There may come a time in your genealogical research where you come across an ancestor whose cultural roots are somewhat of a mystery. In my family tree, the mystery lies with my great grandmother. When I asked my mother about her, my mother told me that my great grandmother always referred to her heritage as “Black Dutch“. I asked my mother whether she knew what that meant, and she told me that she did not know, but perhaps it meant that her family had come from the Netherlands and had dark skin compared to other people from the Netherlands.
I took it upon myself to see whether I could figure out where our “Black Dutch” ancestors came from. Based upon the information that I have read, I will need to look back further than my great grandmother to see what nationality her “Black Dutch” ancestors were because no one nationality is associated with that term.
There are a few potential groups of people that my “Black Dutch” ancestors could be associated with. One possible explanation is that they were Native American. In the 1830’s when the Indian Removal Act was in place, many Cherokee and other Native people denied their Native roots in an effort to avoid removal. By this time, Native people had intermixed with those of European descent to such a degree that many of them had skin that was lighter in color than purely Native people yet was darker than those of purely European descent.
Another possibility is that they really were from the Netherlands, and that they were the descendants of Spanish soldiers and Dutch women. They could also have been dark skinned Germans. The only thing that I know for sure about the “Black Dutch” in my family tree is that the term refers to some type of mixed-race ancestry. It will be interesting to find out exactly what the mixture was, and why they referred to themselves as “Black Dutch”.