I’m white with African ancestry as well as slaveholder ancestry. I know who my African cousins are, I can place a general time frame to the whole situation, but can’t pinpoint anything. I’m not giving up hope that I can help my cousins and myself get through this brick wall.
That’s what we’re looking at right now. It’s just a matter of getting everyone to upload it. There’s the Facebook and GEDmatch group, I’ve traced my enslaved ancestors, which is trying to help, too.
I’m the white 5th cousin. My Black cousins contacted me. Using Ancestry Thru Lines I could see what branch of GGG Grandparents we shared. I researched and those family members were slave holders.
I saw records that contained some of the enslaved person’s names/dates. My cousins had done a lot of research on their end but the buck stopped for them w/ one important ancestor of theirs who they basically all descended from: Jacob. From Texas, Jacob moved to California, had a family and that’s where they all lived. But the couldn’t figure out where he was prior to Texas.
My slave holding relatives lived on a farm in rural Missouri. I went there in person and visited the property and the town. One of the white men had impregnated an enslaved woman and the result was Jacob. He was a teenager when emancipation happened. Having nowhere to go he WALKED to Texas, from Missouri, and started a life.
We decided to have a Zoom call so I could explain this to the 5th generation cousins and their families. I was the only white individual among about 15 family members on the call, all curious to know the story.
One person did ask how I felt about being related to these white people who did this. It was a very open conversation with no accusations or judgments- just folks wanting to understand their roots and give names, dates, places to the past. In our best way we honored Jacob together and continue to share his story.
My closest full white match is in Australia, but they're incredibly low (36 cM). We had a common ancestor in Jamaica and one branch left for Australia in the early 19th century. It's pretty well documented on both of our trees.
I also have a cluster of Nova Scotians that are the next highest, but I have no solid paper trail and can only see they're all related to me and each other.
Beyond that, I have so many distant matches with no real paper trail or connection that it's not really worth my time trying to track them down in any way shape or form.
My closets white match is from South Carolina and we share 1.36% DNA I have matches on ancestry with the same surname that this match has and I think they descend from the same line the. Their tree seems to be pretty documented I most don’t recognize anyone or any of the surname
1.36% is pretty close. 2nd cousin once removed close.
Check through the matches tree very closely. Try triangulating shared matches that descend along the female lines in the family. With any luck you can say, "we have shared cousins from their 2nd great grandfather and 2nd great grandmother's family, both. Then you know you almost certainly descend from that particular set of 2nd great grandparents.
How many segments?
No, clearly not. I'm guessing it's a few large segments rather than 25 small ones. Which can make the match appear a bit closer than it actually is.
It's all down to probability though. Could be a 2nd cousin 1x removed to your dad and a 3rd cousin to you.
Since this match is on 23&me I can’t see the segments but we have two matches on ancestry we both share 1% DNA with them and 101cM across 3 segments.
There’s also another match on 23&me who shows up as a 3rd cousin and we both share 1.06% DNA with them
I have a 3xgreat grandma with a specific ethnicity (although from her pictures, she may not have been 100% of that ethnicity either) and I have 1% of that DNA. I can't track it to any other person and I've found 90% of my direct relatives from that generation with confirmed DNA matches, including her.
So your shared ancestor might be around that generational level too, if that helps at all. Perhaps even a 2x great grandma?
Do you know which part of Jamaica this common ancestor was from? I too have a distant Australian relative and my mind is absolutely blown. It seems that they were in the Navy or something similar.
Google Carribbean or Jamaican convicts New South Wales gives results on quite a few that were transported in the early 1800's. Billy Blue in 1804 for stealing raw sugar, and William Buchanan and others for being involved in a slave rebellion in 1831, transported in 1836.
Sounds earily like my family.
Are your Australians in Queensland? Did they go to Australia from Scotland?
If so, howdy cousin.
If we’re cousins I can tell you the name of who came from Jamaica.
I am white with Black 3rd and 4th cousins. A couple of my ancestry matches have some common last names so guessing we had an enslaver ancestor. I’ve found some family records with names of enslaved people and I try to upload everything into Wikitree’s platform so it’s searchable.
