Finding Clues to Connect to Former Slaveholding Relatives
- Kelly Knight
- Mar 5, 2017
- 3 min read
It all started with a newspaper clipping....
My mother has saved a newspaper clipping from her hometown (Halifax, VA) for years. The article features a white family of Lovelaces from Halifax. Lovelace is my mother's maiden name.
The story goes that a white woman approached my aunt in a store in Halifax and proclaimed that she was related to the Lovelace family featured in the article and that we (the black Lovelaces of Halifax) were their cousins.
Fast forward to 2016...my mother shows me the article and can not help but consistently comment how much one of the men pictured in the article (pictured left) looks like my great-great grandfather, Stewart Lovelace (pictured right). The man in the article is James Smith Lovelace. The resemblance is uncanny, right??
I can not seem to let it go either so I decide to put my researcher's hat on and get to work. Here are some of the steps that have gone into making this connection:
1. Using ancestry.com, I created a private family tree of the Lovelace family featured in the article. I do this often when I am researching a potential connection to my family but am not sure of how they connect just yet. This helps me to do some research on the family line to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
2. Clue #1: I found Stewart's death certificate which states a man by the name of John Lovelace is his father:
Clue #2: Guess what....James Smith Lovelace (pictured above at left) has a brother by the name of John Logan Lovelace!
3. Next step....examine the slave schedules. In 1850 and 1860, slave holding individuals were required to enumerate their slaves. These schedules listed the slaves by age, sex, and race (black or mulatto). Unfortunately, the slaves were not listed by name (except for a very few rare occasions). According to this source, James Smith and John Logan Lovelace were the only Lovelaces listed as being amongst the largest slaveholders in 1860.
Clue #3: This 1860 slave schedule shows that John Lovelace owned a 13 year old boy who could potentially be Stewart (born in 1846):
4. Now it was time for me to evaluate my DNA results. AncestryDNA gives you an option to search your matches based on surname and/or location. It was helpful that I also had my mother tested because as her daughter, I only inherited 50% of her DNA, so I was able to get much more information by searching her matches. I searched her matches for Lovelaces from Halifax, VA. I started documenting the common ancestors I saw in those individuals who had publicly available family trees. At least 10 of them had Charles (born 1696) and/or Thomas (born 1739) Lovelace listed on their family tree.
Clue #4: Charles and Thomas Lovelace are ancestors of James Smith and John Logan Lovelace.*
*This is where the importance of step 1 comes into play. I would not have known the connection of Charles & Thomas to James & John if I had not already researched their family line.
5. As a continuation to my DNA analysis, I uploaded my raw DNA data to GEDMatch. Let me just say, even as someone whose career has been based off of DNA, I am confused by GEDMatch and have a lot to learn about genetic genealogy!
With that being said, the third match to my mother on GEDMatch happens to be someone who also matched her on AncestryDNA so I was able to evaluate her family tree and guess what...
Clue #5: John Logan Lovelace is her great-great-grandfather!
Coincidence?? I don't think so :).
Summary of clues thus far:
Clue #1: Stewart Lovelace's death certificate identifies John Lovelace as his father.
Clue #2: James Smith Lovelace (who has an uncanny resemblance to Stewart Lovelace) has a brother by the name of John Logan Lovelace.
Clue #3: The 1860 slave schedule shows that John Lovelace owned a 13 year old boy who could potentially be Stewart.
Clue #4: Charles and Thomas Lovelace, who are ancestors of John Logan Lovelace, are listed on numerous family trees of our DNA matches.
Clue #5: John Logan Lovelace is the great-great-grandfather of an individual identified as being closely related to my mother on GEDMatch.
So with all of this information I have gathered, I am pretty confident that the John Lovelace identified on Stewart's death certificate is likely John Logan Lovelace, however, this is all circumstantial as we say in the forensic science world so I am still looking for my 'smoking gun' which I may or may not ever get.
My next steps are to go to the Library of Virginia and back to the Halifax courthouse to evaluate some of the probate records of the Lovelace family in detail as well as to further examine the DNA results.
To be continued...stay tuned!
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