{"id":22482,"date":"2012-04-15T23:56:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-15T23:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22482"},"modified":"2012-04-16T01:20:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-16T01:20:02","slug":"black-white-search-for-roots-uncovers-forgotten-family-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22482","title":{"rendered":"Black & White: Search for roots uncovers forgotten family secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black & White: Search for roots uncovers forgotten family secret<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

National Post<\/a>
\nToronto, Canada
\n2012-02-17<\/p>\n

Sarah Boesveld<\/strong><\/a>, General Assignment Writer<\/p>\n

About 20 years ago, David Dossett watched his grandfather politely shut down a woman who called to say she was a relative and that their family had come to Canada from Jamaica and that they were black. \u201cThat\u2019s the most ridiculous thing I\u2019ve ever heard,\u201d Mr. Dossett said to his granddad, businessman John B. Sampson, who seemed amused by this idea. Their family \u2014 Mr. Dossett\u2019s great-grandfather on his mother\u2019s side \u2014 had come to Canada from Scotland in 1907 and settled in Toronto. No one disputed that. But while doing some casual family tree sleuthing online a few years ago, Mr. Dossett, an IT manager and father of four, stumbled upon a tree that looked a lot like his. As it turns out, it belonged to the woman who called his grandfather that day \u2014 Jenny Sampson from Illinois. <\/strong>And so began Mr. Dossett\u2019s \u201cobsessive\u201d hunt for a family\u2019s past that had remained a secret for over 100 years. In the end, he discovered his family is not Protestant and Scottish, but Jamaican and Jewish. Not everyone is pleased about the discovery \u2014 much of which was broadcast last week on an episode of The Generations Project on Brigham Young University TV. Mr. Dossett spoke with the Post\u2019s Sarah Boesveld from his hometown of Kingston, Ont.<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

Q<\/strong> Jenny Sampson had been doing research independently before you began to question your family\u2019s roots and identity. What had she found?<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/strong> When I was looking at her family tree, it was describing my family, it was describing me. And the tree said the family was Jewish, that they lived on an estate in Jamaica called Gaza. The name \u201cGaza\u201d sounds very Jewish, so I\u2019m thinking \u201cWow.\u201d I contacted the person whose name was on the website \u2014 it ended up being her husband \u2014 and Jenny emailed back, explained the whole thing \u2014 that her family had come to Toronto in 1907, that they came as mulatto Hebrews. When it really sank into me that this was true I started thinking \u201cWhat are the odds that my family is from Jamaica?\u201d The odds turned out to be pretty good…<\/p>\n

…Q<\/strong> Why do you think your family kept their heritage a secret even years after they immigrated?<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/strong> Deep down inside I think people [in my family] are concerned about having Jewish or black heritage. My mother\u2019s cousin was concerned her father, my great-uncle the decorated war hero [and top-ranked army official] Franklin Augustus Sampson, would be looked down on if it was revealed our family lied about their heritage. But what are they going to do? Yank medals away from people? He\u2019s dead. My grandfather lied about his heritage because he said he was born in Toronto, not Jamaica. A lot of people lied when they enlisted in WWI<\/a>, lied about their age, lied about their ethnicity. One of my cousins found out many years ago through a blood test that there was either Asian or African blood in her system. When she took the blood test, she went into grandfather\u2019s office, she threw it down on his desk in front of him and said \u201cExplain this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q<\/strong> How did your mother react?<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/strong> She doesn\u2019t believe it. She says we\u2019re from Scotland, but doesn\u2019t provide details. She\u2019s going through stages of dementia, but even without that she wouldn\u2019t believe it. Jenny told me her mother is no longer speaking to her. If this had happened maybe 20 years earlier, I could have been a little concerned about it too.<\/p>\n

Q<\/strong> Did you feel betrayed at all that your family kept this from you?<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/strong> Initially I was, but then I became aware of why this was done. I think what I find most discouraging is the way people were treated when they came to the country, if they weren\u2019t from this white background. We have a past we don\u2019t like to talk about. It\u2019s too bad that Canada wasn\u2019t as open a country as it could have been…<\/p>\n

…Q<\/strong> You say there are likely thousands of other families out there who may actually be of black heritage despite their families\u2019 white complexions.<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/strong> In the late 1800s there was a mass exodus of Jews from Jamaica. The perception was that they were becoming too powerful, so laws were passed to limit what they could own and how much they could acquire. I bet there are a lot of people out there that aren\u2019t searching because they just don\u2019t know. Maybe they just assume they\u2019re from Scotland. Other than myself going to Queen\u2019s University, no one in my family has a kilt, I don\u2019t like bagpipes, I don\u2019t eat oatmeal, I don\u2019t like haggis. Nothing about me would indicate I\u2019m Scottish except for my appearance \u2014 I have reddish hair because my grandfather married an Irish woman. They were very pale and I burn quite easily…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black & White: Search for roots uncovers forgotten family secret National Post Toronto, Canada 2012-02-17 Sarah Boesveld, General Assignment Writer About 20 years ago, David Dossett watched his grandfather politely shut down a woman who called to say she was a relative and that their family had come to Canada from Jamaica and that they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19,21,459,3601,8,6462,820],"tags":[10429,80,2858,10428,9491],"class_list":["post-22482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-canada","category-latincarib","category-history","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-religion","tag-david-dossett","tag-jamaica","tag-national-post","tag-sarah-boesveld","tag-the-national-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}