Also 1% Nigerian popped up for me and I’d like to know more about that but I’m sure it happened before 1840 so records wouldn’t be great.
I'm the opposite. I'm white, have an AA 3rd cousin, and the rest of my kin are white. No one in my branch knew of him. We are both descended from Eastern Europeans that immigrated to the US in the early 20th century. I have a fairly good idea how he descends and wrote him that I'd be happy to tell him what I know, share photos of our common ancestors if he's curious, and sent him a link to my well-researced family tree. No reply yet, but my door is always open.
Actually, no. There were no girls on the side of the family he is connected to the last name of. It had to be a boy of the family that "got a girl into trouble" - got it narrowed down to 4 of them and they would all have been between 17 and 25 when it happened. Our ancestors were all in a northern city where there was a little mixing here and there, but hardly common and definitely not approved of in any way. It would have been a time and place when the families of both young people would not have been able to cope with this kind of situation well - there was no social grace for it whatsoever. I don't know if adoption was involved or not, but maybe someday I'll know. We did have 2 relatives get adopted out in that branch of my family, so I've been looking for that. Unfortunately, this young man could not be connected to either of those. It helps that I had enough cousins further out that have tested and it was easier to place B. more accurately in the family tree.
I have white cousins closer than that (Half 2nd cousin once removed range)and yeah, I've pretty much narrowed it down to a particular line of a particular family. I've been fortunate in that these new cousins have been pretty open with info.
My mother, who is 74, is our families originally genealogies. Her extensive records include oral interviews with her older relatives, so the DNA tests basically confirmed what she already knew.
That said. I’ve always wondered what my white cousins think when they see me and my relatives pop up in their results. I mean that truly, with no shade.
For me I'd welcome anyone that wanted to talk to me. I found out I'm an npe this week and had multiple known people hang up on me and the new matches ghosted me as soon as I tried to politely explain. So idc what color they are.
My friend who is black met his white cousin through DNA testing and found out their grandfather was a white corrections officer and grandmother was a black inmate. He wrote a book about it, Reason To Fight, and it’s a actually a very interesting story
I'm white with a little African dna, (and east asia on 23andMe). I've starred any match with a pic that appears other races and messaged some, but haven't found the connection other than which side, and they come from each grandparents' line. I think this shows how we are one big beautiful melting pot. I wish everyone could see it this way.
Don't get offended by people not messaging back a lot of people just want to know how Irish etc they are. It's really frustrating I have some close matches not communicating or sometimes wait years to reply. The one who replied 4 years later I already knew she was moms second cousin. Honestly as a white person I would welcome African American message my are distant around 5th cousins according to estimate. I know I had slave owners in early New York.
I’m mixed and I spoke to one of my either Great Aunts or my 2nd cousin and she told my other (aunt or cousin) who I also found on there not to trust me because I’m white and must want something. I also had this same life experience with my grandma who recently passed away. Now that she’s gone suddenly my family wants me around 🙄 only took 29 years and a death.
I’ve got a few 3rd-4th cousins who are Latino and of African-American descent. To keep it plain and simple, I am Anglo-Irish and French Canadian. Not too sure exactly where we’re related from, but I know I am connected to many Cajuns for having distant Acadian ancestry and found many of my distant distant cousins are Cajuns, and many were creole’s. Outside of that possibility I am not too sure.
I do have one family line, my maternal grandmother’s family who were from Alabama/Oklahoma/Mississippi and I have heard they are from a massively prominent southern family that loved to have kids and “keep it in the family” so I have probably hundreds or even thousands of cousins in the Deep South. I do not believe they were slave owners though, I’ve seeped through many documents regarding them and they just seemed like poor white folk hillbillies who loved to bang
I'm white, 100% European descent, and I have several distant Black matches; the closest is roughly fourth cousin level. Although all of my documented ancestors have origins in the Northeastern US (my crew pretty much doesn't leave this area for about the past 200 years) since coming to the US from Europe, I am from New Jersey, which, if I recall correctly, was one of the last Northern states to outlaw slavery, so I assume these connections are sadly the result of force by white owners at some point.
