Dear Professor Gates: I have been trying to trace my mother’s father’s line. The furthest I can go back is to my great-grandfather Roscoe Lewis (Louis) Nelson Sr. His death certificate states that he was born in Moultrie, Ga., on April 18, 1907. His parents are listed as John Nelson and Mary Bryant. There is a family…

My maternal grandfather is Grover Cleveland Ryman Jr.  He was adopted sometime after age 7. His birth mother was white, and his father was Indian. We have been told by my mother that my grandfather’s parents were married in Virginia, when this was illegal. My great-grandfather Grover Cleveland Ryman Sr. was run off, and my…

My paternal great-grandfather, Sylvester Collins, lived in Baker County, Ga., for most of his life. He was sent to prison in the late 1920s. He is said to have died in prison five years later. I have been unable to locate a death certificate for him. I wrote a letter to the Georgia Department of…

I’m seeking help confirming a family legend about the origins of my late mother, Helen Sarah Louise Davis, on her father’s side. Her parents were Jennie Eleanor Marshal, from Pensacola, Fla., and a man named Charles Call. Family lore says that Call was married to a woman whom he could not divorce because she was…

My great-grandfather was Thomas Carter, a black American who came to Wales, U.K., and married a white girl named Susanna Evans on Oct. 5, 1871, at Calvary Chapel Pontypridd in a village called Treforest, where he worked in the local ironworks. He is on the Wales 1871 census, living in 226a behind the Swan Inn in the…

The paternal second great-grandfather of my wife, Donna Paulette Wysinger Wilson, is Edmond Edward Wysinger. He was a historical figure in California, having brought a lawsuit (Wysinger v. Crookshank) in 1890 to desegregate California schools so that his son Arthur could attend the local high school. We traced Edmond back to South Carolina, where he…

I have been working on tracing my maternal grandfather’s line using Ancestry.com. I can say with confidence that I traced my great-grandfather George Biggs to the 1900 census, which also lists my grandfather “Levy” as his 10-year-old son. Going backward, I believe a white Biggs family (the patriarch named Morris), also from Pike County, Mo.,…

Could it be that I am descended from Margaret Garner, the real-life inspiration for the main character in Toni Morrison’s book Beloved? Born in 1834 in Boone County, Ky., Garner was an escaped slave who attempted to murder her four children rather than allow them to be captured and returned to slavery. In 1856, Garner and her…

Growing up, I saw a picture of my great-great-grandparents, and it has fascinated me. My great-great-grandfather John Dow was a white man born in Arkansas. He left Arkansas around age 11 in search of his father, Samuel Ward, in Mississippi. He eventually married Eddie Smith, a black woman, and had 10 children. I can’t find…

I’m African American, but about a year ago I received the results of genetic testing, which indicated that I’m 5 percent Ashkenazi Jew. My European genetic makeup is around 15 percent. Family lore (which, of course, can be notoriously unreliable) shared stories about possible Native American ancestry, but Native American ancestry wasn’t part of my…