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CELEBRITY GENEALOGY
Kanye, Meet Your Great-Uncle
Dear Kanye,
Like countless others, I was confounded by your recent comment about slavery being a choice, so I decided to explore your family tree (as a genealogist, that’s my instinctive response to many circumstances). Your sprawling roots extend to at least a dozen states, but since many are most interested in the branch sporting the surname they were born with, I took a deeper dive into your West line.
As soon as I realized they were from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, I wondered whether your family might have been free before Emancipation. Nationwide, roughly ten percent of African Americans were free before the Civil War, but the percentage in this region was much higher — almost 50% for Maryland.
Turns out they were. The giveaway was the 1860 census showing your great-great-great-grandparents, Peter and Nancy West, with their children. “Free people of color” are listed in census records before 1870, the first one conducted post-Emancipation, but sadly, those who were enslaved remain nameless, which is why genealogists frequently refer to the “wall of 1870” in African American research.
But your West family was free, so this is where I first encountered Daniel, your third great-uncle, then 15 years old.
Noticing he was born around 1845, I knew he would have been of a likely age to serve in the Civil War. A quick search showed that he had, but the first page of his service record made me inhale sharply. He didn’t make it home alive.
Daniel volunteered for the 19th Regiment (Co. K) of the U.S. Colored Troops, enlisting in early 1864 for a three-year term. A timeline of his regiment’s service reveals that he would have been among those who helped the Union reclaim Richmond, then the Confederate capital.
The war was over before long, but his tour of duty wasn’t, so he headed by steamship with his regiment to Texas, and this is when…