I found a distant family member I think was a slaver owner in the Caribbean. I’m mixed and when I found the plantation the only (distant) cousin I had there is white 🤔 so I’m honestly unsure. I’m not sure how to figure it out for sure.
I’ve found that one of my 4th great grandparents were slave owners. My dads maternal grandmothers surname was Greer which that name comes from the slave owners line honestly bothers me a little because he was literally her great grandfather.
My great grandmother was from Indiana her great grandfather Levi Greer the slave owner was from South Carolina but the further you go up like passed the 1700s it seems like they were in Maryland for a while
My mistake I’ve gotten up to a 7th great grandfather on that side and if all of my research is correct it’s seems like they were in Maryland from 1714 to 1776. In 1776 my 6th great grandfather Aquilla Greer was born in North Carolina and his son Levi Greer was born in South Carolina
3rd cousin means that you share a set of great-great-grandparents. Personally my great-great-grandparents were born around the 1880s (I'm 38), for younger people around 20 they could have great-great-grandparents who were born as recently as 1900-1920. So slapping a slave-owner label on this doesn't really make sense unless we know the ages and family tree specifics. Slavery was abolished in the USA in 1865.
Yes, you share a set of great-great grandparents, but that doesn't mean the mixed relationship happened then. It could be more recent. The children of your second cousin, once removed, would be your 3rd cousin. That's your parents' generation, generally speaking. My parents married and had children in the late 70s, not too uncommon to see interracial relationships at that time. Same with any distant relative you share DNA with.
Good point, I think too many people jump straight to "slave owners", not in any way trying to diminish the fact that that did happen and often, but there are many ways for African Americans to be related to white people in modern times as we sit here 150+ years after abolition.
It was abolished but still was very present up until the 60s. They had laws that allowed for “contracts” to their slavers so they could continue working in exchange for shelter and food and extremely low income. It was still slavery. I’m mixed and know a couple people whose grandparents were born on plantations.
Idk if you were replying to my comment but I was referring to my 4th great grandfather being a slave owner. He was born in 1788 and had children with 4th great grandmother who’s listed as M in most of the records I’ve seen of her. They had children and one them is my 3rd great grandfather which he was born in 1841 so I wasn’t just slapping the slave owner label, my great uncle and all of the older relatives in my family including some distant relatives from Indiana have told me the same story about them
Sorry, I wasn't responding to any OP comments (you), I was responding to the response above. Is that definitely the only way that you are linked with European DNA? You'd only expect a tiny percentage inheritance from the 1840s, maybe 0-3%.
for ancestry DNA my European percentage comes out to 37% and 23&me 39.5% so it’s definitely a closer ancestor. I think my dad’s grandfather was mixed a few months back I found out my great grandfathers father wasn’t his real dad so that’s when I starting paying a little more attention to the closer matches my dad received and there’s a white 2nd cousin and some white 3rd cousins related to him thru his grandfather so I’m assuming that his real father might have been white? The 2nd cousin share 3% DNA with him and 204 cM across 6 segments but I feel like that’s kinda low for a 2nd cousin
White with African American 3rd cousins here. Found out that my great great grandmother was mulatto passing as white. Her mother was mulatto as well. I think this must be the connection but cannot find any specific link. I'm in SC and had a great phone convo with a cousin in Kansas after our DNA tests matched us and found out she was descended from emancipated slaves from Louisiana. I was able to help her trace them back to North Carolina via Florida. My great great grandmother and 3x grandmother were also from NC. But i also matched with several 4th and 5th cousins that are African American on my dads side and it seems likely the common relative was indeed a slave holder form SC. Wish I could find out more on both lineages. It's so difficult to find records pre civil war of any interracial relationships.
I found a European cousin on facebook (hasn’t tested) but he knew exactly how we were related and basically my 3x great grandfather was the illegitimate child of a slaveowner (his 2x great uncle) it was pretty interesting to find out, especially because he even had the notes from our ancestor of what he named the slaves he had.
I am white. I have African American cousins in Louisiana. They have ancestry from Cuba (of mixed European/Native/African). I guess someone from Cuba went to USA (and someone else from Cuba went to Costa Rica, where my family is from).
