Last survivor of the last slave ship to enter the United States.

Cudjo Lewis is considered the last survivor of the last slave ship to enter the United States. Born around 1841 to a Yoruba family in the Bante region of Dahomey (today Benin), he was given the name Oluale Kossola. In the Spring of 1860 soldiers from Dahomey raided Kassola's town where he was captured and imprisoned in a slave compound, where he was transported via a slave cargo ship into the U.S. Upon his emancipation, he took the name Lewis and purchased land to form a settlement named Africa Town.
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In 1865, with general emancipation, Cujdo regained his freedom and took the name Lewis. He married Abile, a young woman who also had been on the Clotilda. Like their companions, the couple's objective was to return home, but when they failed to raise enough money for the trip, they decided to stay in Alabama and create a town of their own. Because Timothy Meaher had been responsible for their ordeal, they decided to ask him for reparations in the form of free land. Cudjo was chosen as the spokesman. Meaher refused their demand, and they purchased land from him and others and established African Town on a hill north of Mobile. Cudjo worked as a shingle maker but after being injured in a train accident in 1902—for which he sued the railroad company—he became African Town's church sexton.

He and his wife had five sons and one daughter. To mark their attachment to their culture, they gave American and Yoruba names to four of them and Yoruba names only to two. Sadly, all of the children died young: Celia/Ebeossi died of sickness at 15, Young Cudjo was killed by a deputy sheriff, David/Adeniah was hit by a train, Pollee Dahoo disappeared and was probably killed, and James/Ahnonotoe and Aleck/Iyadjemi died after short illnesses. Abile passed away in 1908, just one month before Aleck died.

 During the last years of his life, he achieved some fame when writers and journalists interviewed him and made his story known to the public. Alabama-born author Zora Neale Hurston filmed him, and he is thus the only known African deported through the slave trade whose moving image exists. Cudjo Lewis died of age-related illness on July 26, 1935, at about 94. Although he had always wanted to go back home, he was buried among his family in the Africans' cemetery that opened in 1876. Today, a tall white monument marks his grave. Some of his descendants still live in Mobile.

Encyclopedia of Alabama Published December 6, 2007

'Genealogy Roadshow': PBS Traces 3 Detroiters' Roots Monday Night

Genealogy Roadshow explores the ancestries of two women and a man. One participant says: "I was adopted at two days old, and as an African-American, I need to know where I came from."

Genealogy Roadshow: Detroit  premieres Monday, September 30, 2013. See what all the tweeting is about at PBS.org/ Questions have been submitted by the people of Nashville, TN. Watch the quick Detroit - Preview!

Searching for my Ancestors

Hello Everyone, just dropping a quick note...

Have you ever had a family line that is just a stinker? Well, 6-7 years ago I was corresponding with my Great Aunt Lena's daughter, Dee Sterling Nelson, about her mother's (& my Great Grandmother Mary Ann's) family.

She sent me a 4 page letter, but at the time I was a bit overwhelmed and I lost it! According to Dee, G Grandfather Chris Christensen was not a well liked man. He was cruel, mean and especially after G Grandma passed (trying to give birth to their 10/11? child) his girls had to hide from him at night.

Being a business owner with the website, AncestorEbooks.com,  I am signed onto LinkedIn & work with other genealogists and one day Birthe Mylius Gronvold Kroman was offering to help folks with Danish genealogy problems. What a kind and great woman she is, and she leads a large group of folks who do this for free. What a blessing.

If you are stuck on a problem in Denmark, this group is the one to reach out to! Be sure and leave remarks below if you have anything to add/share/want.

Cristina Besendorfer, AncestorEbooks.com

Remembering Otzi, the Ice Man - Found September 19, 1991

AncestorEbooks.com remembers the discovery of the mummy, known as Otzi, in 1991 by two German hikers, Helmut and Erika Simon, who were vacationing in northern Italy. A Chalcolithic or Copper Age mummy, Otzi was well preserved within the glacier of the Tisenjoch Pass. Because of the bad weather when Otzi was found, and their mistaken thought that he was a climber who had died, his removal from the glacier was not very scientific.

In a formal dig, according to the Learn North Carolina, archaeologists study what is known about an era and people before they begin. That preparation would have prevented Otzi’s bow from being used as a pry-bar to remove him from the glacier, pulling & shredding his clothing & the use of a jackhammer, which accidentally drilled a hole in Otzi's hip.

Since 1991‘Scientists have pieced together an incredibly detailed picture of the iceman’...from where he lived to what he ate and how he died,’ according to LiveScience.com.

The animal hair from his clothing, goatskin leggings, a bear fur cap, and shoes made from hay, deerskin and bearskin, suggests that Otzi herded sheep, cows and goats.

Over 50 tattoos, created by making incisions and rubbing in charcoal, covered Otzi’s body and because they are near joints and back, were probably placed during pain-relieving treatments and follow acupuncture lines.

‘Otzi’s body was so well preserved that the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology commissioned two reconstruction artists, Dutch brothers Adrie and Alfos Kennis, to recreate the mummy’s face using both art and forensic science. They created an ‘extremely lifelike’ replica of how he would have looked like at his death.

According to LiveScience, by analyzing Otzi’s stomach contents, equipment, and isatopes researchers have determined he grew up in either the Isack or Puster Valleys of Northern Italy, and lived SW of there the last 10 years of his life. Most likely a shepherd, Otzi died when he was about 45 years old, had bad knees, was lactose intolerant, had type O blood, and had been infected with Lyme Disease.

As interesting as these forensic discoveries are, it is the decoding of Otzi’s DNA that is truly exciting. Albert Zink, Head of the EURAC Institute for Mummies and the Iceman, together with Carsten Pusch, from the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Tübingen and Andreas Keller from the biotech firm febit in Heidelberg have ‘pooled’ their skills to decode the building blocks of Otiz’s genome to create a DNA library which contains the largest data set ever recovered.

Through studying Otzi’s mitochondrial DNA, scientists discovered he shares a common ancestry with at least 8% of modern Europeans, a genetic group thought to be extinct. His Y chromosome has mutations most commonly found among men from Sardinia and Corsica. “That makes sense, says Eske Willerslev, a palaeogenomicist at the University of Copenhagen. “Sardinians are a group that people have considered distinct from other Europeans, and in this regard it would be interesting if they were more widely distributed in the past.”

“At the recent Southern California Genealogical Society’s Jamboree the three day event focused on the theme of DNA in Genealogy” said Cristina Besendorfer, owner of AncestorEbooks.com. “Dr. Spencer Wells, leader of The Genographic Project spoke of analyzing DNA samples from around the world to find out where our ancestors lived on Earth.” [bit.ly/13q6aei]

AncestorEbooks.com is in the business of helping families share their family history through interactive Ebooks and DNA research is becoming a big part of that. Mrs. Besendorfer suggests, “If you would like reasons for using DNA in family history research you should read Roberta Estes’ Blog, at DNA-explained.com. Ms. Estes’ has written 15 reasons for using DNA in family history research that are easy and fun to read.”