Adrienne talks about how she discovered that the black man listed as the father on her grandfather's birth certificate was a lie but instead was a white man named James Moffett from 1924 segregated Mississippi; working through generational shame, anger and pain about her slave owning white ancestry; her grandfather's connection to Revolutionary War patriots; the story of how the family of George Leighton, son of her Revolutionary War ancestor Samuel Leighton, in Massachusetts, wrote him off because he married into a slave owning family in Mississippi; connecting with white relatives who shared stories of her Revolutionary War lineage; informing the leader of the Connecticut State Society Daughters of the American Revolution that they share ancestry with Revolutionary War patriot James Collins and subsequently being invited to be the keynote speaker at the state conference during which Adrienne presented their mixed race family connection; using DNA to help point toward more record sets; the variations in DNA connections versus genetic heritage versus traditional paper research; Commander James Collins's Revolutionary War service and his letter scolding the British; joining the DAR by a white Moffett cousin providing an affidavit of family relation for her application in support of his Y-DNA test results; amending her grandfather's death certificate to name his true father; giving herself permission to explore her own history; potentially caring for the gravesites of the family of her ancestor's enslavers; her brother joining The Society of the Cincinnati; taking leadership roles within the Children of the American Revolution and Daughters of the American Revolution; assisting members with DNA lineage research. Read Adrienne’s biography at www.daughterdialogues.com/daughters
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