By Alan Boyle
MSNBC.com
When William Holland traveled from Atlanta to Cameroon to dig into his family roots, the quest succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: A blend of genetic testing and genealogical sleuthing connected him with one of the West African nation’s royal families. The king of Mankon, a region in Cameroon, embraced Holland so completely that the American was ceremonially given the name of the king’s father.
But now Holland is facing an embarrassment of genealogical riches: Since he first came upon his royal connection, he has determined that he’s genetically linked not only with nobility in Cameroon, but also with a different clan in Ghana, hundreds of miles to the west.
“I think I’m getting toward the end of it…but with this group, you have thousands of thousands of people,” Holland told me as he headed for another extended-family reunion in Ghana.
Holland’s experience demonstrates how the search for family roots in Africa doesn’t always result in the neat succession of generations that was portrayed in the 1977 miniseries Roots. It also suggests that Black History Month, which Americans observe every February, might more aptly be called Black Histories Month.
“Who was the ancestor that all of us are from?” Holland asked. “Who was he? That’s the question I want to answer, but I don’t know how to ask. This one man created thousands of people, but who was he? This one man…he was something!”
Tracing African roots
African-American roots are notoriously tough to trace back from America to Africa, for an obvious reason: When traders brought shipments of slaves across the Atlantic, families were sundered and the old names were forgotten. Owners typically gave slaves their own family names — which is what happened to William Holland’s ancestors.
Holland has gone through more than his share of twists and turns as a genealogical researcher: Years ago, he found out that his great-great-grandfather, Creed Holland, was a slave wagon driver who was forced to serve in the Confederate infantry during the Civil War. That led Holland to sign up for membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans — a move that didn’t exactly sit well with some whites and some blacks.
Nine years ago, Holland thought his ancestors came from Nigeria. But since then, there’s been a revolution in the use of genetic testing to firm up genealogical ties. Holland took a DNA test offered by GeneTree and pored over records compiled by the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, GeneTree’s nonprofit sister organization. SMGF’s database was suited to Holland’s search because it combines genetic matching with genealogical pedigrees. If your DNA markers match up with someone else in the database, the pedigree of the person you match just might provide new clues for family sleuthing.
The database was particularly attractive for Holland because the foundation’s testing teams went out to gather DNA samples from people in countries around the world, including African nations. This offered a way for Holland to “leap across the ocean” and find genetic connections to families in the old country, even if he couldn’t trace the precise line of ancestry.
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