Figuring out how to incorporate DNA testing into your Native American genealogy research can be difficult and daunting. What types of DNA tests are available, and which vendors offer them? What other tools are available? How is Native American DNA determined or recognized in your DNA? What information about your Native American ancestors can DNA testing uncover? This book addresses those questions and much more.

Included are step-by-step instructions, with illustrations, on how to use DNA testing at the four major DNA testing companies to further your genealogy and confirm or identify your Native American ancestors. Among the many other topics covered are the following:

• Tribes in the United States and First Nations in Canada
• Ethnicity
• Chromosome painting
• Population Genetics and how ethnicity is assigned
• Genetic groups and communities
• Y DNA paternal direct line male testing for you and your family members
• Mitochondrial DNA maternal direct line testing for you and your family members
• Autosomal DNA matching and ethnicity comparisons
• Creating a DNA pedigree chart
• Native American haplogroups, by region and tribe
• Ancient and contemporary Native American DNA

Special features include numerous charts and maps; a roadmap and checklist giving you clear instructions on how to proceed; and a glossary to help you decipher the technical language associated with DNA testing.

About the Author

Roberta Estes, author of the popular blog www.DNA-eXplained.com is a scientist, National Geographic Genographic affiliate researcher, Million Mito team member, and founding pioneer in the genetic genealogy field. An avid genealogist for the past 40 years, Roberta has written over 1,500 articles about genetic genealogy, many for the Native Heritage Project at www.nativeheritageproject.com. Roberta took her first DNA test in 1999 and hasn’t stopped.

The post DNA for Native American Genealogy appeared first on Genealogical.com.

Over 420 African Americans who were born free during the colonial period served in the American Revolution from Virginia. Another 400 who descended from free-born colonial families served from North Carolina, 40 from South Carolina, 60 from Maryland, and 17 from Delaware. At least 24 from Virginia and 41 from North Carolina died in the service. Over 75 free African Americans were in colonial militias and the French and Indian Wars in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Although some slaves fought to gain their freedom as substitutes for their masters, they were relatively few in number. By the same token, those who were not serving under their own free will are not included in this list. It was simply not their fight.

While the information on each of the free black veterans of the War for Independence varies, in most cases the author has provided the individual’s name, state and county, unit served in, military theater, some family information, often a physical description, pension applied for or received, sometimes other information, and the source. The case of Isaac Brown of Charles City County, Virginia, is illustrative of many of the descriptions found in the volume:

Isaac Brown was born in Charles City County and enlisted there in the Revolution for 1-1/2 years on 12 September 1780: complexion black, 5’2-1/2″ high, a farmer [Register & description of Noncommissioned officers & Privates, LVA accession no. 24296, by http://revwarapps.org/b69.pdf (p.45)]. He was taxable in Lower Westover Precinct of Charles City County in 1786 [PPTL, 1783-7], head of a Charles City County household of 10 “other free” in 1810 [VA:959] and 4 “free colored” in 1820 [VA:13]. He applied for a pension in Charles City County at the age of 69 on 19 May 1829, stating that he enlisted in Charles City County in the fall of the year 1780 and served in Captain Sanford’s Company in Colonel Campbell’s Regiment for 18 months. He was in the Battle of Guildford Courthouse, the Siege 14 of Ninety Six, and the Battle of Eutaw Springs. He owned 70 acres in Charles City County [NARA, S.39,214, M804, Roll 366, frame 240 of 893; http://fold3.com/image/11713004].

The post List of Free African Americans in the American Revolution: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware appeared first on Genealogical.com.

The six volumes of Migration from the Russian Empire cover the first half of this immigration era, from January 1875 through June 1891, identifying hundreds of thousands of persons of Russian nationality who immigrated to the United States. This information was extracted from the original ships’ passenger lists held by the Temple-Balch Center for Immigration Research, the only records that furnish proof of the arrival in the United States for these immigrants. Each volume in the series provides the name of passenger, his/her age, sex, occupation, country of origin, place of residence, and destination; additionally, each passenger list is headed by the name of the ship, the port of embarkation, the port of arrival, and the date of arrival. The concluding volumes in the series, covering the early 1890s, also specify the passengers’ last place of residence in Europe and their precise destination in the U.S.

For researchers investigating their Russian family origins, this type of information is the very bedrock on which all American family history is built.

