Comments on: Yvonne Bivins on the Ainsworth-Smith-Knight Connection

By: laricraft

laricraft — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:52:53 +0000

That’s interesting. I descend from the Baudreau/Baptiste Creoles in Mobile, Alabama. They moved all over the Gulf Coast. Today, there are over 10,000 coastal residents that can trace their lineage to this family. They originally came to Dauphin Island, Alabama (via Montreal), to establish a French colony. My ancestors ended up in Coden, Alabama (not too far from Dauphin Island), and others founded Bayou La Batre, Alabama. Some Baptistes ended up in New Orleans and joined the Creole community there.

By: renegadesouth

renegadesouth — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:05:41 +0000

What a fascinating discussion you all have engaged in here! Promoting an understanding of our nation’s history of ethnic diversity and interaction–both the exploitive and loving sorts–is a major reason why I created this blog.

My husband and I are heading out this morning for Texas, where we will spend the holidays. However, I will continue to moderate all comments, though perhaps not as quickly as I’d like. Please continue the conversation!

Vikki

By: dlapeyrouse

dlapeyrouse — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:49:34 +0000

This has nothing to do with any particular family discussed here. I just thought you might find this as interesting as I did. I grew up in the Deep South and lived several years in South Louisiana, including New Orleans where the term Creole is used to designate a certain ethnic and cultural group and used to market Creole foods, etc. That was all I knew of the word Creole – that it referred to people of French, African and sometimes Native American mix. In our own research in our far past ancestry, we learned something insightful about the word Creole – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Creole_people I found this very enlightening and more encompassing than I’d grown up believing Creole to be. There are a lot more “Creole” people in America than people would think, given this broader definition! It just points out something I’m become increasingly aware of in my family research, very few (if any, really) people are “pure” anything. Races have been mixing since very, very ancient times and even the white cultures of the world all stem, at some point, from more ancient cultures who weren’t originally “white”. Europe evolved from people who migrated for ages from Africa and Asia. Some people still balk at the fact that Jesus, for example, was not white, much less at the idea that their own European ancestry was already mixed before it “became” the British Isles, France, or whatever. Those countries were not the cradle of civilization. They all evolved out of people migrating out of Mesopotamia, Africa, and other ancient civilizations. Far enough back, we all have more in common than we may “look like” we do today. What we see in diverse colors and cultures of people today took a long, slow process over time. In more ancient times it seems to me they worried less about mixing of colors than that of mixing religions. They fought wars over religion and to acquire land and wealth as humanity expanded on the face of the earth. It seems wars weren’t fought over race in particular until more modern history. In that sense, we lost the sense of seeing people different from ourselves as exotic and of interest to seeing them as a threat to who we are. God obviously loves diversity. It’s in all His creation – so many colors in everything in nature. There isn’t just one color flower, bird, etc. And so it is with people. We come in varieties and if we dig far enough back to find what our far ancestors had in common rather than focusing on all that divides us in color and culture, we would find the harmony I believe God intended because no matter what color we are, what culture we come from, etc. – at the bottom line of it all, we’re all just people with more in common as part of humanity than the things that “seem” to separate us. I embrace every ancestral heritage that combined to result in “me”. Without each of them coming together just as they did, “I” would not exist. So to have biases is to deny part of who we are, because I don’t believe there is a person in America who isn’t from a diverse background if they dig far enough back in time, not just to which European country their relatively recent ancestors came from. Those Europeans came from “somewhere else” originally. It gives a whole new concept of America as the “melting pot”. The world had long been a “melting pot” in the larger sense long before our ancestors came to America. And, I think the article on Creoles exemplifies in America.

By: Yvonne Bivins

Yvonne Bivins — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:55:28 +0000

Martha Jane Ainsworth dark appearance was a result of being in the sun most of the year farming. I am familiar with that photo that you mentioned as I got it from Brenda Sumrall Bundy who is descended from Park, too. I do have a photo of my great great grandmother and think that it might have been posted on this blog by Vikki. My cousin who is descended from my grandfather’s brother, Louis Delmus Smith, and Newton Knight’s granddaughter, Ollie Jane Knight just received the results of her DNA test through Ancestry.com. This test shows that she is 32% British, 27 % Central European and 20% West African. Her mother is Black Creole from St. Tammany Parish, LA. This test didn’t say anything about Native blood.

