Quote Originally Posted by tundramanq View Post
Bugbear - my dad's mom was pretty tight lipped about her roots too. She was an Illinois McCONNELL. But she sure looked half Cherokee.
Sounds like my Gibbs side. My mother's father to his dying day refused to admit that he was in fact one quarter cherokee. My Gibbs side came down from the mountains of Tennessee to sand mountain Alabama. They like a lot of mountain families that spent tome with and married into the cherokee lived in fear for generations following the trail of tears when the cherokee were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory. Many of us with roots in north Alabama know we are cherokee but are unable to prove as all possible records, even the family bibles, were voluntarily destroyed to prevent discovery that we were "passing" and to keep from losing our land. When I try to dig past my g grandfather I hit a brick wall of no information other than one ancient photo of an elderly native american woman smoking a long stemmed clay pipe in front of a log cabin, her dress has been positively identified as cherokee. She is my gg grandmother the only verification cones through a single source. All others make the claim that the Gibbs of north Alabama are actually Greek. If that is the case it flys completely in the face of all known immigration patterns in that area