Searching for Our Ancestors from a Black Perspective

About the Book

We all have biological ancestors, though we do not choose who they are, and all ancestors have families. Researching some ancestors and families requires working through incomplete information along a complex path. Often, one line of inquiry ends, and another begins. In many cases, a researcher may need to pause the search for an ancestor until new information becomes available. Sometimes, no additional information can be found. Some of our Black ancestors did not travel directly from Africa to what is now the United States. In several instances, there isn’t much of our Black History in any one place. It resembles a situation in which pieces of a crossword puzzle are scattered across different areas, with some missing. Many of our ancestors from Great Britain bought passage on ships and traveled to their chosen colonies. Several others came as indentured servants, and, as we all know, many others came as enslaved people. The enslaved people who came directly to the colonies from Africa were descendants of Bantu-speaking peoples. The Bantu-speaking people originated from West Africa around 4,000 years ago, or approximately 1000 BCE.

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