“How do we create belief in the idea of a shared American identity? For starters, let’s start thinking of the history of slavery as a common history between black and white Americans. Don’t you think Old Americans share a common history in American slavery? My daughter may wish to deny them, but her ancestors in Virginia date back to Peter Montague in the year 1621…Why do you think there is no overlap in the common history of Old Americans—Americans, for example, who can trace their ancestry in Virginia back to the year 1621? — Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America by Winkfield F. Twyman, Jr. and Jennifer Richmond, page 127
Whatever distinctive genes existed in Sir William Brown (1600 - 1664) found their way to Virginia in 1622. And those genes remained in the Brown family through generation after generation after generation after generation after generation after generation. Those genes continued in the white descendants of Sir Brown for more generations before settling in the person of Mark Brown. In 1833, those Brown genes came together when Daniel Brown (1783 - after 1860) and his slave, Phyllis, had a son, Daniel Brown (1833 - 1885). I am a great great grandson of Daniel Brown.
On Monday and for perhaps the first time since before the Civil War in Charlotte County, Virginia, these Brown genes will meet again across the color line. I will have a conversation with my 5th cousin, Mark Brown.
“Sir William Brown was born in 1600 in England. He had one son in 1624. He died in 1664 in Westmoreland, Virginia, at the age of 64. Col. William Brown arrived in Virginia as an IMMIGRANT in 1622.” — Ancestor from the Twyman Family Tree, Ancestry.com
Dogma says the black and the white cannot get along. Such a falsehood.
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Why did I become fascinated with 23 and Me? My Brown ancestors were fundamental to my sense of self growing up. However, due to the intervening factor of American slavery, I did not know much about my Brown line before Grandma’s Grandfather, Daniel Brown (1833 - 1885). Family oral history was quite clear that Daniel was the son of slave master Daniel Brown and his slave named Phyllis. But I could go back no further. I was an orphan before Daniel Brown, the elder.
And like most orphans over history, I felt a hole within my sense of self. One has to keep in mind that my Brown ancestors echoed throughout Hickory Hill, the neighborhood of my childhood. My Brown ancestor had been like Titan. He founded our family church. He owned land from the railroad tracks to the James River, over 300 acres of land. He stood tall in our family memory.
I wanted to know where my Brown ancestors came from. And so I convinced my wife that I should spend money on a 23 and Me test.
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Dear Cousin Mark, According to 23 and Me, we are predicted 5th cousins. That means we share a common great great great great grandparent. This is a long shot but, perhaps, you can help me, and my family, solve a mystery. The founding father of my family was my paternal great great grandfather, Daniel Brown. Born a slave in Charlotte County, Virginia, Daniel lived a life worthy of a Hollywood movie. He started with nothing. He rose from being property to owning about 550 acres of land in Chesterfield and Charlotte County, Virginia after the Civil War. As a little boy, I always marveled at the appearance of his descendants, my grandmother's Brown cousins. They were all tall men, blond and blue-eyed and resolutely colored/black/african-american. However, Daniel Brown and his Cherokee wife, Sallie, had 16 children and of those 16, 4 made the painful choice to pass for white. Their absence was always felt in whispers behind closed doors. I would love to find my lost third cousins who may have forgotten their proud, achieving black ancestor, Daniel Brown. (For a comparable account, see the life experience of Thomas Murphy in The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America by Daniel J. Sharfstein.) Does this story of Brown enterprise and race concealment/lost memory accord with any oral or documented histories in your family's past? Like I said, this is a long shot but life is short and family reunification is long lasting. (Note the descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings.) I could be barking up the wrong tree but the only surname match between us is Brown. Warm regards, Winkfield (Wink) Franklin Twyman, Jr. San Diego, California — My First Message to Cousin Mark, July 30, 2016
According to 23 and Me, Mark Brown was my projected 5th cousin. Mark was like 99% European and yet we shared unique genes. We were clearly related. And his family name, Brown, haunted me. Could Mark be related to my Brown ancestors, Grandma’s people? I remember riding the commuter train to work in the 2000s and imagining what had happened to my third cousins who had passed for white? Where were they living? Did they also feel like orphans in their Brown family line?
Could genetic genealogy answer my haunting questions? Would cousin Mark be receptive to answering my questions? Some people submit their test results to 23 and Me on a whim. They are not particularly interested in deep genealogy. And then I feared some might harbor subtle bias. Would some be gun shy about acknowledging and embracing a black cousin? Mark didn’t know me and I didn’t know Mark.
The days passed…and I heard nothing from Mark.
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On August 8, 2016, Mark replied to me. And, oh boy, did he reply! He was eager to help me locate the most recent common ancestor we shared. He shared reams of tax records and deeds and microfilm data. There were abstracts of wills, guardianship records, and a citation to a book about blacks in Nelson County, Virginia.
I immediately shared my gratitude for his willingness to share extensive research. None of the records and documents provided a missing link or connection to Daniel Brown (1833 - 1885). But I thanked Mark for his time and effort. I felt he was a fellow traveler, even if he might not be related to Daniel. Part of the problem was the sheer number of ancestors. 5th cousins have 64 great great great great grandparents. To find a most recent common ancestor is like finding a needle in a haystack.
I was prepared to never know who connected the two of us. Mark’s thoughts were driven as well to his ancestors at the time of emancipation and how they survived.
