This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Sellers Oswalt Oswald Snider Schneider Sneider Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/JWGBAEB/1299.1.1.1.1.2.1.1.1 Message Board Post: In Switzerland Snider is SChneider and Oswalt is Oswald. Do you know what part of NC they came from?, as the Sellers I have are from Nash and Edgecomb area. The Brantleys of Nash were descended from Black Dutch in NC. In the old days when people say he or she was French or German or Black Dutch or English, they only mean that they were descended from people who were born there-maybe several generations before. So for instance Rachel could have had an Indian mother and Oswalt was only the grandson of a Black Dutch which really is Deutsch which means German. Schwarze Deutsche or Black Germans or Black Dutch, found along the Danube River in Austria and Germany, in the Black Forest and, to a lesser extent, along the Rhine River, have dark hair and eyes, unlike the fairer people both north and south of them. Their descendants in America may be called either Black Dutch or Black German. The origin of their dark coloration is ancient, from the Roman army in the third and fourth centuries, C.E. The Roman army of this time period was mostly made up of German mercenary soldiers, but along the German border, the Romans preferred to station non-Germans. The army on the Danube was mostly drawn from Garamante soldiers. The Garamante (called Tubu now) were Black Africans from the central Sahara. Now the Tubu live in northern Chad, eastern Niger and southern Libya. They are not usually found north of Marzuk in Fezzan or Kufra in Cyrenaica now, but in Roman times they ranged north to the central coast of Libya and to Ghadames in southern Tunis! ia. As well as Garamante, there were some Iranic people stationed on this frontier, especially Sarmatians (called Ossets now) and Scythians (Ashkenazi in the Hebrew Bible) from southern Russia and the Ukraine (Ashkenaz, the old Hebrew for Scythia, has been used for Germany in modern Hebrew by Ashkenazic Jews trying to ingratiate themselves with Germans and Austrians or trying to hide their Khazar ancestry). These African and Iranic soldiers left many descendants who tend to have black, heavy hair and dark eyes even yet. Beethoven and Hitler are two famous examples of this group (Peanuts). It is interesting to imagine Hitler's reaction to someone telling him he probably got his heavy, black hair from Black African ancestry. Since this was so long ago, with population movement and inter-marriage, all Europeans must have some ancestry from these Black African soldiers. In sixty generations, a person could leave 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 descendants with just two children per person each generation so long as no descendants married each other. Obviously, after a time, many descendants will marry each other, but still it works out statistically that most people from that long ago who left descendants at all are ancestors of everyone in Europe today. The tendency for people to stay in their own community explains why we can see the effects along the Danube and in the Black Forest in the people with black hair and dark eyes but do not see it far away like Iceland. The concentration is far greater! at the point of origin, but the dispersion radiates out to everywhere given enough time. 4. Tziganes or, more commonly (but erroneously), Gypsies, are another group called Black Dutch in America. A Tzigane from Germany, who could speak German, could be accepted much better by saying he was Black Dutch than if he admitted to being Gypsy. Tziganes were called Gypsies because of the mistaken belief they came from Egypt. At other times and places, they were called Bohemians (as in La Boheme) because they were thought to be from what is now the Czech Republic. Their language is called Romany, sometimes attributed to their self-given name of Rom (or Dom) but more likely because they were thought to be from Romania. In actuality, they come from the Indus valley area of Pakistan and western India, their language is Indic, their traditional religion a form of Hinduism. The name Rom or Dom comes from the Sanskrit word Domba, meaning low caste ("untouchable") musician. Tzigane, which has cognates in most European languages including Russian and Turkish, is derived from the! Sanskrit name of their caste in ancient India. Words for Tzigane in a few languages: English = Tzigane; French = Tzigane; Russian = Tsygan Dutch = Zigeuner; German = Zigeuner; Hungarian = Cigany Italian = Zingaro; Spanish = Gitano; Rumanian = T¸igan Turkish = Çingene; Polish = Cygan; Czech = Cikan There is already an excellent site on Tziganes as Black Dutch in America: Wayfaring Stranger by Linda Griggs. It also tells about their connections with the Melungeons. Please see: Part One at http://foclark.tripod.com/gypsy/Patrin1.htm Part Two at http://foclark.tripod.com/gypsy/Patrin2.htm. 5. Dutch and Belgian Jews were sometimes called Black Dutch in America because they spoke Dutch or Flemish and were darker than the other Dutch and Flemish. They had only recently moved to the Netherlands and Belgium (then Spanish Netherlands) from Iberia (Portugal and Spain). When Spain annexed Portugal for a while, many Portuguese Jews fled to Spanish Flanders to escape the Inquisition (see http://www.theotherside.co.uk/tm-heritage/background/flanders.htm for Flanders as part of Spanish Netherlands). Most, like the famous philosopher Baruch Spinoza, crossed into Protestant Netherlands for greater freedom of expression and religion (see http://users.erols.com/jyselman/ for more on Spinoza). These Sephardic Jews were, on the average, darker than the Ashkenazic Jews of northern Europe, so an explanation like Black Dutch suited them well. 6. Mulattos, Quadroons, Octaroons and other mixed children of German, Dutch or Flemish fathers who appeared mostly White, but were too dark, would use the term in order to live in White society. Of course, they frequently learned the term from one of the other types of Black Dutch and then would sieze it as their own. How many people were in each of these groups, I have no idea. But there are a lot of people finding ancestors called Black Dutch, so there could have been a sizeable number in any of them. 7. I have found a Mailing List (discussion group) on the Black Dutch in America. This group seems to mostly be Native American or part Native American whose ancestors said they were Black Dutch in order to be accepted as White at a time when people were denied their rights and rejected for being part Indian. See the Rootsweb Mailing List for Black-Dutch-America at http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/black-dutch-america. Susan Aldridge