Who Do You Think You Are? and Black Loyalists

CBC has brought the BBC hit, Who Do You Think You Are? to Canadian television, looking at the ancestry of 13 well known Canadian personalities ranging from Don Cherry to Margaret Trudeau. Not only are the commercials pretty well split between ancestry.ca and the Canadian Genealogy Centre of Library and Archives Canada, but the research is also varied, including DNA testing.

The part of tonight's episode that I found particularly fascinating was the Book of Negroes, a now searchable book listing the names and status of the Black Loyalists who travelled from the United States to Nova Scotia from 1783 to 1785, as a direct result of the American Revolution. Some of these Black Loyalists were still slaves, freed slaves, or still indentured, but given their freedom because they had joined the British in New York. Check out the links to learn more about this period in our history.