In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time. Read More

Author Alex Palmer Haley knew he had roots in northwest Alabama, he just couldn’t prove it. He had only an oral history passed down through generations of his family and a family legend that a plantation overseer in Marion County was the father of slave Alec Haley, Alex Haley’s grandfather. Chris Haley, the son of Alex Haley’s brother Julius, may now have lent truth to the story, simply by swabbing cells from his cheek.

Chris Haley has always been interested in genealogy. But at least when it came to his father's side of the family, he figured things were pretty much covered thanks to his uncle, "Roots" author Alex Haley. "It had been done," Chris, 46, said last week. "What would I prove that hadn't been proved before?" How wrong he was. Read More