Not QUITE so fast....
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In reply to:
Original Exum Truths
2/14/01
Hi Bud -
I have no Exum ancestors, but your Exums were closely connected with my DREW ancestors, also white, in Surry Co. VA and Edgecombe Co. NC in the 18th century.And my research over the past few months suggests very strongly that both families were connected, through marriage, with other families identified as "free people of color" in VA and NC during that time period.As a matter of fact, the same is true for an astonishing number of the Old VA and Old NC surnames which appear on this page.There is an "EXUM SCOTT" identified as "other free" in Edgecomb or Halifax Co. in the 1790 census, and the children of EXUM LEWIS married into a couple of families with numerous identified "other free" members. As a matter of fact, the LEWIS family itself had numerous identified "other free" members in Edgecomb Co. in 1790.These people could have been part-Indian, part-African, or, more probably, a mixture of all three.
The interesting fact is that in VA and particularly in NC at that time, racial boundaries were far more fluid and permeable than we now realize.The intermarrying started in VA in the first couple of generations, and went on until, in most cases, the descendants of these families blended back into the white population.I'm blond and blue-eyed too, but my gg-grandmother, my grandmother, and at least five of my grandmother's eight children had big brown eyes and black curly hair.Many, many more of us have mixed ancestry than we might think.
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