Quote Originally Posted by Jack Daw View Post
... If anything, the intrigue created by Alex Haley, in addition to my father, prompted me to start it all.

FYI, although Alex Haley wrote an interesting book, it turned out that "Roots" was in part fiction. A few years ago a couple of genealogists went over his research, and discovered that he had hit a dead end, not once, but twice, and in both cases "chose" to be descended from people to whom he was clearly not related at all.

I have a cousin who says that he never accepts anything as a genealogical fact unless he can hold the original document in his hands attesting to it. And even then there may be misrepresentations, given, as DNA testing has shown, that historically around 3.7% to 4% of births in the US and the UK have misattributed paternity.