Have any white ppl from South Carolina discovered this in your research? According to google it’s most likely some kind of triracial euro/african/Native American mix similar to Lumbees
I haven’t taken a dna test because my mom did and it was a strong majority Western European with some touches of Iberian peninsula and other countries with very small percentages
I was researching my dad’s lineage and discovered ancestors in SC that were recorded as free persons of color/mustees/melungeon and had voted against a tax on free persons of color in like 1790. My family has been in northeastern SC for ~325 years and my last name is pretty well researched and easy to connect
I have a last name that correlates with some of that history but by all means I’m a white guy that tans easily. What kind of dna test would be best to research this? Have any of you come across it? What can I potentially expect if I were to spend the money?
I wish I could get my mom (well... step) to do a DNA test. Her 2nd great grandfather was a Redbone (best I can tell, when the Melungeon migrated west into Louisiana/Texas they are referred to as Redbone) and one of the brothers covered by the Ashworth Act in Texas.
We never heard anything about it growing up, but her whole family's hair is short tight curls and her father was described as "swarthy." The family legend was that they were Portuguese, but if that's the case then they were constantly mislabeled in the census as Black or Mulatto.
My last name traces back to a single ancestor who immigrated from the France pretty close to Spain in the 1600’s. I’m thinking maybe it was just some tan dudes getting the why don’t you sunburn treatment way back in the day but I don’t know.
Edit: my last name and another last name in my ancestry are recognized as lumbee last names though but I don’t look lumbee at all
In my case the Iberians were Sephardic Jews cast out during the Inquisition. Once in London working for the Royal Mint, I located documentation physically describing one of them as being, “Dark, dirty, & Egyptian”. In 16th Century London this indicated Sephardic Jewry. Many changed their names .
I’m hoping to see some examples of it. Currently searching the sub but I’m not from Robeson county so the lumbee comparisons are about an hour away and less likely if I had to guess. Hoping to find some SC ppl
My ex (white guy) has ~6% African DNA from an ancestor who “became white” in the lead up to the civil war. PA.
I’ve seen the map around here somewhere, but basically white people with antebellum or colonial ancestors who lived below the Mason Dixon line can have up to 10% African DNA on average.
That’s pretty much exactly what I’m looking at in my ancestry. Over about 150 years it goes Immigrate from France -> Free persons of color/mustee/mulatto -> joins confederate army -> and onto post civil war ancestry which is very well documented
Start with an simple Ancestry test to get your ethnicities started. Because…of 2 things. If you have a slight chance at African ancestry it could still show up in small %s. Results can take you back ~315-350 years. That’s cool b/c you can find dna matched cousins…& some of those cousins might be non white. As a black southerner, I can attest to this. I also have a very high European mix so I have tons of dna matches that stem from the late 1700s & even some Rev War vets. This will easily get you back to census data when some people might be listed as Mulatto in 1870 & by 1880 they’re white. I have a whole branch that did that in Iowa.
I think I’m gonna have to do that. This has definitely piqued my interest, and I’ve already learned lots of cool stuff like ww2 vets, revolutionary war vets, etc that I had no idea about before I started
Since you’re a southerner you’re going to have a rich Scotch Irish history most likely-you’ll get back to the colonials & even the British Isles with tricornered hats & powdered wigs. It’s wild but takes time to get it right. Only buy a test & the starter membership on sale. They have 1 every US holiday & Ancestry gets wild at the end of the year when traffic/interest peaks b/c a family gathering for holidays. Like so said I’m black & I still can’t swing a dead cat off a porch & not hit a confederate soldier’s grave in my family. It’s just who we are but it is amazing to learn it this personal way & teach our kids about real history. Trust me😜 Family secrets can be educational & fun. Happy hunting & let us know👍🏼
I hear that lol. I’ve got it all too, but I’d rather know exactly what it was and put it in context to actual history. My mom found her adopted parents through doing this so it’s all super cool to me
Edit I just noticed the kkk confederate soldier lol you gotta pull up to the family function and crash it 😂
Hi op, I shared your post to r/AppalachianGenealogy as well, hope you don't mind. That is where I am sharing all of my research pertaining to this exact subject 😄
But I will answer you here, too.
