Related Sponsors

Involuntary Immigration and Migration

Home » Genealogy » Genealogy - Immigrant Ancestors » Involuntary Immigration and Migration
Posted by Your Guide on July 6, 2006 9:38 PM

As incomprehensible as it is to us now, many people became involuntary immigrants to our country over the years. These immigrants arrived in slave ships and were assigned slave names straight from the Bible. No longer known by the name given to them by their family in their native land, they became Bartholomew, Matthew, Joseph, or Mary. For most of these unwilling immigrants, the change of their name would forever break the chords that linked them to their family and their homeland.

The thousands of slaves brought to America from Africa and other places would not be educated for several generations and have no way to document their own existence here in America. Slave traders and slave owners viewed these people as property and assigned value to them as one would livestock or land. As generations lived with this situation, they became more and more accustomed to devaluing these human lives and thus few records of their lives were kept. They were forbidden to marry in the official sense, and even if they were allowed to take a spouse in order that the slave owner might gain children from their union, they still were under the constant threat of being sold or even killed. The children from these unions were also sold to further the slave owner's business ventures or to seal deals over land and other property.

Some fastidious slave owners kept records of the purchase and sale of slaves, but fewer records were kept of any "marriages," births, or deaths that occurred. Slaves who died were given no burial markers and were not baptized in any churches. Slaves were not allowed to enroll in school and they, being property themselves, could not buy or sell land or property of any kind.

The atrocities of those times long ago still affect African American genealogists today. The lack of records and the inhumanity of the records that were kept are a slap in the face to anyone who descends from the people who were victimized by the institution of slavery.

Slaves and African Americans aren't the only ones affected by involuntary migration. Native Americans were moved from place to place as the government saw fit for many years. When white settlers wanted to move into lands occupied by Indian tribes, the government would move in, sweep the Native Americans onto a reservation and then document them with Americanized versions of their Indian names, or change their names altogether, and forbid them to use their native names. As they were moved from place to place and renamed, many familial ties were broken and records, if they existed, were destroyed. Without delving into the politics for these actions, it is safe to say that the forced migration and name changes make it very difficult for Native American descendants to successfully search for their ancestors.



Next Page: Types of Genealogy Societies

Related Articles