By: laricraft

laricraft — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:04:56 +0000

Thanks so much for clearing this up for me! My husband will be amazed when I tell him that he has African American relatives (right up the road, as we live in Mobile) who descend from Sampson Jefferson Ainsworth. I don’t think that I have ever heard that from his parents or other family members, so I am wondering if it has been kept a secret all of this time. His Martha Jane “Park” Ainsworth married a McNeil, and they ended up in Oklahoma, then West Monroe, Louisiana. My husband was born in West Monroe. I’m still trying to fill in some gaps, but every little bit helps! On ancestry.com, I have a photo (which looks more like a sketch) of Martha Jane “Park” Ainsworth. It has a blue background and she seems to have blue eyes. She is also dark skinned. Could this possibly be a photo of Martha Ann Ainsworth? Could you post your photo of Martha Ann so I can see if it is the same photo (or could you check my tree on ancestry)?

By: dlapeyrouse

dlapeyrouse — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:33:55 +0000

Not to dispute your grandmother, but I have Native blood from two sides of my mother’s family and other than to have a few whispers about it, the family denied it until the last one of my grandmother’s siblings was alive and in a nursing home did she finally confirm and tell me about it. The first time I had asked her about it, she denied it and said she knew nothing about it. Then later she told me all the details right down to where my part Choctaw great-great grandmother is buried. I belong to a site where descendants of mostly Muscogee Creek but also some Chocotaw, etc. discuss their families and try to find more info. Stories have been shared about how families back then were taught to deny being Native American so they wouldn’t have their children taken from them and sent to the schools where the whites were converting them from Native to white ways and/or round them all up and put them on a reservation. So as many as could tried to pass for anything but Native American. At one time it was actually illegal to be of Native blood and reside in Alabama or Georgia. So after decades of denying any Native connections, many families stopped passing any info down about it and there are probably a lot of folks with Native blood that are clueless to that fact. My mother who is 80 didn’t know until last year that her ggggg-grandparents were full-blood Muscogee Creek, and I’d never even heard of that tribe before last year. So it may well be that there is Native blood in your family and either it was supressed so long that no one knows about it or they still don’t want to own up to it. That’s not to say I’m right about that. It’s just something to consider. My mother didn’t even want me to tell her about her Native ancestors. She is blonde, green-eyed and lily white and and to tell her she is part anything other than white was an insult to her. It’s a shame there are still such stigmas that people don’t even have curiosity about their true heritage. I’m just sharing what happened in my own family in that regard. Yours may actually not have a drop of Native blood in it, but just saying…just because someone denies it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s so. Now the DNA thing is totally different. That’s not just someone’s denial. It must be confusing for many though that the Choctaw names are used in the Ainsworth genealogy. I wonder how that even got started.

By: dlapeyrouse

dlapeyrouse — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:21:17 +0000

Well, that pretty much clears all that up. Thanks for sharing all that. Regardless of how it all came about, the mixed race Ainsworths are my distant half cousins and I’m thankful to learn the actual facts about them.

By: Yvonne Bivins

Yvonne Bivins — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:16:46 +0000

Martha Jane and Martha Ann Ainsworth were two different people. Martha Jane “Park”Ainsworth was born about 1832 in Smith County, MS to Sampson Jefferson “Jeff” Ainsworth and his legal wife, Anna Jones. Jeff Ainsworth purchased my great great grandmother, Martha Ann around 1841. His illicit relationship with her resulted in the birth of my great grandfather and his five sisters. Although in the only photo we have of Martha Ann, she appears to be Native American, my grandmother said that she was not “an Indian”. She was born in Virginia.

