My grandfather once told me that his father or grandfather was an african from africa?

Question

he told stories about arriving here on a boat.....and he had dark skin straight black hair also.....what part of africa could he have come from west east north or south?

my grandpa and great grandpa are dead and parents know nothing of their ancestry really....except those stories....abt slave ships

Answer 1

Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Ghana, Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Senegal, Benin, Mozambique, Guinea, Togo, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Cote d' Ivoire, The Gambia, Liberia, Gabon and Guinea-Bissau and the 19 countries of slave origins you are most probably a mix of more than even two countries but I know that around 23% of slaves brought to the USA were from Angola, the Bakongo ethnic group and another major group was the Igbo of Nigeria

Answer 2

There's really no way of knowing.  Slave ships were notorious for changing slaves names repeatedly.  Especially if they were originally sent to Haiti, and to sold to a Spanish boat, and then sold to a brittish boat, and so on and so on, and then auctioned off in one area and then resold again.  Your ancestor's names could have changed dozens of times.  The long hair wouldn't have mattered, long times on the boat would have given it time to grow.  He could have come from anywhere.

Answer 3

Genealogy is about using records, and finding them is not always as hard as you might think.  What is needed is to find grandpa and/or gr grandpa in the census.

Can you find dates and place of birth/ death for grandpa?  Especially if born prior to 1930 (latest that the census is open for searching).  The trick is that the census will normally give place of birth for both the person, and that person's parents.

If you will post those details (or send to me via my profile), we will see what is findable.  By the way.. my own grandfather was born in the 1830s.. so I realize this is not impossible, generation wise.