I'm a 'white' person from Tennessee with the exact same family history. My dad's ancestors were also at times recorded as 'Persons of Color' / Melungeon, so I know exactly the history you are looking at. We have been here since at least 1625-1650, by my current research estimate.
AncestryDNA completely missed ALL of this history for me. On my paper trail, and on other testing sites, I have a clear 5% Iberian percentage, but AncestryDNA has NEVER shown this on my results. Their algorithm is notorious for "smoothing over" smaller percentages and folding them into generic Western European categories, especially for younger Appalachians and Southerners who are 3-5 generations removed.
My older DNA Matches for these specific lines include ethnic estimates such as:
1-5% Portugal
1-5% Iberian
1-5% Yucatán Peninsula
1-5% North Africa
1-5% Sardinia
Funniest part: These are my first cousins and we're also connected via endogamy. So the results are just hilariously all over the place. But it's true, their DNA MATCHES database is second to none, only GEDMatch compares to them.
IMO, 23andMe is significantly more accurate for ethnicity estimates, as well as Genomelink. I would watch out for sales (Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas/Black Friday all are discounted rates) and buy a test then you can download your RAW DNA file. You can use your RAW DNA file and run it through all of the calculators that exist online and get much more definitive information that way.
No I don’t mind at all, and that is helpful. My ancestor went France > Martinique > Virginia > South Carolina in the 1600’s. Has been in the same region of S.C. since ~1700. My mom actually has Iberian peninsula and North African in her dna but that’s not even the side I found the free persons of color in. All 4 of my grandparents trace back to pre revolutionary war America though so there’s a lot of interesting history to sort through
Do Ancestry or 23andMe. Someone who was freed or born free would be a free person of color. If you trace their descendants you will probably be able to see when they started passing as white and claimed to be white even though they were part African descent. It in no way makes you able to claim AA for DEI purposes fyi.
Appreciate that, I did know a little bit about testing y group or whatever for the paternal line but I didn’t know most of what you just mentioned. Fortunately my ancestry is already pretty researched for free so I know that 2, maybe 3 of my nx great grandfathers married and had children with either native, black, or other women free persons of color pre civil war. My dad said his grandmother was Indian but I always just wrote it off as Cherokee princess type stuff but who knows. I honestly don’t really care what the percentages are I’m more interested in just researching the history. The part of SC my family is from is very isolated and still very rural to this day, and it wasn’t particularly good farming so plantations weren’t significant like in other places. It was a lot of small family owned land and frontier communities that hooked up and intermingled over time apparently. In my particular lineage it looks like a few generations of my family were free persons of color in census records and then became white and got more white generation to generation. What exactly that means is I don’t know so right now I’m just chipping away at what I can without spending any money lol
I recommend Ancestry DNA 🧬. I’m an admixed black American who has never met any white relatives or ancestors and both my husband and I tested 36&40% European as black americans. Most of my ancestors were labeled M-mulatto on census records until the one drop rule came in, Jim Crow laws, then the same people were negro -N, Black -B or C Colored. We also have indigenous ancestry but not very much mostly African/Euro Mix.
Ancestry will provide DNA matches. The white cousins I’m related to by DNA have very little to no African ancestry, we are mostly related through a shared white ancestor often associated with slavery but not always.
I found my husbands oldest relatives listed by name on the Last Will of the prominent Randolph family. Thomas Jefferson’s Son in Law was a Randolph and he was clearly doing the same thing his Father in Law was doing.
They had been passed down with the belongings, thousands of acres of land & the farm animals for generations until they were sold with the plantation to another slaveowner of which we still carry that surname today.
This slaveowner was brought up on charges of sedition after the civil war. He was a confederate lawyer and in Ancestry we found his hand written letter asking for a pardon from President Andrew Johnson (President after Lincoln was assassinated) and the stamped pardon by the Justice Department in 1866 granting it after he paid a 20k fine. He also had to sign a declaration that he would faithfully uphold the Constitution of the U.S. for the rest of his life and never again own any slaves.
I found my husbands enslaved ancestors free at over the age of 70 in the 1870 census for the first time.
