Free People Of Color Brooks, Clark And Associated Families In Western NC

Introduction I use to think that DNA could answer all of my questions as far as my ancestry. Yes, DNA can confirm paternity. Does it truly tell the the full story about a person's heritage or pedigree?  I remember taking my first test years ago through DNAtribes. I wanted proof of the oral traditions of having an ancestor being Native. Indian is the term they would use. My father and others, would tell me about my ggrandfather, Dili, and that he was a Cherokee medicine man/herbalist from GA. He was from the Oconee River area. The Cherokee Indians lived on one side of the river and the Creek Indians lived on the other side. When I came to a road block on finding them on any Indian rolls, that's when I decided to turn to DNA.         My Results   I was looking forward to seeing my results. The first thing that I looked for was the Native/Indigenous part.  To my surprise, I saw 0%. Instead, I received a small amount of Polynesian and Metis.  I called my father to tell him the resu

Famous Tennis Player   Arthur Ashe's Native Heritage  In my blog, I mentioned the migration of these eastern NC families to western NC.  Here is another example of the Ashe family, that married into the Brooks, Cooper, and Clark line.  As a matter of fact, Author Ashe and I both descend from Jerry Brooks and Eliza Cooper Clark. Coincidentally, I came across this information in the screenshots while searching for something else. I was told that a lot of our families came from the eastern part of NC and the SC/NC border as well.  No one ever mentioned his native heritage. The native heritage was usually disregarded or lost because of the one-drop rule or because of assimilation into the non-Indigenous communities.  Also, there just weren't many left to intermarry with because of the Indian Removal Act, the diseases that were brought over by the colonizers, and the exportation of the native slaves to the Caribbean. Some passed or were recorded by the enumerator as black, mulatto,

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Introduction I started my journey researching my maternal grandmother's line about 3 years ago. A lot of the family reunions, that we attended, were mainly on my grandfather's side.  Every once in a while, I would ask her about her father because she never really talked about him.  Her reply would always be that he was part Indian, had soft hair, a slim hooked nose, and was light-skinned.  Her father's name was William Mckinley Young. He was the son of Joseph "Joe" Deck and Laura L. Young. His grandparents were George Deck and Sarah Brooks. William died in 1963 and that was the last time my grandmother saw her father.  Over the years she has been disconnected from that side of the family. Her father's line was a mystery to me and others. I wanted to know more about them the older I became.  After many years of researching my other family lines, she finally asked me to research hers. I found her father's death certificate and it had his father listed as &qu