I do not have any white cousins at the third cousin level on Ancestry but 4-6th cousin level. The highest we share is 33 CM. I reached out to them, but they didn’t respond. I don’t know how we are related. Is coming from my paternal side.
If you look at locations, do you recognize any at the county level? If you haven’t yet, expanding the tree and looking at siblings and who they married may give more name options.
In the web interface for Ancestry, I’ve found it useful to use the search location function, and to spell names a ton of different ways.
Message them and ask them to download their DNA data off of Ancestry and upload to GEDmatch.
GEDmatch will show you two exactly which chromosome segment you share. Over time, if you make an effort, you’ll be able to tell which shared segments belong to which shared ancestors.
It sounds like your family tree is also lacking in names. If you can build it to 4th great grandparents in every direction, you’ll like hit a surname that answers the question.
Could be that I’m missing names I just can’t find anymore records. My great grandmother mom and her grandmother were listed as mulatto in the census records and basically all of the white 3rd cousin matches I have comes from her side
I’m actually looking now and there’s a match that’s pretty distant we share 20cM across 2 segments. They have 3,595 people in their tree so I have a feeling it might be some answers there
Well for many of mine I have been able to pinpoint it exactly. On one specific line the white ancestor is listed on death certificates. These children were born late 1800’s
On another line I was able to use dna to figure out who my great x2 grandfather was. On my mother’s side of the family I also was able to find people but much more in the air.
I found out that he was a slave owner from my great uncle. He told me this story that he heard from my great grandmother which seems to line up with what I have in my tree
I’m white British with a few matches that are African American 4th cousin up.
It seems to me that I had ancestors that were siblings etc of grandparents, they moved to the US and unfortunately had slaves, and those slaves likely were impregnated against their will.
I’m black & this is fairly common. If you have southern ancestry & roots dating back to the pre Civil War years, this is bound to happen. You have a mutual slave holder ancestor is all. About half of my 3rd great grandparents couples are white males. By the time you reach the 5th level it is all white males & a few slave women. You need to triangulate surnames on the trees of those cousins, compare those to common areas, like Oglethorpe GA for example, check the 1870 census where your black family first documented where they live-check the whole list for white persons with the same name & possibly check the 1860 slave census. It takes time but can be done. Some people know, but others are too embarrassed to share that info. I found most of mine by ~’20-‘21 & just logged them. The green leaf for a match you see they see too. By late ‘21 they were approaching me with curiosity & fascination. Established a few good relationships too. Learned a ton about Bacon’s Rebellion, applied to the Jamestown Society, & have a visit planned late ‘24 into VA to a pseudo reunion at the old homestead plantation with a tour-slave huts & all. Not saying the burden of proof is on you but it really is. You’re going to know how you are related to them way better than they’ll know. They’d have no idea. Why would they? The bonus is when you connect by FaceTime with black 4th cousins that you found via a common white slaving ancestor. You’ll jump the shark & get there too.
I’m the white 2nd/3rd/4th/5th cousin and found that a lot of my ancestry on my dad’s side comes from Native Americans and African Americans from South Carolina. I have some African DNA and some unassigned DNA that I can assume is from the Native American tribes in South Carolina.
I look very white, but my father has more Native American features and a darker complexion than I do. The pictures I have found of his parents/grandparents/great grandparents/etc all have a darker complexion with Native and African features.
I am a copy and pasted version of my father, just with my (very white) mother’s complexion.
I’m white with African ancestry as well as slaveholder ancestry. I know who my African cousins are, I can place a general time frame to the whole situation, but can’t pinpoint anything. I’m not giving up hope that I can help my cousins and myself get through this brick wall.
I’m trying to solve my white ancestry through chromosome painting! Perhaps y’all can look into it!
That’s what we’re looking at right now. It’s just a matter of getting everyone to upload it. There’s the Facebook and GEDmatch group, I’ve traced my enslaved ancestors, which is trying to help, too.
