Hi everybody: Native American ancestry can be a touchy subject because academic genealogy relies on information from genuine source records, such as parish records, muster lists, minister's returns, etc. for the "scientific" part. Oral tradition and family stories supply the "traditional" part - the my grandfather told me, hand-me-down story component. When both are combined, a rich, evocative family history becomes a treasured account of the origins of our ancestors. The further back in time we try to go, the harder it gets, because frontier records become more and more scarce. Almost all of us have traditional stories about some parts of our ancestry, particularly regarding the period during the Colonial frontier days. If you rely solely on the scientific sources, you will have an academic family history with gratifying citations. If you rely solely on the traditional sources, you will have a colorful, personal family history with scant proof. As genealogists, we have to admit that both are beautiful and hopefully everyone will have gratification combining both. Sometimes the facts are actually wrong, even in the source records, and future generations will correct some things as new data becomes more and more available. Some things will simply never be proven, but must be retained for the romance and coloring they bring to the history. How an individual looks to you in a photograph is subjective - like looking at an ink blot and seeing a camel, but one thing is for sure, all Colonial marriages had to be performed by a licensed magistrate or minister of the gospel to be valid. Otherwise, residents of Kentucky, Virginia and old North Carolina would be fined and jailed. Now I know a lot of quirky things happened on the frontier, so it is probable that there were unions between Native Americans and the settlers. What is lost if we don't budge on what is rational and provable? What is gained if we do? I suggest we just let individuals bring all the richness, pageantry, mystery and humor to their own family histories and those of us that like footnotes, citations or references, type away. I love both. But in my history, if I have a family tale, I call it that and if I have a fact, I cite it in a footnote. In the end, everybody wins. In my own family (Bralley), my great-grandfather always said we were from County Cork, Ireland. We always believed that and wore green on St. Patrick's Day and dreamed of the old country. When I went there to do research, I was astonished to discover that the Bralley's were actually from Somerset, England, but had moved to Cork during Elizabeth I's reign (1588) and were part of the Plantation of Munster scheme to take land AWAY from the native Irish and give it to loyal, Protestant English. They lived there until they came to Wythe County, VA in 1769. They were indeed FROM Cork, but NOT Irish. Get the picture?