I knew...

I can't wait! lol

BTW, did you see the documents?

I'm seeing a lot of interesting material. I'm keen on starting to look at who the traders were. What do you think, Kwame: do you think the Africans were recorded with names when they got on the ships? When I look at the New Amsterdam stories, they get generic names (van Angola etc), and the first names were initially given by their masters. I was reading the Kuntah Kinteh story yesterday (who hasn't seen 'Roots'? :-) ). It was one of the very few cases (that we know), where the original African names and ancestors were told by the first slaves to their children and grandchildren. Which is why they Alex Haley was able to reconstruct that genealogy.

Everyone had a name. But on plantations in U.S. and Caribbean, the names the slaves (or neighbors) gave themselves in MOST cases differed from the ones the masters gave them.

So, how did that evolve, Kwame? I suspect that the given names persisted - not the original names? I'm just asking because of the challenge this might give that many people may have records under two different names.

%he naming p ractices of New Amsterdam blacks appear

to have been influenced by the Dutch colonial

naming system which is distinctive in its use of

patronymics and its bilineal orientation. Whether officials

of the Dutch Reformed Church pressured black

parents to conform to Dutch naming practices when

baptizing their infants is unknown. For insight into the

Dutch colonial naming system, see Rosalie Fellows

Bailey, Dutch Systems in Family Naming: New York -

New Jersey (Washington, D.C.: Genealogical Publications

of the National Genealogical Society, No. 12, May

1954) and Edward H. Tebbenhoff, “Tacit Rules and

Hidden Family Structures: Naming Practices and Godparentage

in Schenectady,New York 1680-1800,” Journal

of Social History, 18 (1985), 567-85.

Even though genealogical

evidence on many of New Amsterdam’s black

families is sparse, it is possible to analyze the distribution

of names among the town’s black population, using the

names of blacks contained in the marriage and baptismal

registers of the Dutch Reformed church. Certain names

were repeated in the black community so consistently

that their usage was undeniably deliberate. The 7 1 black

males who can be identified from church records bore 23

different names, but 49 of these men (70%) shared only

six names-Anthony, Emanuel, Francisco, Jan, Domingo,

and Pieter. Moreover, 21(58%) of the 36 male black

babies who were baptized in New Amsterdam between

1639 and 1665 bore the same names as older black men

in the community. The data on intergenerational naming

patterns among New Amsterdam’s black females is even

more conclusive. Of the 24 female black babies baptized

in the church between 1639 and 1665, 19 (79%) were

given names already carried by black women in New

Amsterdam. Moreover, these names were among the

most popular female names in the black community. To

put it another way, nine names-Anna, Catharina,

Cecilia, Christina, Elizabeth, Lucretia, Magdaleen,

Marie, and Susanna-accounted for 19 babies and 51

women in the black community of New Amsterdam.

That 70 black females shared only nine names suggests

strongly that girls were being named after their mothers

or aunts or grandmothers or perhaps even more distant

female kin.

Quote:
The most important case in these efforts was that of Mary Butler in 1787. She gained her freedom when she proved she was the great-great granddaughter of a servant, “Irish Nell” Butler who came to Maryland as a free person in 1681 and subsequently married an enslaved man.

Mary Buttler (dunno the same, but from the 18th century) is on Geni

Nell is Eleanor born in 1665 England

I guess you found this already, Jennie? http://www.freeafricanamericans.com/Butler.htm
Here you have the man's name: Charles. He was living with Irish Nell on the plantation of Major Boarman, and they had children. It looks like they were legally married. Will you find the record? :-)

So I do it over and over again? finding the same names? Must be that I'm fond of love stories....... LOL
Anyway I have the name an direct descendant and was just asking Jason to look in to that....
Now I know men search better than I do......
So maybe he has the results better and sooner than I do, but it's a challange... I mean for him, I can find it in an instant of course LOL

George I allready knew the man's name is Charles!

Ooohh you are so slow......

:-P

"Lord Baltimore told her what would happen and warned her not to do it," says Agnes Kane Callum, a direct descendant of the couple. "She didn't listen. They were married by a Catholic priest. They had seven or eight children. The whole family was the property of Charles' master."

That's just one of the fascinating stories that Callum, 80, unearthed while painstakingly preparing her family's genealogical chart, on display in the Lewis Museum's permanent collection.

Callum, a Baltimorean, began preparing the chart in 1968 while taking a black history course at Morgan State University.

The course introduced her to genealogy, one of the consuming passions of her life. She spent decades tracing her family on her mother's side to 1681, and her family on her father's side to 1793.

"I never thought it would go this far," she says.

In the early 1970s, Callum, then over 50, was named a Fulbright Scholar and spent a year studying in Ghana. She is about to publish the 25th annual issue of the black genealogical journal she started in 1982, Flower of the Forrest. And she is at work on her 10th book of history and genealogy.

I think a pretty interesting lady: Agnes Kane Callum...
Does someone allready knows her?