Consult military records and check census records on microfilm in the local library. The explosion of information on the Internet is opening up a more personal dialogue about slavery and the nature of family, Campbell said. Easily and rapidly, people are connecting to their pasts, finding distant relatives, and hooking their family tree to others on the Internet. Many are finding mixed-race cousins online, then redrawing family trees to include blood connections that came out of slavery, Nelson said. Still, some run the other way, or withhold information, when confronted with connections that cross racial lines, she said.
Some people are very embarrassed by having white connections.
The debate over slave descendants of Thomas Jefferson has fueled research on the descendants of slave holders, said Steve Mintz, a University of Houston professor researching cultural aspects of American slavery. Almost all those births resulted from sexual exploitation, he said. Lee, the local descendant of slave holders, is not surprised. I'm not vain enough to think my white ancestors didn't do that. Not every slave owner . . .