Do not dismiss oral hiistory, many African Americans and poor whites have 
been able to trace their ancestry because of the family stories passed down. 
Unfortunately some of those stories upon research turn out to be untrue. 
However, sometime facts get lost in translation, I can say this from 
personal experience. I remember my paternal grandmother very often 
mentioning what turned out to be her mother's family name, it took me two or 
more years looking at transcribed census rolls to realize that the family 
living next door to my great-grandparents were my great grandmother's 
family.

When looking at original hand written documents, if you are unable to 
decipher what a word is, especially names, scan the document for another 
word with the same letter (writting styles change over the years) often 
helps.

Harriott Lomax







From: [log in to unmask]
Reply-To: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history 
<[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] African American Genealogy
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 22:51:58 EST
>A think the oral history thing is bogus. My oral history was that I was
>descended from a signer of the Declartion of Indenpendence, which turned 
>out to
>be a fiction.
>
>I think the dna analysis is the best criteria.
>
>JD South
><BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free
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