ME & Alex Haley.....A Genealogy Post-Part 2

* Part One of this Post is HERE.

So when we left off last time Kunte Kinte was sold to John Waller's brother, Dr. William Waller, after John Waller had half of Kunte's right foot chopped off so he no longer could attempt to run off.

According to the oral tradition in the Haley family, Kunte, who had been renamed "Toby" by his first owner John Waller, fell in love with another of Dr. Waller's slaves, a woman named Bell.
They had a child in 1790,  a girl they named Kizzy(or "Kesia" in the Mandinka language).  Supposedly her name meant "Stay Put" in Mandinka, Kunte's native tongue, and it was given to her to keep her safe from being sold away from their plantation.

But Kizzy ran afoul of the rules on Dr. Waller's plantation when she was a teen.  She had secretly learned to read and write* and being in love with a slave named Noah who wanted to escape up North, she wrote a fake pass from their master for him to take with him to keep him safe.
*The tv show told that Missy Anne, the niece of William Waller-his brother John's daughter, was Kizzy's playmate and had taught her literacy as one of the games children play.  Except this can't be true as Missy Anne was much older than Kizzy would have been and would not have interacted with her as a childhood friend.*

Kizzy broke one of Dr. Waller's rules(and a Virginia state law as well at that time)so he chose to sell her off to another master and plantation.
Dr. William and John Waller, the brothers share a common ancestor with me in Thomas Waller of Gregories, Buckinghamshire, England.  Thomas Waller is my 9x Great Grandfather.  Thomas Waller of Gregories is William and John's Great Grandfather.
But while this is interesting it doesn't make me a relative of Alex Haley, does it?

And this is where it gets interesting as far as my genealogy goes.

Dr. William Waller sold Kizzy off to Thomas Lea, a plantation owner in Caswell County, North Carolina.
Thomas Lea is my 4th cousin 6x removed.
His wife was Sarah "Sally" Lea who is also my 4th cousin 6 x removed.
Tom and Sally Lea were 1st cousins.

Tom's father was Major Lea and Sally's father was John Lea and they were brothers.
These two Lea brother's father was James Lea from Spotsylvania County, Virginia.
James Lea's wife was Ann Herndon who also happens to be my 2nd cousin 8 x removed.

Ann Herndon Lea's parents were Edward Herndon and Mary Elizabeth Waller. Mary Elizabeth Waller was my 1st cousin 9x removed and was also the sister of Col. John Waller the Immigrant and father of  the Waller brothers who owned Kunte Kinte.

So Mary Elizabeth Waller Herndon's daughter, Ann Herndon, was 1st cousins with the Waller brothers John and William Waller from Spotsylvania Virginia.
Ann Herndon married James Lea from Spotsylvania County.  Their son, Major Lea married Elizabeth Herndon.  Elizabeth's father was Richard Herndon who is the brother of Ann Herndon so Elizabeth Herndon married her 1st cousin Major Lea.

This is just a roundabout way to say that the WALLERS, the HERNDONS and the LEAS were all  cousins to one degree or another.
Are you confused yet? lolz

So as the Haley family tradition goes, Kizzy Kinte Waller was taken from Virginia down to Casewell County, North Carolina to become a slave of the Waller cousin, Thomas "Tom" Lea.  Tom thought her a comely wench so as some plantation owners did, he "had his way with her", the more accepted euphemism for rape and the prerogative of slave owners in that era.

Of that union was born a son, George Lea, having an African American mother and a Caucasian father, a mixed race child called a mulatto in that time.

Old Tom Lea took a liking to George and allowed him to work with his fighting cocks as Tom Lea had a penchant for booze, women and gambling.   He was a "poor Waller relation" until he made a fortune gambling on cockfights and parlayed his winnings into buying and training fighting birds.  He was known as one of the best cock fighters in the Caswell County and beyond.  George had a way with the birds so he became his father Tom's cock trainer and was given the nickname "Chicken George".
In the tv miniseries he was played by actor Ben Vereen but here is an actual photo of Chicken George Lea later in his life.

After being freed(story goes that he got his father very drunk and stole his manumission papers and ran off before the War Between the States began-it would have had to been around 1820 because that is the year Tom Lea died and George would have been 14 years old).  George had to flee Virginia not just because of the wrath his owner might bring down on him but the law in Virginia at that time was that a free negro could only stay in Virginia for a short time before they were required to "move on" or they could be re-enslaved(This law came into being in 1806 though many free black people did stay as the law was not always enforced depending on where you lived.)

