“Delivered of a mulatto child…”

Time may have changed our laws, but natural attractions and bonds of love have always been there. Take the case of Stephen Cole in North Carolina in 1848. He’d been married several years to Mary, who to his “great grief, mortification and shame,” gave birth to a “mulatto child.” Apparently, Mr. Cole was a white man and Mary’s lover was not. According to public record, Cole did a little investigating. Sounds like he went around the community asking questions which must have terrified poor Mary, because in 1848, the laws were very clearly against love affairs between blacks and whites. Sounds like Cole discovered that his Mary found pleasure in the arms of Richmond, a slave from a neighboring estate. Let the record show two things:

Stephen Cole sought a divorce and thankfully, our laws have changed.

Suellen Ocean is the author of the Civil War Era Historic Romance, Black Pansy:

Smallpox Infected Blankets

It’s hard to imagine that people could be so cruel as to send handkerchiefs and blankets to Native Americans, that they first made sure were infected with smallpox. It sounds like an outlandish conspiracy theory but it’s not. It really happened. Throughout the Americas. From the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. To the Northwest.

Suellen Ocean is the author of Secret Genealogy IV – Native Americans Hidden in Our Family Trees:

Black Ancestry… We Cannot Depend on the Old Censuses

If you’re looking for Black ancestry in your family tree, you cannot depend on the accuracy of the census taker from days of yore. In the early 1800s, the census taker looked at people and determined their ethnicity by how they appeared. If they looked white, they were recorded that way. There must be thousands of our ancestors of color, who are not recorded as Black. Searching for ancestors is a frustrating endeavor when your family oral history (or your intuition) tells you one thing and government records tell you another. For example, I’ve seen it written that a descendant of slaves appears on the census as a “white free plantation owner.” Looking at the census is a difficult way to determine the true origins of family.

Suellen Ocean is the author of the Civil War Era Historic Romance, Black Pansy:

Native Americans Hidden in Our Family Trees

Deciphering the old censuses is not the easiest way to trace our ancestry. For one thing, they’re really hard to read. The old cursive is not what I’m used to, and the ink is almost always faded in spots. If one has the patience though, a lot can be garnered from the old records. One such example comes from a reader of my blog, Joan. She shared this with me:

“I was trying to trace my great-grandmother’s ancestry. She was the one some family say was Cherokee. I stumbled upon some inconsistent census info—a family nearby suddenly had three older children that were not there ten years prior! They had the same first names as those my ggm listed in her family bible as she and her siblings.”

We should look for these types of anomalies in our own family census records. The latest 60 Minutes story about the boarding schools that Native American children were taken to, after being taken from their families, gives us a lot to think about when trying to find the truth about our origins. Perhaps the neighbors of Joan’s great-grandmother were trying to protect these Native American children from the government and their cruel practices.

Suellen Ocean is the author of Secret Genealogy IV – Native Americans Hidden in Our Family Trees:

We Can Thank the Brits and the Native Americans for Wall Street… Literally.

In the middle of the 1600s, more than a hundred years before the Revolutionary War, New Amsterdam colonists built a wall along the Hudson River from North to East. It was designed as a defense system for Lower Manhattan. The colonists were apprehensive of both the British and the local Native Americans and wanted protection from them. They went to war with both. Today, Wall Street conjures different images, but let us not forget, hundreds of years ago, Manhattan was still in its natural state.

Suellen Ocean is the author of Secret Genealogy IV – Native Americans Hidden in Our Family Trees:

Do Not Try This at Home (Or anywhere)

There are a lot of interesting stories in the history books. People make mistakes. People suffer from other’s negligence. Some mistakes though, have devastating consequences. Like an entry from Winthrop’s Journal that said that a man lit a pipe next to a keg of gun powder. Blew off his hands and feet. Whoa! Poor guy. Life was hard enough in the early colonies, imagine trying to survive with no hands or feet. Braving the dangers of the New World, took courage. And the use of our extremities.

Suellen Ocean is the author of the Civil War Era Historic Romance, Black Pansy:

Genealogy… Our Ancestor’s Canoes

Today’s New Jersey was (and probably still is) known by the Native people as, the Land Along the Water. It is hard to picture the canoes and the tranquility that prevailed. Henry Hudson recorded:

“The people of the country abord of us, seeming very glad of our coming, and brought green tobacco and gave us it for knives and beads. They go in deerskins, loose, well dressed. They desire clothes and are very civil.”

The peace did not last. The explorers were there to exploit.

Suellen Ocean is the author of Secret Genealogy IV – Native Americans Hidden in Our Family Trees:

No Owner Given

I make genealogical timelines for my ancestors. It’s my way of keeping things straight. (Or trying to.) Looking at one of them today, I see that I have listed that thirty-seven million immigrants came to America between 1840 and 1930. That’s a lot of people reaching our shores for a better life. Europeans, Asians, Middle-Easterners, to name a few. Today, America has immigrants from Africa, but in 1840, Africans were still being bought and sold. Kentucky has a list of deaths of people over fifteen in Adair County between 1852-1859. Those who are Black have first names only. In lieu of parents, their “owners” are listed. The first person on the list is a man named Aaron. In parentheses is “Yellow.” Further information is, “No owner given.” Some people came to America for a better life. Some people were taken from their better life.

Suellen Ocean is the author of the Civil War Era Historic Romance, Black Pansy:

Slavery… Humans as Collateral

How’d you like to be the collateral on someone’s bank loan? During the pre-war years of the Civil War, it was a reality. Thousands of humans held in bondage, were not only breaking their backs working for slaveholders and building the value of their estates, but they were also leveraged to borrow money to further enrich the slave barons. Money to cover gambling debts and other loans came from the value that was placed (literally) upon the backs of people solely because their skin was a different color.

Suellen Ocean is the author of the Civil War Era Historic Romance, Black Pansy:

Where the Indians Camped

Indian Camp Point, in Adams County Illinois, has gone through a name change. Not today, but many years ago. First the Indians quit camping there, then eventually the title of the settlement was changed. From Indian Camp Point to Camp Point. Back when the Indians camped there, the forest met the prairie. I have never been there so cannot observe the topography, but like all frontier communities, trees were cut to build log cabins and land was cleared for farming.

If you have a Native American ancestor who married a white settler, we need these little clues to help us form ideas about how these two ethnic groups intermarried. Especially since there was a deliberate attempt to remove the Natives from history, as shown here in the removal of their title.

Suellen Ocean is the author of Secret Genealogy IV – Native Americans Hidden in Our Family Trees: