Last night on T.V., we enjoyed watching “Who Do You Think You Are”. The program was about actor Blair Underwood’s family history[1].

Blair learned about a couple of branches in his lineage and then some.


One of Blair’s ancestors, Sauney Early, was a defiant character living in Post-Civil War Virginia. Sauney survived a number of shootings, believed he could not be killed by men, and he lived to see the Twentieth-Century. Sauney may have been a conjurer![2]

Blair also learned about the Scott branch of his family. His ancestor Samuel was a free-born African-American who bought a large land parcel in 1806. And he owned slaves! Then Blair learned that Samuel was following a common practice for those living in a world where Laws forced slavery upon their people. He “owned” his elderly relatives so that they could live as if they were free.

To top the program, the Ancestry.com[3] staff found a match for Blair’s DNA! Blair and his father were flown to Cameroon in Africa—to meet their cousins, living branches of their family tree who still thrive in the ancestral lands, proud and free.

Long may we all live—proud and free!

Images: Map of Cameroon in West Africa & rendering of a conjuring (file found online at Wikipedia.com and identified as public domain; apologies to the unknown artist)

[1] See: http://realitytvmagazine.sheknows.com/2012/02/24/who-do-you-think-you-are-recap-blair-underwood/

[2] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_religion (Religious practices came to America with enslaved men and women from Yorubaland in W. Africa)

[3] See: http://www.ancestry.com/ (Have fun learning “who you are” and meet some cousins!)