Anita Wills wrote:
> What if they do have black blood (whatever that means)? My understanding is that humans migrated out of Africa, so there are varying strains of "Black Blood" in all of us. By the way blood is not black, it is blue until the air hits it, and then it turns red. 
> 
> Anita 
> 
> 
> -- Laura Fortune <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I have just read an article in the Arcade@Home that claims that Thomas 
> Jefferson was our first president with black blood.  Do any of the 
> historians on this list have any information on this allegation?  The artcle 

No.

> also states that Andrew Jackson was the son of an Irish  wonan who married a 

I've spent a lot of my life in the Carolinas 
and Tennessee, all three of which claim Andy 
Jackson. That's one of the most ridiculous 
things I've ever heard. His wife was 
literally hounded to death because Jackson 
and she married before her divorce was final: 
just imagine what his antagonists would have 
done if Jackson's father, who did die when he 
was very young, had been black.

> black man, that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of an African man 

There's a lot of speculation about Lincoln's 
true parentage, but none of it as to African 
ancestry that I've heard. There is some oral 
tradition in western ("Upstate") South 
Carolina that Nancy Hanks, his mother, had an 
affair with John C. Calhoun, and that Robert 
Lincoln was paid to marry the pregnant Nancy 
and get her out of the state.  There is some 
speculation that Lincoln may have had some 
American Indian ancestry.

> and allegedly an Ethiopian woman, that Warren Hardng had black ancestors on 

I've heard that Warren Harding _may_ have had 
some black ancestry. I've never seen any 
documentation.

> both sets of parents, and that Calvin Coolidge claimed his mother was dark 
> because of mixed Indian ancestry.  I have never heard of any of these 
> before.  Is there any truth here?

It's possible Coolidge may have had some 
American Indian ancestry as it's possible for 
most of us, but I think that speculation 
comes from his legendary taciturnity, but 
being taciturn is also identified with rural 
New Englanders of Coolidge's era.

Elizabeth Whitaker

______________________________________
To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at
http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html