Sunday, July 12, 2020

Did my ancestors own slaves?

I've been interested in genealogy for some time, and with the help of Ancestry.com I've traced my father's family back to the early 19th century. In fact, I recently turned up an ancestor who was born in 1777.

I find several things interesting.  I have yet to find an ancestor in my father's line who wasn't born on this continent.  My mother's family came to the U.S. in 1921 (from Canada), but the Ivy line, and the associated Moody line (my paternal grandmother's people) all seem to have been here from quite early.  Even the guy born in 1777 came from North Carolina; he moved his family to Tennessee between 1805 and 1810.  They all seem to have lived, before the Civil War, in the "border states" - Tennessee and Kentucky. Based on census and other records, they all seem to have relocated to Missouri sometime after the Civil war.