Ken et. al.: Records likely indicate a high degree of surety, particularly if the early Goads you reference are from Virginia. The reason being no state was more active in pursuing the non-recording/registration of people of color. A wealth of records indicate that this same activist mentality against non-whites was preached to county clerks in the contiguous states as people of color emigrated from Virginia and its vast colonial holdings west of its current boundaries. For an individual to take a wife from a non-white background, a widower might adopt his former wife's Christian name for his new bride (this has occurred, and is clearly much more likely in a "frontier" environment in a closed-minded era), or a trader might have two families - one at his base (home), and one on his trade route. Many Virginia-based traders moved down the valleys into the present-day Carolinas, and contiguous present-day states. This was common among the earliest traders, and indeed if the individual i! n question wants more information regarding intermarriage, with native peoples in particular, they should seek out early trading families from South Carolina (to a great extent) and from Virginia (to a lesser extent). A good place to start this research is "South Carolina Indians, Indian Traders, and Other Ethnic Connections, Beginning in 1670". The authors are Theresa M. Hicks and Wes Taukchiray, the publisher The Reprint Company, Spartanburg, South Carolina. It contains no reference to Goads, or name variations of Goad, but a wealth of Anglo name references - for both native and white peoples - which are common to the eastern seaboard for this time period and/or common to those families intermarried with early Goads. An ancestor being from Virginia and having a white wife in the records, does not completely eliminate the possibility of native offspring, but it does make the documentation of said relationship more complex at best. This is an excellent reference, and ha! s helped many people who are serious about this type of connection. dp