The post Migration from the Russian Empire. 6 Volume Set appeared first on Genealogical.com.

This book contains references to people in the Northern Highlands of Scotland and the Northern Isles, at home and abroad, between 1800 and 1850. The counties concerned in the Northern Highlands are Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland and Caithness; and in the Northern Isles, the counties of Orkney and Shetland—locations figuring largely in the Highland Clearances. The persons named were derived from primary sources such as court records, contemporary newspapers and journals, monumental inscriptions, and documents located in archives in the United Kingdom. On the whole, the entries bring together emigrants; their destinations, especially in North America and Australasia; and their kin who remained in Scotland.

The post The People of the Northern Highlands and Isles, 1800-1850 appeared first on Genealogical.com.

Founded in 1837, The Baltimore Sun published numerous articles characterizing local, national, and international events relating to and impacting people of color. Beginning with the Reconstruction year of 1870, Margaret D. Pagan has performed the yeoman’s task of scouring the newspaper for all such accounts and summarizing their contents through 1927. To quote historian Donna T. Hollie, who wrote the Foreword to the compilation, “The author has selected articles for this publication which provide an expansive overview of experiences chronicling the African diaspora. For example, the reader will learn of the evolution of ‘Jim Crow,’ regarding housing and interstate travel.  Also included are summaries covering sports, lynching, entertainment, and political, educational, economic and religious activities. The accomplishments of well-known activists such as Frederick Douglass, and lesser-known ones such as Henry Highland Garnet, both Maryland born, are detailed.”

Genealogists searching for Baltimore connections will appreciate that Mrs. Pagan has also included references to marriage license applicants and obituaries. Obituaries, of course, sometimes provide details about the decedent’s family and organizational connections.  Among the more than 800 entries in this chronology, researchers will find references to James B. Parker, the African American who subdued Leon Czolgosz, President McKinley’s assassin; meetings of Baltimore’s Brotherhood of Liberty, the precursor to the Niagara Movement and founding of the NAACP; and efforts to install black teachers in Baltimore’s segregated schools for African Americans. For the researcher’s convenience, the author has included a comprehensive index to names and events referenced in her chronology. For all these attributes and Mrs. Pagan’s careful attention to detail, African American News in the Baltimore Sun, 1870-1927 must certainly be the starting point for anyone interested in black history and genealogy during the era under investigation.

The post African American News in the Baltimore Sun, 1870-1927 appeared first on Genealogical.com.

Some were well described, some not at all. Indented servant John Folsom “had a remarkable homely Countenance.” Sarah Kelly, in describing the woman who ran away with her “loving husband,” referred to that woman’s “short flat Nose, like the Nose of a Skunk, with a scalded Head, has the Itch, and is lousey, very much given to lying and whoring.”

This compilation lists all individuals mentioned. If an individual is listed with more than one name, all the names appear in the index. Mr. Boyle examined 28 newspapers from New England to Maryland, including The Boston News-Letter, The Boston Post-Boy, The Boston Gazette, The Connecticut Courant, The Connecticut Gazette, The Massaxhusetts Spy, The New Hampshire Gazette, The Pennsylvania Gazette, The New York Gazette, and The Maryland Gazette.

Each ad conveys a number of details about the runaway and his/her master, including names and aliases of the runaway, physical description, personality quirks if any, location in New England (including the future states of Vermont and Maine), and where to contact the advertiser. In all, this book contains about 1,200 ads and names over 2,200 persons with connections to colonial New England.

The post “can tell an ample story”: New-England Runaways, 1769-1773 appeared first on Genealogical.com.

In four, laminated pages, this guide describes the waves of Ukrainian immigration to the Americas and various European countries; Ukrainian surnames and religions; vital records and censuses; Communist-era databases and Soviet-era persecution files; online resources; and much more. Sprinkled throughout are tips to help you locate your ancestor’s hometown and expand your search.

To assist Ukrainian genealogy researchers even further, Miller has included a “Quick Guide to the Ukrainian Alphabet” and pointers on understanding the culture of Ukraine.

The post Genealogy at a Glance: Ukrainian Genealogy Research appeared first on Genealogical.com.

