This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Eagle Plume/Dodson Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/RKT.2ACIB/1526.1.1.1.1.2.2.1.3.1.1.1.1.1.1 Message Board Post: "Preponderance of evidence" is a good term for this. John Dod's was in Va. in 1607 and the 1624 "muster." He had a wife Jane who did not arrive on a ship. Documents are missing, as they are for most of Native Am. colonial history. Jane, if Indian, probably was not Christian, so there would be no church records. Elsewhere I have read John had a 1 1/2 acre grant (I'm away from home and can't cite the exact doc.), which is a lot less than the other folks' grants. He's listed on the 1607 list as a laborer (not a gentleman nor an artisan). He must have quite a history himself, and fewer expectations as a lower class, uneducated and unskilled man There were very few white women and a lot of higher class men, who would be more appealing to a woman arriving from England. I would guess the more alpha males and more wealthy males would get immigrant women first. So again my guess is if Jane was not from overseas--she was Am. Ind. Indentured servants of all backgrounds were lumped together in the early 1600s (See the living quarters at Monticello for slaves AND indentured servants). Also, the freeafricanamericans web site gives court records for all free African Americans and Indians in colonial times, and it shows a much greater interaction among "races." One last thing on census race categories: my husband and I have researched and written a book on Langston Hughes's background (Langston Hughes in Lawrence, available thru amazon.com or online at www.mammothpublications.com), and we found Charles Langston, his grandfather fr. Va. and brother of John Mercer Langston, listed in US and Ks. census as white, mulatto, and then colored. This is mysterious and engrossing. I applaud the use of documents and legitimate research. I've found many errors in my own mother and father's oral versions of the family trees (some were obvious censoring). And as much as I have a gut feeling and some preponderance of evidence that Jane was Indian, I hesitate to state it as a fact until we have more concrete information. Helen Rountree's books on colonial Va. are very informative also of the times and the Native people's interactions with Jamestown and later Virginians.