Posted on 06/24/2012 6:57:47 AM PDT by lbryce
We knew that the Sunday article about Mrs. Obama’s white ancestors would stir considerable interest so we decided to invite readers to pose questions and make comments. We never imagined that one of those readers would provide us with the first glimpse of two key figures in the first lady’s family tree: The white man who owned Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great grandmother, Melvinia Shields, and his son, who most likely fathered Melvinia’s child.
The photograph of those two men and their relatives, which is believed to have been taken in Georgia sometime around 1884, is being published here for the first time.
The slaveowner was Henry Wells Shields, who inherited Melvinia when his father-in-law died in 1852. DNA testing and research indicate that he and his wife, Christian Patterson Shields, are the first lady’s great-great-great-great grandparents.
Their son, Charles Marion Shields, worked as a farmer and a teacher. DNA testing and research point to him as the father of Melvinia’s son, Dolphus Shields. That would make Charles Mrs. Obama’s great-great-great grandfather.
The photo came from Jarrod Shields, a science teacher at a community college in Alabama who also happens to be the great-great-great grandson of Henry Wells Shields. He was getting ready to mow the lawn when his wife, Tonya, got a call about the article and called him to come inside. Jarrod had grown up knowing that his family had once owned slaves and always wondered what happened to their descendants. His wife sent me an e-mail this week, outlining her husband’s connection to the Shields family, along with the photograph.
When I spoke to Jarrod by phone, he told me that he hoped that he might be able to meet his extended black family, he said of the descendants of the slaves his ancestors had owned.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
now the stooopid cow can hate herself too...
I’m first-gen American, and my parents and grandparents, along with other relatives fleeing Communism, had to start all over again here. They were highly educated (doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc.). You’re exactly right in that they worked their tails off from day one. No slaves or even servants for my family, since they landed on these shores!
I’m first-gen American, and my parents and grandparents, along with other relatives fleeing Communism, had to start all over again here. They were highly educated (doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc.). You’re exactly right in that they worked their tails off from day one. No slaves or even servants for my family, since they landed on these shores!
Losing the Civil War was an unmitigated disaster of truly Biblical proportions throughout the Souf'.
Unlike pictures of former Union soldiers and their families in that same time period (like a whole big bunch of them I have), this Souvrn' family could no longer afford firearms ~ least not so's they'd have them hanging on the waste, leaning across an elbow, of lying along a log ~
Where are the leather belts? When they slaughtered hogs were they eating the whole thing? In the North you'd see leather ~ much of it from cowhide but a lot of it from pigskin all over the place. They do seem to have serviceable workboots ~ of local make.
The wealth is different from that of the North but we don't know by looking who owns the land and who does the tenant farmer trick. Or, maybe these folks cut trees and blend whiskey.
Now, the shack, that's a pretty good one. I've seen similar ones burning down in Northern Alabama after the family moved out ~ and that was 80 years later ~ so the materials did meet thetest of time ~ it's that main crossbeam ~ unseasoned timber ~ probably a couple of jacktar pine logs up there. Plenty of flex for the occasional hurricanes.
No problem. All they needed was an eight holer out back.
Well . . . fry me for an oyster.
Well . . . fry me for an oyster.
NYT trying to get the white vote for Obama...
Exactly. How often do we have to be slapped with this Alex Haley (plagiarist) Roots (massively fictionalized) scenario? How often do we allow the impugning of Thomas Jefferson (slandered and libeled) by tawdry fabrication and specious speculation regarding his slave women? How often must the white devil slavemaster confer to the residue of Caucasian America the presumed stain of slave rapist?
Apparently, we must suffer these calumnies indefinitely, or at least until we get it!
:-)
And you are right! Our only solace is that the NYT doesn't change anyone's mind anymore. It only reinforces the beliefs of liberals.
Dem hips are great for birthin’!
I lived in houses worse than that growin’ up in Arkansas in the 50s.
Who are the two black guys standing in the back?
I think her great-grandfather was the banjo player in “Deliverance.”
I’ll bet Rahm and Barry would love a double date with those two movie stars.
“I have traced my heritage back 20+ generations through all branches.”
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Yeah, sure you have, what’s your next project, counting all the stars in the skies?
My Great ,great,great//Grandfather was Joseph Johns, founder of Johnstown PA. Pennsylvania has been collecting taxes ever since the FLOOD. Perhaps some of that money is mine??? Repatations are reparations, NOT?
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