There is something about a genetic connection that drives people. It is instinctive and visceral. Mark was drawn to my writing, even before he knew we were distant cousins:
I was wondering if you are the Winkfield Twyman that wrote about Critical Race Theory? My daughter is a recent law school graduate. I thought I remembered reading something written by a Winkfield Twyman when she and I were discussing the idea of White Privilege and employment law.
I assured Mark I was one and the same. It was a moment of connection. Query whether the Brown genes we both shared were in harmony. I do believe personality and temperament is genetic, in part.
Mark shared with me the name of an ancestor, Lt. Colonel Thomas Brown, that would prove pivotal. We were both curious individuals and wondered about who presented more as a caricature for our respective race. I shared my musings on race and disparities and motivations in life:
Anyway, one of my motivations for taking the 23 and Me test was to locate lost third cousins who passed for white. They too were descended from Daniel Brown (who may have been a white-appearing former slave after all). I've noticed an interesting dynamic, one that is not politically correct to talk about. Sometimes, the white descendants of achieving black ancestors achieve less than black descendants. See Shirlee Taylor Haizlip. I think it is because the transition to whiteness robs descendants of a need to prove something. Those descendants who remain black retain an urge to strive and to prove themselves in America. Compare this impulse with "Have something to prove: A Drive to Succeed" in The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People by Steven Silbiger. In short, Derrick Bell was wrong for African-Americans of middle America. And he did an injustice to the power of agency, self-reliance in the human experience. Every black isn't oppressed due to structural racism. Every white isn't privileged due to long-ago slavery. The song might be pleasing to the ear but the tune rings hollow in my experience. We are cousins at different places in life but CRT robs us of what we know to be true and replaces our experience with an imposed story of privilege. Nothing could be more disempowering to descendants of slaveowners or the descendants of slaves. Thanks for wondering about Bell's explanation. I loved Bell as a professor. He was a great guy, even though he shopped a story line that disempowers people.
Sometimes, distant cousins can understand one another. Race does not matter.
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Over the years after 2016, I kept thinking about the Brown family line and Mark. We shared a great great great great grandparent more or less. But was our most recent common ancestor a Brown male? And was there a connection to the slave master named Daniel Brown? I kept thinking and thinking about the problem. And the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
A distant cousin, Samuel Haynes, is an expert genetic genealogist. Sam led me to the Gedmatch.com website which confirmed Mark and I were related at the level of 5.1 generations. Haynes researched a Brown family tree on Gedmatch which contained the name of Daniel Brown. The family tree was a DNA match with me and the birth, death and residence in Chesterfield County, Virginia matched my Grandma’s Grandfather’s line. What sealed the deal was the name Thomas Brown who appeared in Mark’s family tree as a DNA match to me. The reasonable and probable conclusion was Thomas Brown was related to me and Mark. I had stumbled upon our most recent common ancestor. Not only was I a Brown descendant but I now knew my Brown ancestors dating back to 1622 in Virginia.
How cool is that?
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Conclusion: On Monday, Mark and I will meet as Brown cousins for the first time in a podcast. The genes of Sir William Brown (1600 - 1664) reunited across the color line. Mark and I will not solve the race question on Monday. But we can bring more harmony and understanding into the world next week. The distant son of a slave owner and the distant son of a slave bound together by Sir Brown telling a story of one genetic family:
There is power in the single story we tell ourselves as Americans. It is the single story, not the divided story, that will lead us to a better purpose and meaning in life. We talk about race so much in this correspondence. It is easy to forget that we, you and I, are people first and foremost. For both of us, a sense of closeness creates rootedness. Rootedness creates belonging. Old Americans, regardless of race, need their rightful belonging in our complete American past…
How one thinks of oneself carries one through the highs and lows of life. If one thinks of oneself only as the descendant of faceless and agentless American slaves, what does that self-identity mean for one’s sense of self? Inspiration comes from triumph over adversity. Stories of tenacity, resilience, and mental strength among slaves and former slaves are legion. This mindset is why Daniel Brown (my grandmother’s grandfather) speaks to us through the ages. Now change the mental programming and take this all a step further. Suppose one is taught that one is the product of a rich tapestry — African slaves who survived the First and Middle Passage, an English indentured servant who ran away from his master Thomas Lee into the Virginia woods, a free black immigrant from England who founded the elite Brown Fellowship Society, and the first school teacher in the Virginia colony? See how a complete and full accounting of everything in one’s family history might bolster and lift one’s sense of self? Nothing beats the full story of all ancestors. See generally Migrants: Our Family’s Immigrations to America, From All Over the World by J. E. Smith, III. — Id. at pages 138 - 141
https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwi_0Nyz0PqEAxVfgVoFHfXgAWcYABABGgJ2dQ&ase=2&gclid=Cj0KCQjwhtWvBhD9ARIsAOP0GojfWngw81MRsNsYbIIcgfTUnsFdZtUULCsAmkVHlTioY27trQitfMsaAkdgEALw_wcB&sig=AOD64_2sgEad0OK1U1JXGQw7arv8LDICQg&ctype=5&nis=6&adurl&ved=2ahUKEwjRi9Oz0PqEAxW2t4QIHSciCxwQvhd6BAgBEFM
“How cool is that?” VERY cool!
I agree with Anne!
It is very cool!!!