U209 is widely found at lower frequencies in West and Central African countries surrounding Cameroon and Gabon.[6] Brucato et al. (2010) found the SNP in a populations of Ahizi (in Ivory Coast) 38.8% (19/49), Yacouba (Ivory Coast) 27.5% (11/40), and Beninese 6.5% (5/77) respectively.[48]
The paper trail mostly dead ends at the father of Jacob Busby, a John Busby who was in South Carolina before him and likely born around 1738.
There are two older Busbys in that region that are potential fathers, one of them who had spent time previously in Virginia.
The plot thickens even more in that these Y DNA Busbys match extremely closely (I belive 66/67 markers) to some Ivey/Ivy/Ivie lines from Virginia. Those Ivey lines also include recorded mulatos around the 1700s.
They have an excellent write up about how the paternal ancestor of these Iveys and Busbys could have been introduced into their line: Ivey-Ivie-Ivy Family
I personally lean towards their #4 scenario:
Quote:
4) COLONIAL VIRGINIA ORIGIN -> FAMILY OTHER THAN THAT OF ADAM IVIE, CHARLES CITY/PRINCE GEORGE CO, VA : The Ivey/Ivie/Ivy E1b1a could have arisen in a somewhat later ~1700 AD period in Colonial Virginia as the offspring of a union between an African and a white female Ivey/Ivie/Ivy. For this scenario, it is necessary to suggest a list of the more likely females from the lines of the early Ivey/Ivie/Ivy immigrants. One plausible candidate might be Elizabeth Ivey (c1678 – aft1695), daughter of George SR, and grand-daughter of Thomas Ivey of Norfolk Co, VA (see section 2.7 of this document). The likely mixed-race offspring of such a union could have been Adam of Edgecombe Co, NC, Thomas, and Joseph as documented by Paul Heinegg as well as Robert Baird. One point in favor of the "Elizabeth Hypothesis" is the petition by George Ivie and others who signed a petition to repeal a 1691 Virginia law against interracial marriages. This would have been George JR who would have been the brother of this Elizabeth.
A second candidate might be a daughter of Gilbert Ivie, son of Adam of Prince George/Charles City Co, VA. This Gilbert has long been a mystery to researchers as he appeared to disappear in the northern counties of North Carolina but in the same approximate area where the first mixed-race Ivey/Ivie/Ivys appear. This suggestion has arisen from the observation that early family researchers such as Robert Allison Ivey connected the lines of Henry and Charles of Granville Co, NC, to Gilbert. Perhaps the connection was closer to the truth than some of us have previously believed (since Robert Allison Ivey furnished no documentation) but to a female descendent of Gilbert. Several of the participants in the Y-DNA Surname Project descend from Charles of Granville Co and have the E1b1a Haplogroup.
Basically that there was a non-paternal event iwht an African descended man with an Ivey woman. Researchers are still unsure on how the Busby and Ivey lines converge, was it Ivey -> Busby... Busby -> Ivey, it's even entirely possible an African and not white lineage connects these families (maybe each family had non-paternal events with African servants or slaves).
In any case in the scenario detailed in #4 I find the fact that a George Ivie in Virginia signed a petition in 1699 to revoke a law established in 1691 banning interacial marriages. This case and these Iveys are listed on the Home Page website.
Obviously an Ivie was concerned about allowing interacial marriage at precicsely the right around of time the mulatto Ivey branch began and also right around the time the Busby line dead ends too.
Not really relevant but under the category of amazing coincidence... that George Ivie was likely married to an Elizabeth Langley, she belonging to the Langley family of Norfolk Virginia, a line of Langleys many related trees of my own paternal Langley line suspect we connect to. In fact she may be the sister/daughter/aunt of an paternal Langley ancestor of mine. A small genealogical world.
Despite the origin of this African Y DNA (which with more DNA testing and research maybe it will be discovered) I am very lucky to be able to find a paper trail to an ancestor with Y DNA proving his paternal line West-African ancestry. I know I have at least two sources of African ancestry (the larger amount of DNA I and my mother inherited being from my grandmother), but this confirmed and narrows down one of those for me.
On top of that this is intersting since it's African Y DNA coming through an African male, which was much more rare than coming throug a female African ancestor.
I am very fortunate that all of this research and DNA work has already been done by others and I just get to stumble into it.
Interesting results but I wanted to put out there that for the most part your 200-300 year old African ancestor was probably not a slave but more likely an African indentured servant. Slavery wasn't as solidified in the USA in particular until the 1700s, even in the south and especially in VA of which you mentioned above.
It's true that hereditary bondage was not instant in the colonials, but it did exist well before 1700. I believe it was 1662 when they passed a law in Virginia that the status of the child would be that of the mother. This was the first of hereditary slavery as far as I know. It likely didn't take 80+ years to spread to other colonials. By 1688, the first anti-slavery petition was written and signed in Germantown, Philadelphia, which surely wouldn't be necessary if slavery wasn't even "solidified" yet.
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