George came back for his wife Matilda Murray and their children(at some point Tom Lea sold George's wife and children to the Murray plantation and Matilda took Murray for her surname after emancipation came)once the war was over and removed to Henning, Lauderdale County, Tennessee where he died in 1890.  He is listed in the 1880 Census as 74 years old and working as a servant in the household of William Posey.  He says he is a widower so Matilda probably was dead before 1880.

Here is a photograph of Chicken George's son, Tom Lea/Murray, who was a blacksmith by trade.  He married to Arena Irene Holt in Alamance County, NC and she lived to 1908.(Seeing that surname HOLT I am a bit scared to even attempt to research Irene's African American Holts as it may lead back to my white Holts and another master/slave sexual relationship) No one knows exactly when Tom Lea//Murray died or where he is buried but his will was probated in Lauderdale County, TN Aug. 3rd of 1903. Thomas Lea/Murray the blacksmith is my 6th cousin 4 x removed.

So, even though it's a horrible way in which we are connected, George Lea is my 5th cousin 5 x removed through his owner/father the plantation owner Tom Lea and I proudly call these people my cousins.

Which brings us to George Lea's 2 x Great Grandson, Alexander Haley, the acclaimed author.  He is my 9th cousin 1 x removed.

Alexander Murray Palmer "Alex" Haley 1921-1992

Bertha George Palmer 1897-1932, his mother

Cynthia Babica Lea  1875-1949, her mother

Tom Lea/Murray 1833-?, her father

George" Chicken George" Lea 1806-1890, his father

Thomas Lea 1770-1820, his father

Major Lea Sr. 1741-1843, his father

Ann Herndon 1706-1777, his mother

Lt. Major Tillman Lea 1742-1843, her father

Mary Elizabeth Waller 1674-1727, her mother

Dr. John Roberts Waller 1645-1750, her father

Thomas Waller  1610-1682, his father *common ancestor*

John Thomas Waller 1652-1688, his son

Susannah Waller 1680-1758, his daughter

Major Weatherford 1710-1774, her son

Rev. John William Weatherford 1743-1833, his son

Elizabeth "Betsey" Weatherford 1778-1854, his daughter

Sarah "Sallie" Mason 1805-1854, her daugther

Mary Agnes Driskill 1837-1894, her daughter

Robert William Harper 1881-1961, her son

Wirt Ross Harper 1909-1968, his son

Carole Frances Harper 1934-2000, his daughter

ME,her daughter

As for Alex Haley's paternal roots-it seems his Y DNA goes back to Scotland!  After Mr. Haley's death DNA testing became popular.  

Alex Haley's nephew, Chris Haley, back in 2007 had his DNA tested and the family story of the husband of Queenie, the subject of Haley's novel "Queen" and his grandmother's spouse having been born from an Alabama plantation Overseer named William Harwell Baugh(from Virginia but with family roots in Scotland before these Baughs emigrated to America)"taking his pleasure" with a half black/half Cherokee slave woman named Sabrina or Viney is true.

Link to News Story HERE. 

Sluggy

Me & Alex Haley.....A Genealogy Post-Part 1

I mentioned that I read Alex Haley's magnum opus work "Roots" back in 2018.
The Hollywood crowd had recently done a remake that year of the 'made for tv' miniseries which aired back in 1977 that was hella popular back then and won a slew of tv industry awards.
A popular bit of history and entertainment if not quite accurate in all aspects.   After the book was published in 1976, claims of plagiarism and lawsuits by other authors and claims by genealogists of bad research would follow Mr. Haley to his grave.

First a little about the man, Alex Haley.

Alexander Haley was born in Ithaca, New York in 1921.
His family lived in Henning Tennessee, where his mother was from, for a time before returning to Ithaca NY.  Haley's father was Simon Haley, a professor at Alabama A & M University and Simon's mother, Bertha George Palmer Haley was a well read woman who encouraged her children to learn.

Alex Haley and I share a cousin connection through his maternal side.  It is a horrible way to be connected as a cousin(and nothing I am proud of)but you have to understand American history(particularly in the South in this case)and the flawed people who inhabited this part of the country and the times, and whom we come from.

At age 15 Alex was enrolled in Alcorn State in MS and the next year went on to matriculate at Elizabeth City State College in NC.  Then he told his parents he was dropping out of college so his father convinced Alex to join the military once he turned 18.  So in 1939 Alex joined the US Coast Guard and had a successful 20 year career there.

He served during WWII in the Pacific theater and eventually attained the rank of Chief Petty Officer 1st Class by his retirement in 1959. During the war he found a love for writing and once the war was over he requested and gained a transfer to the field of journalism within the Coast Guard.  Before Alex Haley came along the U.S. Coast Guard did not have the rank of Chief Petty Officer.  Because of his writing skills and accolades the rank was created for him.

