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Tracing Your Roots: Our Family Matriarch Was a White Indentured Servant
Untangling the origins of Virginian ancestors whose lives crossed boundaries of race, freedom and the law. Dear Professor Gates: I am a descendant of Catherine Donathan, who was a white servant to Robert Bristow of Virginia. She had a relationship with a black slave from another plantation. She had a child, William. She has been…
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Tracing Your Roots: Is My Spouse Kin to a Man Who Freed 81 Slaves?
Sleuthing the tale of a “bachelor” slave owner who freed those enslaved at Virginia’s Tynes Plantation in his will. Dear Professor Gates: I have been trying to research the connection between the family of my father-in-law, Timothy George Tynes (April 13, 1927-November 1983), of Cambridge, Mass., and a slave listed in an 1802 will. The…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