In 1776, on the outbreak of the American Revolution, former soldiers who had received land grants were recalled for duty by the British Government. For example, former Scottish soldiers who had been settled on the Mohawk Valley joined the King’s Royal Regiment of New York. After the war large numbers of soldiers from former Loyalist units and from regular British Army regiments, including many Scots, were settled in what has become Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec.

The War of 1812 revealed the military weakness along the borders of British North America with the United States. After the contemporaneous Napoleonic Wars, 1793 -1815, the British government strategically settled thousands of former British soldiers along the Canadian border.  Among the units involved was the Canadian Fencibles, a Highland militia raised in 1803 on the promise of settlement in Canada after the war–a promise that did not fully materialize.

This book, which identifies upwards of 2,000 Scottish combatants, their units, and places served in the Americas,  is based on primary and published source material located in Scotland, London, Canada, the United States, and the West Indies, and likely marks the final installment in this series.

The post Scottish Soldiers in Colonial America. Part Six appeared first on Genealogical.com.

Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware is a work that will intrigue genealogists and historians alike. First and foremost, Mr. Heinegg has assembled genealogical evidence on more than 400 Maryland and Delaware black families (naming nearly 10,000 individuals), with copious documentation from the federal censuses of 1790-1810 and colonial sources consulted at the Maryland Hall of Records, county archives, and other repositories. In fact, the author has examined all extant court records for Maryland and Delaware for the period under investigation. No work that we know of brings together so much information on colonial African Americans, except Mr. Heinegg’s three-volume series volume on Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. This second edition of Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware from the Colonial Period to About 1810 is nearly 60% larger than the original.

The author offers documentation proving that most of these free black families descended from mixed-race children who were themselves the progeny of white women and African American slaves or free blacks. In all, Heinegg proves that these families descended from 264 white women who had had 374 mixed-race children. He has also identified another 112 white women who bore 127 mixed-race children for whom no direct evidence of offspring could be found. While some of these families would claim Native American ancestry, Mr. Heinegg offers evidence to show that they were instead the direct descendants of mixed-race children.

Colonial Maryland laws relating to marriages between offspring of African American and white partners carried severe penalties. For example, one 18th-century statute threatened a white mother with seven years of servitude and promised to bind her mixed-race offspring until the age of thirty-one. Mr. Heinegg shows that, despite these harsh laws, several hundred child-bearing relationships in Delaware and Maryland took place over the colonial period, as evidenced directly from the public record. Maryland families, in particular, which comprise the preponderance of those studied, also had closer relationships with the surrounding slave population than did their counterparts in Delaware, Virginia, or the Carolinas. Mr. Heinegg recounts the circumstances under which a number of these freedmen were able to become landowners. Some Maryland families, however, including a number from Somerset County, chose to migrate to Delaware or Virginia, where the opportunities for land ownership were greater. For example, the freeman John Johnson, of Somerset County, patented 400 acres in Rehoboth Bay, Sussex County, Delaware in 1677. Other Maryland families who settled in Kent County, Delaware, included Butcher, Fountain, Gibbs, Grinnage, Lacount, Norman, Parsons, Plummer, Poulson, Proctor, Roach, Saunders, and Toogood.

The post Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware from the Colonial Period to 1810. Second Edition appeared first on Genealogical.com.

In his previous books, Phillips identified these children by name and listed their ages and dates of their court appearances. He searched all available birth and baptismal records and, where possible, cross-checked them with marriage and death records to identify the parents of 1,400 of these children. He also examined all available shipping records to identify 125 white slave ships and, if possible, the names of the captains who commanded them.

Since the publication of the trilogy, many records that were previously unavailable have been posted online. The parish registers for London and for Essex, downstream on the Thames, are now complete, as are the parish registers for Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset, thus enabling Phillips to complete his search for the birthplaces of the children. The marriage and death records for Bristol, where only the baptismal records were previously indexed, have now been examined, thus clarifying cases of mistaken identity. One more parish register from Ireland, previously omitted, is included here.

Dozens more captains of white slave ships have been identified from colonial records of Virginia. More than forty indictments for kidnapping have been found in the court records of London. And more than 100 white children sold into servitude along the Delaware River have been identified, some of whom have been matched with their baptismal or marriage records, despite the fact that the records from Philadelphia have not survived.

All of these records are compiled in this supplement. So far as is known, this completes the data set for the trilogy.

The post White Slave Children in Colonial America: Supplement to the Trilogy appeared first on Genealogical.com.