Word: slaving
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Contrary to myth, blacks don't always carry the names of their family's last slaveholder: slaves could change hands numerous times without changing their surname, points out Tony Burroughs, who teaches genealogy at Chicago State University. In the case of biracial children born to slaves, it is often impossible to tell if the father was the slave owner, the overseer or a relative of the slave owner given liberties with the slave (see story, next page). Jewish researchers run into complications too: traditionally Jews did not have surnames; they were called, for instance, Isaac, son of Jacob. Only beginning...
...origins revealed. But lately it has become fashionable to be a first-fleet Australian. Likewise, in the new South Africa, nonwhite ancestry for an Afrikaner is not only politically correct but socially advantageous. Former President Frederik Willem de Klerk, once a defender of apartheid, now admits to a Bengali-slave forebear. In the U.S., blacks and whites are cooperating in joint genealogy searches. Says Colorado land appraiser James Rogers, a Caucasian who unearthed a slave ancestor: "It certainly brought home to me that we are all related...
...easier for African-Americans to talk about their roots these days than it was even a decade ago. People then didn't openly debate the slave descendants of Thomas Jefferson, discuss black slave owners or see whites sitting alongside blacks searching for their shared African ancestors...
Practically speaking, slave transactions provide solid genealogical connections. Slave names are recorded in wills, bills of sale and even dowries. Records from slave-ship cargo lists, captain's logbooks, ship route maps, white family histories and oral histories once available only in obscure books and dusty archives are available today on computer databases and widely disseminated via the Internet and on CD-ROMS...
...more is on the way. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize deteriorating pages of diaries, autobiographies, primary texts and slave narratives for inclusion in the university's database...