There is no denying that oral history, even when not quite accurate, can 
provide us with valuable clues for research. But we should not confuse oral 
history with reality unless we can find some historical evidence for it.

Martha Hodes quotes David Thelen's "Memory and American History," People 
construct memories in response to different circumstances, and therefore "the 
important question is not how accurately a recollection fitted some piece of 
past reality, but why historical actors constructed memories in a particular 
way at a particular time." 

My research of Virginia and Maryland court records indicates there were as 
many as 1,000 mixed-race African American children born to white servant 
women during the colonial period in Virginia and Maryland. I know of about 
three or four instances in which this information survived to the present 
generation.
Paul