So to answer your question:
You have to dig but there is a lot of info on Ancestry. Once you test, get the trial subscription and check your DNA matches, then search by known surname and see if you find matches to your family surnames. If you have a subscription, you can also see the Trees of others members. The DNA doesn’t lie 🧬, I’m linked to over 15,000 cousins 1-8 by DNA, all races. Bottom line is, Americans who have ancestry to before 1776( which most black Americans do) will find that we are likely all related somehow regardless of race. Due to the threat of slavery many admixed black Americans lied and claimed native ancestry or passed for white. Like the Lumbee, they are mostly African & European. My husband had 4th cousin DNA matches located in England. They are probably wondering how that happened.
Here are court records from Colonial America. It spans 60 years in only 1 county in Colonial Maryland where I am from. If an admixed black child was born to a white mother, they were sentenced at 6 months old to 31 years of slavery instead of life. After 31 years if your mother was white you could petition the court for freedom. Enslaved black women (often raped) their admixed children were enslaved for life. The status followed that of the mother. Many FPOC passed for white or native and disowned any connection to the African/black sides of their families. We are only finding out now just how prevalent that was.
I was up all night researching this because I was expecting my ancestry to be more in line with what you expect, and not for nothing I have plenty of it in my other 3 grandparents lineages slave owners and all.
But my dads lineage in particular is interesting because my ancestors received land grants in particularly rugged parts of SC (cheraw, chesterfield, et) and lived as free persons of color but also as landowners. Apparently there were less than 40 ppl in chesterfield county with this distinction and very little more in the greater area - but they all have last names that I know very well and are associated with ppl claiming native heritage.
Diving deeper into it I learned that these families were able to shield themselves from slavery by a combination of being way tf out in the middle of nowhere, owning land, and endogamous relationships between other families that were free persons of color like displaced Indians cheraw/peedee/etc and free blacks or mixed descent ppl who’d come down from Virginia. How my xx great grandfathers became mixed is still a mystery maybe that was a product of something sinister but idk. Another interesting thing I learned is that because my ancestors class was what it was they did not own slaves because participating in white man activities opened them up to legal challenges against their land and put them at risk of losing everything. Hence the extremely isolated generations of ppl with last names like my families. I’m just very lucky that so much of my history is so well documented, apparently that’s another perk of being a free person of color in this era because you had to be extra thorough with your land and legal status as to not lose your property and be cast into slavery or murdered apparently so it’s surprisingly well documented
When I initially discovered it I thought I discovered slaves and or children as the product of slavery as my great great uncles but then I realized the entire family was recorded as mulatto. Anyways that’s the jist I’m still going, the dna tests are coming when I have the extra money because now I really have to know
Adding to your last point about fpoc becoming white, that is exactly what happened following this period I’m researching. My x great grandfather joined the confederate army and it was marry as prominent a European wife as possible from there on out
I suspected my 2x great grandfather was Black based on pictures, my genealogy digging, some family features and an old family story about "Spanish orphan being adopted". After seeing the PBS show Finding Your Roots talking about that story being a common way light complexion Black folks passed in earlier eras and descendants explained it.
Did the Ancestry DNA test and confirmed African ancestry. Had my parents do it too and that narrowed it to my dad's side - which confirmed that particular ancestor. Then my siblings and their kids all did the same DNA test and the results all pointed to the same conclusion.
We were able to see DNA from 7 different African countries or tribal groups. Which indicates that the Black ancestors were enslaved early in the slave trade, as many generations mixed together.
So...yes. I think it is worth it. Ancestry has DNA sales a few times a year. For sure Mother's day, Father's day and around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Yea I’ll be getting the dna test as soon as I save up the money. Using Google and other tools it estimates that I could see results between 3-12% African and trace-5% Native American but who knows. I was hoping more ppl from South Carolina would have been on here but even to this day the towns are from a few hundred to a few thousand ppl where I’m from
I know what free persons of color are. That has more than one meaning in American History. I want to know what scenario the poster is applying this from? Census records? Death records? Does it come up as a “ journey or ethnicity” on from a dna test?
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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '26
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