Hi Bill, >So, this translated to black slaves in America taking on the names of the >slaveholders (lots of them SI)? Yes, from what little I've read that also occurred. Sometimes of course because the owner of the plantation was the daddie. I am sure other people of color assumed surnames when they married. I found a record of a marriage in Campbell Co, VA where a man named Adam McCormack married a woman of color in the late 1700s. She had no surname but apparently her husband purchased her freedom for her prior owner is identified. Their children would have assumed her husband's surname of McCormack but to whether today the descendents of this couple consider themselves white or black -- donno!! Very possibly a mix. In any case they bear the surname McCarmack because they descend from this man and have his genes. I also read somewhere of a community of people of color now living in northern England who had moved from one of the West Indies islands. They descend from Englishmen who had settled the island in early centuries. Apparently they are quite adamant that they are English by right of heritage, not by right of having been colonized by the English in the past. So it is not always correct to assume that people of color are not blood relatives of people without any color (...I guess!) who carry the same surname. Apparently too I heard of a small West Indies island where many Catholic Irish settled in the 1700s and married into the local populace. There you have a population with darker skin of Irish descent who speak or spoke Irish. >I know of at least two McKinneys of color in the NFL. And another retired >from Oakland Raiders. My maiden name MASON is a nightmare to research -- it's a common surname and then some are people of color. (My Masons arrived in the USA by way of Canada in 1870, coming from Durham, England....so unless you can get your colonial Masons back to Durham, I doubt there is a tie-in. Plus we were lead miners in Weardale -- not too likely to be connected to the rich & famous MASONs of Virginia, for example, or maybe not....Eddie Longshanks parked his army in Weardale on his way north to harrass the Scots, so I might bear the genes of anyone in England including Eddie himself but I hope not) Linda Merle ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at mail.fea.net