Henry Louis Gates Jr.

His tree is started. It may take a while to get "connectors" entered for this great "connector" (in the Malcolm Gladwell sense of the word).

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Thanks Erica!

This is fantastic news, A.J.

My friends are sharing information about your public appearances on my FB page all the time now. They don't know that I already know about you, but since they know I "do genealogy" they tell me that they have heard about the reunion :)

Thanks Hatte! I love that. I hope you tell them that you are helping to make it happen...

If there's a Cheney in there *anywhere*, he's connected to half of Geni. I call it "Six Degrees of Dick Cheney" (by analogy with "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon").

The Cheneys were very, very prolific and very, very ambitious, and married into every prominent family that they possibly could.

Take a look at Cumberland County, Maryland families, perhaps ?

I thought we agreed to keep poltics out of this...

just kidding.. that would be impossible..

well done erica.. well done..

Oh, how marvelous it would be to meet Professor Gates! I admire not only his popular genealogy work but his scholarship. Here's hoping that one of us has a Geni connection to his tree.

FamilySearch isn't going to be a lot of help - they default to "White" even when the census *explicitly* identifies people as "Mulatto". (Jane Gates and four of her children are also in the 1870 Census, and were identified with "M" - which somebody at FamilySearch misread as "W".)

Jane's consistent identification as "Mulatto" suggests that she too was of mixed race.

I'm a Cheney descendant :) My mother was "surprised" to hear this, to express it neutrally.

A.J. Jacobs - I do tell my friends and family that I am part of the team that is helping build the world's largest family tree, but considering my "work" workload, I'm not able to help as much as I want to :(

I got Cheneys too. Mostly the Maryland branch, which is surprisingly *not* directly connected to you-know-who (but they are collaterals).

My Cheney is William Cheney of Roxbury. I think they may have even come on the Arbella with my Johnsons. His daughter married Humphrey Johnson. William Cheney is my 9th ggf.

We should actually be looking at Washington, Allegany, and possibly Garrett Counties. Allegany was split off Washington in 1789, and Garrett off Allegany in 1872.

Cumberland, MD, is the largest city west of Frederick (in Frederick County, MD) and was once the second largest city in the state.

Other neighboring counties are Somerset, Fulton, and Bedford, PA, and Morgan, Hampshire, and Mineral, WV.

http://www.geni.com/path/William-Cheney+is+related+to+Richard-B-Che...

And the former Veep is my 8th cousin once removed...

Yeah, mine too - different and more circuitous route via Duvalls and Tylers. :-P

I can look on Ancestry for Gates and his wife's ancestors. I'm not an expert in that area, although I live nearby.

I've been looking on ancestry.com, his direct tree is pretty well known for some odd reason. :). What's needed on Geni is

- getting a couple more hundred profiles entered so we can find the connect points to the shared world tree
- cracking his ex wife's ancestry

Thanks again guys! Oddly, I'm going to be on a show with Dr. Gates tomorrow. It's HuffingtonPost Live at about 12:20 p.m.
I'll let him know we're on the case...

Yes please, we're not done. Maybe 300 more profiles to go
(Unless he wants to slip you a hint).

My cousin in Lexington MA wrote:

"Hey, are you working on Skip Gates tree? What's this about him being 10% Ashkenazi Jewish??"

She gets the "wicked local" news ...

A.J. Jacobs

You're in by a Jefferson ...

http://www.geni.com/path/Henry-Gates+is+related+to+A-J-Jacobs?from=...

Yay! Great work, Erica!

I can't get my path to work via A.J.

Can someone do it for me.

Kevin

I found it as: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s second great aunt's third great grandmother's partner's wife's first cousin thrice removed's wife's fourth great nephew's ex-wife's sister's husband's first cousin's husband's first cousin once removed's wife's great nephew's ex-wife's fifth cousin.

Can someone please get it to display for me.

He's related to both Arthur and me - it's a little stranger about Arthur, who's so Scandinavian he burns in the sun, but there were a couple of odd sideways links. (Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is your partner's second cousin twice removed's husband's first cousin twice removed[T. Jefferson]'s partner[S. Hemings]'s third great niece's husband's second great nephew.)

As for me, I'm his "second great aunt's third great grandmother's partner's wife's father's wife's grandfather's wife's 9th great niece" , with about half of that coming down through Accomack/Northampton. (Had to work the process in reverse, and add a generation.)

Enter a few hundred more profiles, we'll get this more solidly in the tree & find more connections.

The geographic range for the historic Gates extended family is very much in the pocket you identified, Maven.