This is a fascinating story, involving genealogy, the late Alex Haley, his nephew Chris Haley, a family in Scotland, Megan Smolenyak, Roots Television, and Ancestry.co.uk. In brief, Alex Haley's roots and those of Chris Haley have now been traced back to... Scotland! This week the "family" had a reunion in London, and I was fortunate enough to be there to watch it happen. I even took pictures.
Alex Haley was well known for his book Roots, which became a very successful television mini-series. The book is based upon Alex Haley's maternal ancestry. Stories were handed down in that family from generation to generation – stories that later became the basis for the Roots story that described Haley's search for his roots in Africa.
Alex Haley didn't write much about his paternal ancestors. However, he later wrote Queen: The Story of an American Family. Queen is a partly factual historical novel which portrays the plight of the children of the plantation – the offspring of black slave women and their white masters, who rarely acknowledged the children who were not only their progeny but also legally their slaves.
While the book was fictional, the characters in the book were based on real people: Alex Haley's paternal family tree. The lady called "Queen" was actually Alex Haley's paternal grandmother. The novel recounts Queen's anguished early years as a slave girl, longing to know who her father was. She eventually found that her father was Alec Haley, and we now know where Alex Haley got his name: from his great-grandfather Alec Haley.
In the book, Alex Haley wrote:
Alex Haley was unable to finish writing "Queen" before he died, and it was completed by David Stevens. Haley also did not complete his studies of his paternal ancestry and did not know much about William Baugh.
Now let's jump forward a few years:
Chris Haley is a professional historian, archivist, and a serious genealogist. He has been researching branches of the Haley family tree that his famous uncle did not complete before his death. In fact, I interviewed Chris Haley on Roots Television in 2007. You can see that interview at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2007/08/interview-with-.html. In the description of that 1997 interview, I wrote, "His famous uncle only researched one-fourth of Chris' ancestry, so Chris has been working on the other three-fourths."
A few months later, Megan Smolenyak asked Chris Haley to take a DNA test, an option not available to his uncle only a few years earlier when the uncle was doing genealogy searches. You can watch Chris' reaction to the DNA test on Roots Television at http://www.rootstelevision.com/players/player_dna3.php?bctid=1243732346&bclid=1485323732.
Now let's fast-forward again to a week-and-a-half ago. Chris received an automated e-mail message, informing him of a match to another customer who had just submitted his DNA sample. A few e-mail messages flew back and forth, and Chris soon learned that a man in Scotland had identical DNA with Chris' sample (and therefore, it also had to match Alex Haley's DNA as well) except for one mutation. This means that Chris and the man in Scotland shared a common ancestor.
Megan Smolenyak again got involved and, in turn, she asked the folks at Ancestry.com and Ancestry.co.uk to help. (Megan is the Chief Family Historian at Ancestry.com and Ancestry.co.uk.) Together, they researched some of the Haley's paternal ancestry.
Now the best part of all is the fact that the Scottish man's name is Baff. While the spelling is different, the names "Baugh" and "Baff" are pronounced the same. The man's last name is the same as what Alex Haley wrote some years ago in Queen.
It seems that the man in Scotland had submitted DNA as a favor to his daughter. She is the genealogist in the family, having researched her family tree for the past three weeks. That is not a mis-print: she has been researching her family tree for THREE WEEKS!
She wanted to compare DNA but, as a female, she does not possess a Y-chromosome. She needed a close male relative to submit a sample for her. She asked her father to do so, and he swabbed his cheeks and sent in the sample. A few days later, voila! A match. The man in Scotland has the same DNA as the famous Haley family in America.
The Haley family legends turned out to be true: the paternal ancestor was probably named Baugh or Baff. (We are assuming a 99% chance of being named Baugh or Baff here; the man obviously shared male ancestry with the modern-day Baff.)