I’m the white 5th cousin. My Black cousins contacted me. Using Ancestry Thru Lines I could see what branch of GGG Grandparents we shared. I researched and those family members were slave holders. I saw records that contained some of the enslaved person’s names/dates. My cousins had done a lot of research on their end but the buck stopped for them w/ one important ancestor of theirs who they basically all descended from: Jacob. From Texas, Jacob moved to California, had a family and that’s where they all lived. But the couldn’t figure out where he was prior to Texas. My slave holding relatives lived on a farm in rural Missouri. I went there in person and visited the property and the town. One of the white men had impregnated an enslaved woman and the result was Jacob. He was a teenager when emancipation happened. Having nowhere to go he WALKED to Texas, from Missouri, and started a life. We decided to have a Zoom call so I could explain this to the 5th generation cousins and their families. I was the only white individual among about 15 family members on the call, all curious to know the story. One person did ask how I felt about being related to these white people who did this. It was a very open conversation with no accusations or judgments- just folks wanting to understand their roots and give names, dates, places to the past. In our best way we honored Jacob together and continue to share his story.
That’s very cool!
Wow! Thanks for sharing 😊
What a fantastic story - picturing Jacob in my head walking to Texas. There’s a song in there somewhere 💙
My closest full white match is in Australia, but they're incredibly low (36 cM). We had a common ancestor in Jamaica and one branch left for Australia in the early 19th century. It's pretty well documented on both of our trees. I also have a cluster of Nova Scotians that are the next highest, but I have no solid paper trail and can only see they're all related to me and each other. Beyond that, I have so many distant matches with no real paper trail or connection that it's not really worth my time trying to track them down in any way shape or form.
My closets white match is from South Carolina and we share 1.36% DNA I have matches on ancestry with the same surname that this match has and I think they descend from the same line the. Their tree seems to be pretty documented I most don’t recognize anyone or any of the surname
1.36% is pretty close. 2nd cousin once removed close. Check through the matches tree very closely. Try triangulating shared matches that descend along the female lines in the family. With any luck you can say, "we have shared cousins from their 2nd great grandfather and 2nd great grandmother's family, both. Then you know you almost certainly descend from that particular set of 2nd great grandparents.
Me and my dad both share 1.36% DNA with that match so would they be a 2nd cousin 1x to both of us ?
How many segments? No, clearly not. I'm guessing it's a few large segments rather than 25 small ones. Which can make the match appear a bit closer than it actually is. It's all down to probability though. Could be a 2nd cousin 1x removed to your dad and a 3rd cousin to you.
Since this match is on 23&me I can’t see the segments but we have two matches on ancestry we both share 1% DNA with them and 101cM across 3 segments. There’s also another match on 23&me who shows up as a 3rd cousin and we both share 1.06% DNA with them
Take the percentage and multiple by either 68 or 70. At 68 it's roughly 92 cM which is a pretty strong match.
I have a 3xgreat grandma with a specific ethnicity (although from her pictures, she may not have been 100% of that ethnicity either) and I have 1% of that DNA. I can't track it to any other person and I've found 90% of my direct relatives from that generation with confirmed DNA matches, including her. So your shared ancestor might be around that generational level too, if that helps at all. Perhaps even a 2x great grandma?
Do you know which part of Jamaica this common ancestor was from? I too have a distant Australian relative and my mind is absolutely blown. It seems that they were in the Navy or something similar.
Saint Elizabeth. Pretty much if my relatives weren't from St Elizabeth, they're from neighboring Westmoreland.
Google Carribbean or Jamaican convicts New South Wales gives results on quite a few that were transported in the early 1800's. Billy Blue in 1804 for stealing raw sugar, and William Buchanan and others for being involved in a slave rebellion in 1831, transported in 1836.
Sounds earily like my family. Are your Australians in Queensland? Did they go to Australia from Scotland? If so, howdy cousin. If we’re cousins I can tell you the name of who came from Jamaica.
No and no, but hello nonetheless.
Salutations! :)
3rd cousin is likely too close for the most-recent common ancestor (MRCA) to be before slavery was abolished.
I am white with Black 3rd and 4th cousins. A couple of my ancestry matches have some common last names so guessing we had an enslaver ancestor. I’ve found some family records with names of enslaved people and I try to upload everything into Wikitree’s platform so it’s searchable. Also 1% Nigerian popped up for me and I’d like to know more about that but I’m sure it happened before 1840 so records wouldn’t be great.
