Ancestry.com DNA Testing Reveals 'Roots' Author's Scottis...( Nephew of Alex Haley Meets Newfound S...),Health

Nephew of Alex Haley Meets Newfound Scottish Cousin for the First Time

PROVO, Utah, April 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Ancestry.com, the world's largest online resource for family history, announced today that the late Alex Haley, author of Roots - the decisive masterpiece that inspired many Americans to take pride in their heritage - was the direct descendent of a Scottish ancestor. The discovery came through an Ancestry.com DNA test taken by Alex Haley's nephew Chris Haley in 2007, where his results were added to a growing database of others who had taken DNA tests.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090407/LA95570)

In February 2009, Chris Haley received an e-mail from a Scottish woman in the database, June Baff Black, whose father's DNA very closely matched his. According to the DNA results, an ancestor who likely lived in the 1600 or 1700s in Scotland connects Mr. Haley with Ms. Black, making them distant cousins. Mr. Haley and Ms. Black met for the first time on Feb. 28, 2009, in London, England.

Until the confirmation by Ancestry.com, Mr. Haley had only word-of-mouth history to prove that his great-grandfather had been born of a slave mother and a white father, both of whom lived and worked on an Alabama slave plantation. This scientific finding adds weight to research conducted by Mr. Haley's uncle, Alex Haley, in which he traced his ancestry back to Baugh (variation of Baff) - an overseer of an Alabama slave plantation - who was thought to have fathered Mr. Haley's great-grandfather with a female slave. The story is cited in Alex Haley's book Queen.

"Through the writing of Roots, my uncle Alex Haley sparked a fascination in researching the past. DNA testing is a continuation of that and is another way of emboldening yourself with pride. To be able to find out that y
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