By: Yvonne Bivins

Yvonne Bivins — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:58:13 +0000

Martha Ann Ainsworth and Martha Jane “Park” Ainsworth were two different people. Martha Ann was Jeff Ainsworth’s slave concubine and Martha Jane “Park” was his daughter with his legal wife, Anna Jones.
Cherokees owned slaves and took them to Oklahoma. Also, runaway slaves were often adopted into Native American tribes.
In Mississippi, there has always been a lot of racial mixing which I call “an open secret. Take a look at any of the two slave schedules and you will see that there were many mulattoes in both Smith and Jasper Counties.
Caroline Duckworth was married to Wiley Buckhalter and while working as a maid in the home of Polie Ainsworth, he forced himself on her resulting in the birth of Andrew. Caroline Duckworth was given to Wiley and Mary Duckworth Keys as a wedding gift in 1852. Mary was the daughter of Joseph Duckworth.
If Wiley Buckhalter had challenged Polie Ainsworth, he would have been lynched, so Andrew was raised in his home as a Buckhalter. Andrew’s wife, Adaline McCoy Lewis, was mixed, not his mother Caroline.
DNA evidence shows that Thomas Ainsworth was not Native American.

By: dlapeyrouse

dlapeyrouse — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 08:11:22 +0000

I have a little info on the family, as Sampson Jefferson “Jeff” Ainsworth was my great-great uncle one one side of my family and he married my great-great-great aunt from another side of my family. However, the info I have won’t answer all your questions. I have that Jeff had a family of children with Martha Jane Ainsworth, but I hadn’t heard the “Park” info, so I can’t say about that. I would “guess” it’s the same Martha Jane since it would be unlikely he had two women his life both named Martha Jane and I’ve never seen any info to indicate there were more women in his life than Anna Jones and Martha Jane Ainsworth. According to all info I’ve seen, Martha Janes was a mulatto slave mistress of Jeff’s. What I’ve read has been that the mulatto offspring of Martha and Jeff weren’t accepted by blacks or whites. The same was true of the mulatto offspring of Newt Knight and his slave mistress. So it seems those families married into each other since they were from similar backgrounds and racial mix. I have been confused by the conflicting information on the Native American lines of the family. Some people accept it as true and others refute it. But “supposedly”, Jeff’s grandmother Nancy Welch Ainsworth was the daughter of a Choctaw. It is accepted by some that she and Levin Ainsworth I had a son named Thomas Phillemahay Ainsworth, named Phillemahay after her Choctaw father. This Thomas P. Ainsworth was a Jeff’s father. So that would make his offspring part Choctaw. However, I have seen where a direct descendant of Thomas adamantly refutes that Thomas was part Choctaw. I understand your comment about some families not wanting to admit to having Native blood, but in a family already known to have racially mixed children it wouldn’t make much sense to be ashamed to claim their Native heritage. Like you, I have seen photos of members of the family who definitely look ethnic. There were also those who were racially mixed that look totally white. I’ve learned that some of the white descendants of the Ainsworth family had no idea there were bi-racial descendants. It took a site like this to bring it all to light, for which many of us are thankful to know the true history of the family. It’s certainly an interesting, albeit confusing history. Since the Choctaw heritage affects my own direct line, I’d love to one day know the actual facts as opposed to conflicting family stories. I’m not sure who might have been adopted. And I certainly don’t know enough fact from fiction on these issues of this family to speak with any authority on it. My info is a hodgepodge of conflicting information. One of those that “may” be related to an adoption is that of Andrew Buckwalter. I’m totally confused on that one. He has the Buckwalter name and was definitely part Black. But some say he was the son of Caroline Duckworth and Jefferson Napoleon “Polie” Ainsworth. Here again, I’m related to both sides. Caroline Duckworth, if truly the daughter of Joseph Wakefield Duckworth and Mary Polly Green Duckworth would be my distant cousin. There is conflict over whether she was mulatto or not. Some say her mother was mulatto. That would be the only explanation of how she and Polie Ainsworth could have been the biological parents of Andrew Buckwalter, who was bi-racial. So, my question is was Polie Ainsworth Andrew’s father? If so, did Wiley Buckwalter, Caroline’s 2nd husband, adopt Andrew and give him his name. Wiley was black. All of these would be my distant cousins or partial relations, but I have no clear facts on this couple and their offspring. I only learned of the Choctaw and black heritages of this family this past year and haven’t really put a lot of research into these particular lines since they would be my distant cousins rather than my direct ancestors, but it’s definitely part of my own family history and I would like to sort it all out. If you or anyone else on here has or comes across information that would once and for all clear up the conflicting information on the relationships of these folks, I’d love to have the facts of it all, too.