The Cookout

There is some family story that one of my female ancestors married a white boy from Wales in the late 1860s. 2 brothers left Wales, one married her. The family disowned him. She was an ex slave or something or her parents were or something like that.

Anyway, my Auntie moved to LA and that's her maiden name. She said she was at some estate sale buying some antiques and struck up a conversation with some white woman because they were bidding on some things.

From the convo they found out they had the same maiden name and its a unique enough spelling that its not common. (Nerd moment: Davis and Jones are common surnames from Wales, not my name though). Anyway, this white lady said her family story was that 2 brothers left Wales. And they 'lost touch' with the other brother. If this story is true, we think the family dis-owned him.

Anyway, they both thought it was very unlikely that they were not related. Both stories were too similar and the name was not usually spelt that way (there are other common ways to spell it). This white lady was introducing my aunt as her 'cousin' at some dinner party when my aunt was invited to their home.

On the other side of the family, I was doing a book report and my uncle said we were enslaved on a sugar plantation. A Scottish one and our surname on that side is Scottish but a different name than the plantation and his guess was that it was from a woman there who married to that name.

One of these days I'll do some deep digging. Recently my cousin did a DNA test.
19% Nigerian
18% Cameroon, Congo and western Bantus
15% Ivory Coast and Ghana
11% Benin and Togo (hoping no Dahomey blood in that)
8% Ireland (that's a bit too high for my liking)
5% Senegal
5% Norway (I'm like wtf?)
4% Mali (I want some of that Mansa Musa stacks)

When I visited Ghana, the locals were talking to me in their language. I was saying "I am not Ghanian, sorry". Me and the hotel food manager were cool from jump and talked history, etc, and he said when he first saw me he swore I was Ghanaian (Ashanti specifically) and my parents left for America. He said my facial features were 100 percent Ghana as well as my body shape. Hmm...seems he was possibly right.

Bmick#8 said:

How far can you trace back your lineage? I'm playing detective on this ancestry website and pieced together enough info to find my great great great grandfather on my dad's side in cumberland county, NC. I could only go back to 1870, but my family sat right next door to a white family with the same name. For occupation, it either read farmer, laborer, or housekeeper......unfortunately, that's the only limb I know well enough. My grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side were both born n the hill country, not far from Houston and San Antonio, where did those slaves come from? New orleans? Tennesee? its kinda overwhelming because I'm tryna stay present and connect the dots at the same time. I need to process just this one part.....long story short....the war ended, slavery ended, and my dad's family stayed around.........that's all I'm gonna say about that. I just gotta see if I can piece together how we got to Texas on that side of my family. Unfortunately, my dad's mom died before I was born, all I know is that she was part Cherokee and had big cheekbones from the one picture I saw of her.

Anyway,
any of ya'll do some digging and find some interesting truths? You find it helpful at all?

Click to expand...

My cousins in Charlotte, Raleigh, Kings Mountain & Spartanburg are digging.
My eldest daughter's collaborating with them from CA, using the information that my Grandmother's, on both sides of our family gave me. I can hardly wait! There's also more Black Ancestry sites now.
websites/

I would love to know what my lineage is. I believe it goes pretty far back, but I wouldn't know the first place to look. I will check out your suggestions though GwynShivers they all seem pretty promising.

I was going to try out those services that help you figure out your DNA, but I heard rumors of it being used for other purposes.

Stan Zero said:

I would love to know what my lineage is. I believe it goes pretty far back, but I wouldn't know the first place to look. I will check out your suggestions though GwynShivers they all seem pretty promising.

I was going to try out those services that help you figure out your DNA, but I heard rumors of it being used for other purposes.

Click to expand...

You're right, cloning for one.