E-mail started flying back and forth across the Atlantic. Chris Haley corresponded with the man's daughter, June Baff Black. While born in Scotland, June now lives in Wales. The two decided to meet as soon as possible. Megan arranged many of the details, including coverage by the BBC. The "reunion" was held the following weekend at the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE show in London. Chris obtained the first available airline ticket to London, and June jumped on the train, along with her husband and children.
By good fortune, I was in the hotel lobby this morning when the two families met for the first time. It was cute: they shook hands, and immediately both cousins started examining the other's face and hands, looking for visible similarities. They also quickly zeroed in on similar interests and hobbies, just as any two long-lost cousins would do. You can see a picture of the two on this newsletter's web site. I believe full coverage will be available on RootsTelevision.com within a few days as well.
It was a heart-warming moment.
The two families soon jumped into a waiting car and went to BBC Television to appear on the Saturday morning "BBC Breakfast Show," along with Dr. Nick Barratt, the genealogical consultant for the BBC television show Who Do You Think You Are? Other news services have since picked up the story and it has since appeared on television and in the printed press throughout the U.K.
I love it when a good story comes together, this time because of the hard work of number of people, including the two "cousins" as well as Megan Smolenyak, Roots Television, Ancestry.co.uk, FamilyTree DNA, and even the BBC.
A lot of work is left to be done. The DNA match occurred only one-and-a-half weeks ago. There is much paperwork left to be studied. Now that the two have a name confirmed and Chris Haley now has a country identified, the two are prepared to spend the next few months studying census records and all the other records that genealogists use. The goal is to find a paperwork trail that verifies the DNA, as well as vice-versa.
I am also fascinated by the deflation of a stereotype. Many of us think of American Blacks tracing their ancestry back to Africa, and that is certainly accurate for many of their ancestors. However, history also teaches us that many slaves had white ancestry, such as the case of overseer William Baugh and his relationship with a slave woman. Indeed, many of today's American Blacks do have white ancestry that will lead them back to the British Isles or to Europe. I am sure that Alex Haley never knew that his roots went back to Scotland as well as to Africa. Yet he knew about and wrote about his white ancestor, William Baugh. I don't think he would be surprised by this week's events.
The Haley family is not alone in having both white and black roots.
Hi Dick,
Great news for the Haley and Baff families!
I would like to know what you would recommend for the amount of 'numbers' that would be best to use for a DNA test. I have wanted to purchase a test for my uncle, but have no clue to the appropriate (or best) numbers for the best results.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Kathleen~CT.
Posted by: Kathleen | March 01, 2009 at 10:37 AM
It's great to see oral history validated by testing procedures. Our country has had such a difficult time dealing with ethnicity and I still see it when the "unusual" mtDNA L pops up in an European American family. Hopefully folks will realize that when an African American family "passed" for white, they lost contact with that part of their heritage - no one was going to "out" the family. So, the L might be that "rare" link to a few samples from Italy, or it might be that European American families "are not alone in having both white and black roots."
Posted by: Sonia | March 01, 2009 at 11:24 AM
I think there is a mistake here. Queen could not pass Y-DNA to her grandson. Articles from 2007 about Chris Haley taking the DNA test say that Alec Haley was Alex Haley's grandfather.
Posted by: Roger | March 01, 2009 at 12:03 PM
The book was FICTIONAL although based on real people. Relationships were not the same in the book as in real life. The quote from the book shows father-son relationships which means that Y-chromosomes were passed down.
Posted by: Dick Eastman | March 01, 2009 at 12:44 PM
Very interesting and makes complete sense. I've wondered why Obama hasn't made more of what I understant is his Irish ancestry.
Posted by: Kathleen | March 01, 2009 at 04:16 PM
As a female can I have my half uncle's grandson take the Y Chromosome test? My half uncle and his son and grandson are from the male line. This grandson is the only one living.
My half uncle's mother was a 1C 2R to me. This means that my grandfather had two sons from his first marriage and had my father from his second marriage.
As an alternative can I again as a female have my grandfather's brother's great grandson take the Y Chromosome test?
