I'm at a family reunion in West Texas (Midland/Odessa), and some of my older cousins have traced our lineage back to 1815, when my ancestors were slaves in Tennessee. I'm amazed because they actually have a picture of the slaveowners....where that side of my family got their last name from (maternal side). So it made me curious to see how far others can go back. I think being able to backtrack to the slaveowners is about as good as you can get for a black family, unless you are writing Roots, lol. Does anyone else have some good stories to tell and how was your history recorded....or how did ya find it?
I'll answer seriously. I can trace three lines of my family tree to pre-revolutionary war... one line goes back to the mid 1600's. The fourth line, my mother's maternal line I can't get past where they moved to the US from Germany in the late 1800's I am a DAR - Daughter of the American Revolution.
My Y-chromosome DNA results identified me as belonging to haplogroup R1a1. That haplogroup traces its ancestry back anywhere from 10,000-15,000 or more years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R1a1 http://www.dadamo.com/wiki/wiki.pl/Haplogroup_R1a1_(Y-DNA) My peeps may have been the first to domesticate the horse. I feel honored. I need to do my mtDNA test eventually.
Watched a program years ago on PBS called African American Lives that had black celebrity guests and traced their ancestry They'd usually have slave roots to Africa, and they'd fly the celebrity to the African city & village of their ancestry. It was pretty neat. Some of the celebs probably felt compelled to put on an image like they really cared maybe...but you could see even a guy like Chris Tucker that it was a truly humbling experience. Oprah was all into it and appreciative. Forget the guest but he was all Mr Pro Black back to Africa type and 90% of his ancestry was in Europe lol. One of the best talks with my grandmother (RIP) was I asked her how far back we went. Got far back as great great great grandmother 1800's Ireland.
Much of my far back ancestry, and history thereof, disappeared in the Holocaust. That said, I do have a family tree on my mother's side that goes back to the late 1800's. And I do have the actual immigration paper work for when my grandfather on my fathers side came through Ellis Island in the teens...bot nothing before that.
I can go back to my GGG Grandfather who died in 1850. He was a sea captain who was the original owner of the famous Loyd steamship line and also supposedly built the first log cabin in Chicago. He voyaged his ship to the Republic of Texas, after finding a wife (who as a child was a flower girl at the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1819) in New Orleans. They married in Galveston in 1842. My GG Grandfather was born there later that year. The family soon moved to Tehuacana, TX then Ellis where he built the first jailhouse in Liberty County and a water mill in partnership with General Tarrant. He went off during the gold rush, got sick and died. His wife was left with the kids and had to use weapons to fight off Indians from her front door. She gained their respect and would cook for many Indian Chiefs in her home. Their daughter married a close friend of Davy Crockett. I stay ever loyal to their independent spirit.
Wow, that's amazing. Gotta love the Internet. I did a simple google search and traced the slavemasters family back to the 1600s, and there is a website with tons of contact info for those who helped put that together. I think I will reach out to some to see if they have any more records. Worth a shot....
Well, up until my mother, her ancestry was extremely well documented and it was massively frowned upon to marry anyone who was not British. So I'm the first of the "mutt" generation on my mom's side. But I'm a direct descendant of Oliver Cromwell.
I think I have got the prize on this one. Some relatives in India have gone all the way back to 600AD- about 50 generations - myself and my son are apparently somewhere on the tip of some leaf on that family tree in the picture... (of course India is very male dominated and so I think daughters weren't really included) http://www.mumbaimirror.com/index.a...11032502798ce7ede50§xslt=section&pageno=1
The really cool thing about it is that these names weren't found on the Internet all, but were just kept track of from generation to generation. It was also really interesting to see that my ancestors from the 1300's lived in the same region of Punjab (India/Pakistan) as my grandfather did.