If one of the athletes profiled on the Sept. 30 episode of “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.” had ancestors who were immigrants listed in the 1860 Census of Lewiston, the assumption might be that they were Franco-Americans, possibly from Quebec.
Of course not. Tennis star Billie Jean King’s ancestors in that enumeration were, rather, Duncan Campbell, 46, born in Scotland; and Duncan Campbell Jr., 15, born in Scotland. They came from Killbride, Scotland, according to Gates.
Both were employed as dyers, and they were boarders in the apartment of David and Agnes Black, factory operators, with David also being from Scotland.
It turns out that even the surname Campbell was totally unknown to King, who knew only that grandmother Blanche (Leighton) Moffitt of Boston had been adopted.
Adoption can often be one of those brick walls that is never broken through, but genealogists were able to connect a Boston address of Blanche Leighton to a maternity home where young Elizabeth Campbell was listed with a baby girl, first name unknown. Further research revealed that her name was Hazel Campbell, the birth name of Blanche Leighton, and from there the connection to Duncan and Duncan Campbell Jr. was made.
I don’t have all the pieces sorted out, but isn’t it amazing that Billie Jean King now has this information on her grandmother?
Another question the program was able to answer for King was whether she has Native American ancestry, the family legend being that her forebears included a Seminole Indian.
That didn’t prove out, as a DNA test on King’s ethnic origins were 100 percent European — in other words, all Caucasian.
It is widely known that Yankees star Derek Jeter is part African-American and part Caucasian, but genealogists learned a lot more about him.
Yes, the Jeter name does come from a slave owner in Alabama, as was common for the time. And ancestor the Rev. Green Jeter founded a church in 1872 on land that had been part of the Jeter family property before the Civil War.
Green’s mother was a slave named Charity, but could it be proved that his father was owner James Williamson Jeter? Indeed, it could. AncestryDNA was able to locate a male descendant of James W. Jeter, and genetic testing proved that Derek Jeter also was a direct descendant of James W.
The Jeter line traced back to 17th century England, it turned out. Derek Jeter also can claim ancestor William C. Pierce, who was from Manchester, England, in 1840.
But the prize for most varied ancestry on the episode would have to go to Rebecca Lobo, star of the Women’s National Basketball Association. From watching her on television, I presumed she had African-American ancestry, and that certainly accounts for a portion of her genes.
But she also has Irish and German ancestors on her maternal McGlaughlin side of the family. Lobo also has Spanish lines on the Lobo side, with good information provided by a diary written by great-grandmother Emilia Guttierez, who was born in 1891 in Tangier, Morocco. Emilia’s mother was Catalina Rocha, and her father was Antonio Guttierez of Cadiz, Spain.
The family emigrated on Oct. 12, 1896, Emilia wrote in her diary later, and came to New York City — only because they had missed the boat to Argentina!
Also on her father’s side, Rebecca had a grandmother named Catherine Wade, whose mother was Mary Olech from Austria. Her father’s genes provided something else to Rebecca’s ancestry — the 10 percent of her lineage that turned out to be Ashkenazi Jew. This was certainly a surprise to her.
The focus on the next “Finding Your Roots,” to air at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 7, will be storytellers — Anderson Cooper, film historian Ken Burns and Anna Devere Smith.
This program sometimes repeats on Saturday afternoon on MPBN.
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On Saturday, Oct. 11, do join researcher Nina Giordano Brawn for a free program on “Irish Roots” at 10 a.m. at the Family History Center at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the corner of Grandview Avenue and Essex Street in Bangor.
For i nformation on researching family history in Maine, see Genealogy Resources under Family Ties at bangordailynews.com/browse/family-ties. Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402, or email familyti@bangordailynews.com.