Family Lore – Do We Have Native American Ancestry?
Stories are passed down from generation to generation, and like the game of telephone, something can be lost or changed in each retelling of a story. We are told that family stories have a kernel of truth, but we have to sift through all the husks to discover that kernel. When I first began my quest to find out about my mother’s southern family, I had already heard that we had Native American ancestry. It was used to explain why I had darker skin and hair than my siblings (though my German/Irish ancestry father had dark hair, too). My mother wrote her family’s racial origins as Irish, Scots, Indian, and English. She had done no family research, so this was probably just what had been told to her. I dutifully researched the family backward in time and got to my fourth-great-grandparents, and still no sign of any Native American ancestry. All census records stated these sixteen ancestors were white. My grandmother, Pansy Lancaster, thought her side of the family carried it. Then one da...