Tools for Finding your roots

GENETICS/DNA:

23andme: Priced @ $100 the most comprehensive DNA test for its price, gives you information on your Maternal line, Paternal Line and the mixture of all your lines. Has a great system to match you up with relatives who are also on the site.
AncestryDNA: Priced $100 I highly commend this one if you want to get a more specific breakdown of your African ancestry. Lacks a direct maternal/paternal lineage test (Mtdna/ydna) However like 23andme has a great system to match you up with relatives.
FTDNA: Price varies I only recommend FTDNA for folks who have done 23andme and or Ancestry but want to find specifics on their Paternal and or Maternal lineage ancestor.

GENEALOGY:

FamilySearch: The best and largest database compiled by the mormons of our Catholic and Civil records, this is the MACHETE for anyone looking to find their ancestors via records. Most of the records are online, but not all are searchable via the 'search'.
Instituto de Genealogia Dominicana: Has great posts on some genealogies, if you are lucky some of your ancestors may be in one of these and much of your work may be cut out for you.
Archivo General de la Nacion: Dominican general archives, many books and archives online as well as tools that may come in handy for the genealogist such as Entrada de Imigrantes and Fondos Documentales

Other Genetics/Genealogy Blogs:

Genealogia Nuestra: Blog on Dominican/Puertorican/Carribean Genealogy
Radiants Roots Boricua: Blog focusing on Puertorican/Afro-american Genetics and Genealogy
Tracing African Roots: Blog solely focused on African genetics in the African-diaspora
Roots & Recombinant DNA: Blog focused on Afro-american Genetics and Genealogy

Comments

Freedom in the Colony of Santo Domingo

Early society in the colony of Santo Domingo started out very similarly to other colonies in the Americas with a very high rate of enslaved natives, pillaging, murdering from the Spanish followed by a mass importation of Africans of a multitude of ethnicity ranging from inhabitants of the Jollof empire to inhabitants of the Kongo empire. Santo Domingo which was later to become the Dominican Republic had a majority of enslaved peoples up until the early 1600s, after which time period, a combination of events such sugar cane economy crashing in 1606 and plagues such as measles in 1666, created an environment where free people began to outnumber the enslaved. With an ever-decreasing white-population this also meant that the free population of the island also had less and less vigilance and had more access to social climbing. This of course does not erase the fact that we are not truly free until we are all free , and it was not until Feb. 1822 during Boyer's occupation that we gaine

Moren@: Language of Resistance

It is often that Dominicans come to mind when it comes to self-hate or anti-blackness. "Dominican's don't like to be called black"- is a common term. I remember back close to a decade ago I watched one of my first afro-dominican documentaries "Congo-Pa-Ti" which featured the community of Villa Mella in North-Santo Domingo and although one part featured the outstanding traditions of the people, the other almost in mockery asked residents of villa mella what they considered themselves as far as "race", some respondents said yellow, cinnamon and where quite precise with their color. The ones that said "moren@" where translated in the subtitles as "mixed black" or "light skin black". In the end it seemed to illustrate for the English speaker that Dominican's don't use the term "negro" "black" and therefore use other terms to avoid it. Growing up as a person who gets called "moreno"

We don't have African Ancestry from One Place - Example of Dominicans

For those of you who have watched genetic/genealogy TV shows like Finding your Roots by Henry Louis Gates JR, or perhaps NatGEO documentaries on the "Roots" of people you may be thinking that we have one ancestral homeland, this is not the case for pretty much anybody in the Caribbean or the Americas for that matter. In all the studies done, and if you take a personal dna test or have the luck of finding these distant ancestors via genealogy you will quickly note your roots are all over Africa, all over the Americas and all over Europe. Ancestry.com provides one of the most comprehensive but not perfect African regional analyses which I am using in these examples, the names of the categories are NOT meant to be countries, they encompass large regions, so "Senegal" is not confined to Senegal but goes all the way to parts of Ghana and even Nigeria in the case of Fulani and Hausa folks. This is not specific to one ethnicity as many African ethnicities may s

Sambumbia - Dominican-Caribbean Genetics and Genealogy

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