Once out of military life Alex worked his way up to become a Senior Editor at Reader's Digest.  He also wrote for Playboy.  He ghostwrote the book, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" with Malcolm X, which was published in 1965.
In 1973 Alex Haley wrote the screenplay for one of the "blaxploitation" films popular in that era called, "Super Fly T.N.T.", a sequel to the highly successful 1972 film, "Super Fly".

In 1976 Haley published a novel "Roots:An American Family".  It was called a novel based on one of Alex Haley's maternal lines, that family going back to his first ancestor to step foot on America, a man called Kunte Kinte kidnapped from The Gambia in Africa in 1767 and brought to the New World to the Maryland colony.
"Roots" the miniseries was so popular that a sequel called, "Roots:The Next Generations" was aired on ABC, that continued to follow another of his maternal family's line, that Haley family's journey from the 1880's to the 1960's and Alex Haley's recounting of his journey back to Kunte Kinte's village in Africa after the Malcolm X autobiography was published.

"Roots", both the novel and the tv series were also responsible for a surge of interest in Americana for regular people to take to researching their genealogy.  It wasn't until the internet came along in the 1990's though that amateur genealogy really took off.

I remember watching "Roots" on tv when it came out in 1977 on my family's small color tv in our den.  It fascinated me(I've since watched it as an adult and oh boy, the production values were so bad!lol)just like 130 million other American viewers.
Little did I know, that as a just turned 18 year old high school Senior, that I was watching a show about people related to me(albeit distantly)and that Alex Haley was my 9th cousin 1x removed.

As everyone who has read the book or seen the show knows Kunte Kinte was kidnapped near his village in Africa and brought to Maryland aboard the British slave ship the Lord Ligonier and was sold to John Waller, a wealthy planter from Spotsylvania County, Virginia(outside of Fredericksburg VA).  In the tv series they changed the name of the slaveholding family to Reynolds from Waller.  Maybe because the then living in 1970's Wallers in Spotsylvania Virginia had enough clout to make them change the family name in the show(one was a District Court Judge by the way)?  I don't know but this newspaper article appeared around the time the tv show aired in the Washington Post with an interview with then Judge Absalom Waller. (Judge Waller is my 7th cousin 3x removed as well.)

My first hint I had Waller ancestors was finding the first wife of my 11th Great Grandfather, Sir William Waad(Wade).  Her name was Anne Waller and she lived her life in London and died in childbirth at the age of 19.  Her father was a "citizen and stockfishmonger" in London named Owen Waller.
But come to find out after a few years of research that this line of Wallers probably has nothing to do with the Wallers that came to Virginia Colony.

Then I found another direct ancestor Waller on my Weatherford line. Susannah Waller, my 7th Great Grandmother, born 1680 in New Kent, Virginia married William Weatherford around 1700 and died about 1758 in Lunenberg County, Virginia..

Susannah's father was John Thomas Waller and had a brother Dr Robert John Waller,  Robert had a son, Colonel John Waller who is the Waller 1st Immigrant to Virginia. Col. John is my Susannah's 1st cousin(and I am 9 x removed).  John Waller, being the fifth child and not the first son inherited nothing from his father as primo geniture was the rule of the land at that time so he took his chances on this New World and arrived in Virginia some time before 1696.  We know this because in May of that year he purchased 1039 acres of land in King and Queen County along the Mattaponi River  along the Pamunkey Neck in VA.  This land became his first plantation he named "Endfield".

Eventually he moved his growing family northward to Spotsylvania County Virginia(about a 60 mile journey)to land he purchased around 1724 and named "Newport Plantation" after the town in England where he was born.

Col. John Waller had 5 sons and 1 daughter with his wife, Dorothy King Waller: Mary, John, Thomas, William, Benjamin and Edmund.

Their first son, John Waller III is the person who originally bought Alex Haley's ancestor Kunte Kinte from that slave market in Annapolis Maryland.  He is my 2nd cousin 8 x removed.
John Waller III's brother, Dr.William Waller is the second owner of Kunte Kinte.  Kunte kept trying to run away from John Waller's plantation so he had his overseer chop off part of Kunte's right foot to keep him from trying to escape.
Being brothers this makers Dr. Waller my 2nd cousin 8 x removed as well.

Photo of William Waller's headstone in the Waller cemetery in Partlow, Spotsylvania County, Virginia where the old Newport Plantation was located.  He was a Revolutionary Army Colonel as well as a Doctor.

Dr. William, so the oral tradition goes, was so incensed at his brother treating a slave thusly, that he bought Kunte and the slave Kunte Kinte lived out his days under Dr. William Waller's control as a gardener for the family.

I'll continue this story in Part 2 of this post on Me & Alex Haley.


Sluggy