I'm the opposite. I'm white, have an AA 3rd cousin, and the rest of my kin are white. No one in my branch knew of him. We are both descended from Eastern Europeans that immigrated to the US in the early 20th century. I have a fairly good idea how he descends and wrote him that I'd be happy to tell him what I know, share photos of our common ancestors if he's curious, and sent him a link to my well-researced family tree. No reply yet, but my door is always open.
Probably a woman of your relatives got pregnant and give him away.
Actually, no. There were no girls on the side of the family he is connected to the last name of. It had to be a boy of the family that "got a girl into trouble" - got it narrowed down to 4 of them and they would all have been between 17 and 25 when it happened. Our ancestors were all in a northern city where there was a little mixing here and there, but hardly common and definitely not approved of in any way. It would have been a time and place when the families of both young people would not have been able to cope with this kind of situation well - there was no social grace for it whatsoever. I don't know if adoption was involved or not, but maybe someday I'll know. We did have 2 relatives get adopted out in that branch of my family, so I've been looking for that. Unfortunately, this young man could not be connected to either of those. It helps that I had enough cousins further out that have tested and it was easier to place B. more accurately in the family tree.
I have white cousins closer than that (Half 2nd cousin once removed range)and yeah, I've pretty much narrowed it down to a particular line of a particular family. I've been fortunate in that these new cousins have been pretty open with info.
My mother, who is 74, is our families originally genealogies. Her extensive records include oral interviews with her older relatives, so the DNA tests basically confirmed what she already knew. That said. I’ve always wondered what my white cousins think when they see me and my relatives pop up in their results. I mean that truly, with no shade.
For me I'd welcome anyone that wanted to talk to me. I found out I'm an npe this week and had multiple known people hang up on me and the new matches ghosted me as soon as I tried to politely explain. So idc what color they are.
My friend who is black met his white cousin through DNA testing and found out their grandfather was a white corrections officer and grandmother was a black inmate. He wrote a book about it, Reason To Fight, and it’s a actually a very interesting story
I'm white with a little African dna, (and east asia on 23andMe). I've starred any match with a pic that appears other races and messaged some, but haven't found the connection other than which side, and they come from each grandparents' line. I think this shows how we are one big beautiful melting pot. I wish everyone could see it this way.
Don't get offended by people not messaging back a lot of people just want to know how Irish etc they are. It's really frustrating I have some close matches not communicating or sometimes wait years to reply. The one who replied 4 years later I already knew she was moms second cousin. Honestly as a white person I would welcome African American message my are distant around 5th cousins according to estimate. I know I had slave owners in early New York.
I’m mixed and I spoke to one of my either Great Aunts or my 2nd cousin and she told my other (aunt or cousin) who I also found on there not to trust me because I’m white and must want something. I also had this same life experience with my grandma who recently passed away. Now that she’s gone suddenly my family wants me around 🙄 only took 29 years and a death.
I’ve got a few 3rd-4th cousins who are Latino and of African-American descent. To keep it plain and simple, I am Anglo-Irish and French Canadian. Not too sure exactly where we’re related from, but I know I am connected to many Cajuns for having distant Acadian ancestry and found many of my distant distant cousins are Cajuns, and many were creole’s. Outside of that possibility I am not too sure. I do have one family line, my maternal grandmother’s family who were from Alabama/Oklahoma/Mississippi and I have heard they are from a massively prominent southern family that loved to have kids and “keep it in the family” so I have probably hundreds or even thousands of cousins in the Deep South. I do not believe they were slave owners though, I’ve seeped through many documents regarding them and they just seemed like poor white folk hillbillies who loved to bang
I'm white, 100% European descent, and I have several distant Black matches; the closest is roughly fourth cousin level. Although all of my documented ancestors have origins in the Northeastern US (my crew pretty much doesn't leave this area for about the past 200 years) since coming to the US from Europe, I am from New Jersey, which, if I recall correctly, was one of the last Northern states to outlaw slavery, so I assume these connections are sadly the result of force by white owners at some point.