Posted by: Ethel | March 01, 2009 at 07:35 PM
As long as the person taking the test has straight male ancestry from the common ancestor, no females in the line at all, the answer is "yes."
Posted by: Dick Eastman | March 01, 2009 at 07:52 PM
Great article.
One interesting note, what one group of people call a "relationship" another call "Rape."
Semantics I guess.
Posted by: Jack Abramoff | March 02, 2009 at 04:48 AM
Great article.
One interesting note, what one group of people call a "relationship" another call "Rape."
Semantics I guess.
Posted by: Jack Abramoff | March 02, 2009 at 04:48 AM
Very interesting article. One thing I think should be corrected:
It's written above:
"While the book was fictional, the characters in the book were based on real people: Alex Haley's paternal family tree. The lady called "Queen" was actually Alex Haley's paternal grandmother. The novel recounts Queen's anguished early years as a slave girl, longing to know who her father was. She eventually found that her father was Alec Haley, and we now know where Alex Haley got his name: from his great-grandfather Alec Haley."
Alec Haley is the grandfather of Alex Haley (not the great-grandfather), and is the husband, not the father, of Queen. Queen was the child of a slave named Easter and her master, James Jackson, Jr. Queen later married Alec Haley, the son of Scottish overseer William Baugh and Sabrina, a slave of the Haley plantation. Alec and Queen Haley left Alabama and lived in Tennessee and were the parents of Simon Alexander Haley (b. 1892), the father of Alex Haley.
Posted by: Chris Child | March 04, 2009 at 11:37 AM
I am really interested in how you have put this together. I wish i could have something like this with my family.
Posted by: Holly Watson | March 12, 2009 at 02:17 PM
I read this article and subsequent posts with great interest. I am a Black American and I am tracing all of my roots which also include my white ancestors. Another reason why I am interested is because one of my friends is a close cousin to Alex Haley who grew up in Savannah, TN. I first made the connection after she talked about a cousin named Queenie (it's a family name passed down through generations) and I noticed that Alex's family lived in Savannah for a while. I can't wait to tell her that she is part Scottish. I know her response will be hilarious.
Posted by: Jennifer Campbell | March 14, 2009 at 09:23 AM
this may or may not be more than a publicity stunt.. with free trips for the parties involved.
many people in england belong to a broad group of Atlantic Modal Haplotype Y-DNA and its VERY COMMON to get hundreds of exact or nearly exact ''matches'' with someone in this large group that includes much of the british isles..
we would really need to know how many alleles these families matched on 12,24,36..more ??) beacuse if this is a 12 marker AMH Y-dna match, on what we KNOW is the most common (R1b) european DNA Hg, then this is totally meaningless..
all it proves is they are both related for thousands of years to almost all the rest of europe.
Posted by: tom flanagan | July 17, 2009 at 08:53 PM
I was there and talked at length with both the individuals and with Megan Smolenyak (a well known DNA expert) who was involved in the testing. There were no free trips involved nor any other form of promotion. The two men tested matched exactly on 37 markers.
- Dick Eastman
Posted by: Dick Eastman | July 17, 2009 at 10:06 PM
I am the coordinator of the Baugh DNA Project at http://www.worldfamilies.net/surnames/baugh. Take at look at the y-Results page (http://www.worldfamilies.net/surnames/baugh/results) and you can see how closely the Baff DNA sample matches a cluster of Baughs in the USA who are descended from William Baugh, who immigrated to Virginia in the mid-1600s and is the ancestor of many Baughs now living in the USA. William Baugh is the subject of the Baugh Genealogy web site (http://arslanmb.org/baugh/baugh.html).
Several members of this Baugh family moved to the South. The Alabama overseer William Baugh is probably one of this family.
If we could get more of the direct male descendants of the various Baugh, Baff, Baw, etc. families to join the Baugh DNA Project, we should be able to confirm this connection, but the evidence looks very compelling.
Posted by: Mark Arslan | July 28, 2009 at 11:56 PM