How I Found My Ancestor's Slave Owner

Did you ever learn something that blew your mind? Left you speechless? Made you want to know more?

Same thing happened to me!

It is no small feat for Black people to find the name of their ancestor’s slave owner. It is the proverbial brick wall genealogists ram into head first because no records were kept on a slave beyond name, age and gender. Even a slave’s surname was not their own, but that of their owner.

Native Americans, however, had extensive records kept on them by the U.S. Government.

That was my silver lining in researching my family tree. You see, my GG-Grandmother was enslaved not by white people, but by Indigenous people. That’s right, Cherokee Indians owned African slaves. That fact blew my mind. How had I not known about this? Because it’s not taught in history class. It is just more untold American history. I was so stunned that I decided to make that fact the backdrop of my novel SEEDS OF DECEPTION.

Did you know that after the Civil War, the Cherokee signed the Treaty of 1866 wherein they promised their former slaves full citizenship rights in the tribe, which included an allotment of land? But it wasn’t automatic. Slaves had to prove they had been slaves.

I know. it sounds incredulous, right?

How does one go about proving that? Well, you bring in witnesses and hold a trial. That is what the former slaves —now called Cherokee Freedmen— had to go through.

At the National Archives in D.C., I found the official transcript of my GG-Grandmother’s trial. In it was a treasure trove of information. It was there that I also learned she didn’t know how old she was, but she did know who her owner had been. From that 32-page document, I learned that she had been married three times, who her children were, who her parents were, how she was homeless upon being granted her freedom and how she wandered from place to place working for whoever would or could feed her.

Please check out the excerpt below. And yes, she was finally granted her land, and a piece of it is still in the family today. More on that in a future post, because tons of other freedmen lost their land.

What about you? What have you learned about your family history that blew your mind?

Leave your answer in the comments below.