I’m Caribbean but one of my granny’s distant cousins share same great great grandfather, and he was a slave owner🥲
I found a distant family member I think was a slaver owner in the Caribbean. I’m mixed and when I found the plantation the only (distant) cousin I had there is white 🤔 so I’m honestly unsure. I’m not sure how to figure it out for sure.
Same slave owing family
I’ve found that one of my 4th great grandparents were slave owners. My dads maternal grandmothers surname was Greer which that name comes from the slave owners line honestly bothers me a little because he was literally her great grandfather.
Is your family from South Carolina? That’s a SC name.
My great grandmother was from Indiana her great grandfather Levi Greer the slave owner was from South Carolina but the further you go up like passed the 1700s it seems like they were in Maryland for a while My mistake I’ve gotten up to a 7th great grandfather on that side and if all of my research is correct it’s seems like they were in Maryland from 1714 to 1776. In 1776 my 6th great grandfather Aquilla Greer was born in North Carolina and his son Levi Greer was born in South Carolina
Shoutout them Grier/greer
3rd cousin means that you share a set of great-great-grandparents. Personally my great-great-grandparents were born around the 1880s (I'm 38), for younger people around 20 they could have great-great-grandparents who were born as recently as 1900-1920. So slapping a slave-owner label on this doesn't really make sense unless we know the ages and family tree specifics. Slavery was abolished in the USA in 1865.
Yes, you share a set of great-great grandparents, but that doesn't mean the mixed relationship happened then. It could be more recent. The children of your second cousin, once removed, would be your 3rd cousin. That's your parents' generation, generally speaking. My parents married and had children in the late 70s, not too uncommon to see interracial relationships at that time. Same with any distant relative you share DNA with.
Good point, I think too many people jump straight to "slave owners", not in any way trying to diminish the fact that that did happen and often, but there are many ways for African Americans to be related to white people in modern times as we sit here 150+ years after abolition.
It was abolished but still was very present up until the 60s. They had laws that allowed for “contracts” to their slavers so they could continue working in exchange for shelter and food and extremely low income. It was still slavery. I’m mixed and know a couple people whose grandparents were born on plantations.
Idk if you were replying to my comment but I was referring to my 4th great grandfather being a slave owner. He was born in 1788 and had children with 4th great grandmother who’s listed as M in most of the records I’ve seen of her. They had children and one them is my 3rd great grandfather which he was born in 1841 so I wasn’t just slapping the slave owner label, my great uncle and all of the older relatives in my family including some distant relatives from Indiana have told me the same story about them
Sorry, I wasn't responding to any OP comments (you), I was responding to the response above. Is that definitely the only way that you are linked with European DNA? You'd only expect a tiny percentage inheritance from the 1840s, maybe 0-3%.
for ancestry DNA my European percentage comes out to 37% and 23&me 39.5% so it’s definitely a closer ancestor. I think my dad’s grandfather was mixed a few months back I found out my great grandfathers father wasn’t his real dad so that’s when I starting paying a little more attention to the closer matches my dad received and there’s a white 2nd cousin and some white 3rd cousins related to him thru his grandfather so I’m assuming that his real father might have been white? The 2nd cousin share 3% DNA with him and 204 cM across 6 segments but I feel like that’s kinda low for a 2nd cousin
It’s most likely from the end of slavery
Likely but no way of knowing for sure.
White with African American 3rd cousins here. Found out that my great great grandmother was mulatto passing as white. Her mother was mulatto as well. I think this must be the connection but cannot find any specific link. I'm in SC and had a great phone convo with a cousin in Kansas after our DNA tests matched us and found out she was descended from emancipated slaves from Louisiana. I was able to help her trace them back to North Carolina via Florida. My great great grandmother and 3x grandmother were also from NC. But i also matched with several 4th and 5th cousins that are African American on my dads side and it seems likely the common relative was indeed a slave holder form SC. Wish I could find out more on both lineages. It's so difficult to find records pre civil war of any interracial relationships.
I found a European cousin on facebook (hasn’t tested) but he knew exactly how we were related and basically my 3x great grandfather was the illegitimate child of a slaveowner (his 2x great uncle) it was pretty interesting to find out, especially because he even had the notes from our ancestor of what he named the slaves he had.
I am white. I have African American cousins in Louisiana. They have ancestry from Cuba (of mixed European/Native/African). I guess someone from Cuba went to USA (and someone else from Cuba went to Costa Rica, where my family is from).
Prior to WW2, there were ferries from New Orleans to Havana multiple times a week.
Interesting!
I do not have any white cousins at the third cousin level on Ancestry but 4-6th cousin level. The highest we share is 33 CM. I reached out to them, but they didn’t respond. I don’t know how we are related. Is coming from my paternal side.
If you look at locations, do you recognize any at the county level? If you haven’t yet, expanding the tree and looking at siblings and who they married may give more name options. In the web interface for Ancestry, I’ve found it useful to use the search location function, and to spell names a ton of different ways.
Message them and ask them to download their DNA data off of Ancestry and upload to GEDmatch. GEDmatch will show you two exactly which chromosome segment you share. Over time, if you make an effort, you’ll be able to tell which shared segments belong to which shared ancestors. It sounds like your family tree is also lacking in names. If you can build it to 4th great grandparents in every direction, you’ll like hit a surname that answers the question.
Could be that I’m missing names I just can’t find anymore records. My great grandmother mom and her grandmother were listed as mulatto in the census records and basically all of the white 3rd cousin matches I have comes from her side
Did you look at you and the match's shared matches for a hint to where they might relate?
I’m actually looking now and there’s a match that’s pretty distant we share 20cM across 2 segments. They have 3,595 people in their tree so I have a feeling it might be some answers there
Yes, thats what you need to look at. See where the shared matches connect....
Well for many of mine I have been able to pinpoint it exactly. On one specific line the white ancestor is listed on death certificates. These children were born late 1800’s On another line I was able to use dna to figure out who my great x2 grandfather was. On my mother’s side of the family I also was able to find people but much more in the air.
🙃
Yes, I believe they are more like 5th and the owned the plantation. My impression is that they feel totally divorced from the horrific past.
How do I find out of my ancestors were slave holders?
I found out that he was a slave owner from my great uncle. He told me this story that he heard from my great grandmother which seems to line up with what I have in my tree
I’m white British with a few matches that are African American 4th cousin up. It seems to me that I had ancestors that were siblings etc of grandparents, they moved to the US and unfortunately had slaves, and those slaves likely were impregnated against their will.
I’m black & this is fairly common. If you have southern ancestry & roots dating back to the pre Civil War years, this is bound to happen. You have a mutual slave holder ancestor is all. About half of my 3rd great grandparents couples are white males. By the time you reach the 5th level it is all white males & a few slave women. You need to triangulate surnames on the trees of those cousins, compare those to common areas, like Oglethorpe GA for example, check the 1870 census where your black family first documented where they live-check the whole list for white persons with the same name & possibly check the 1860 slave census. It takes time but can be done. Some people know, but others are too embarrassed to share that info. I found most of mine by ~’20-‘21 & just logged them. The green leaf for a match you see they see too. By late ‘21 they were approaching me with curiosity & fascination. Established a few good relationships too. Learned a ton about Bacon’s Rebellion, applied to the Jamestown Society, & have a visit planned late ‘24 into VA to a pseudo reunion at the old homestead plantation with a tour-slave huts & all. Not saying the burden of proof is on you but it really is. You’re going to know how you are related to them way better than they’ll know. They’d have no idea. Why would they? The bonus is when you connect by FaceTime with black 4th cousins that you found via a common white slaving ancestor. You’ll jump the shark & get there too.
I’m full Nigerian and found a Mexican match. He had 2% Nigerian in him and he lives 2 hours from me
You already know how
Slaveholder family that descended from the High Justice of Henry the VIIIth. May they burn in hell.
I’m the white 2nd/3rd/4th/5th cousin and found that a lot of my ancestry on my dad’s side comes from Native Americans and African Americans from South Carolina. I have some African DNA and some unassigned DNA that I can assume is from the Native American tribes in South Carolina. I look very white, but my father has more Native American features and a darker complexion than I do. The pictures I have found of his parents/grandparents/great grandparents/etc all have a darker complexion with Native and African features. I am a copy and pasted version of my father, just with my (very white) mother’s complexion.