Charles Holman, an African American lawyer, had been meticulously researching his family tree for more than fifty years when he uncovered a startling piece of information linking him to the Bush presidential family.
Throughout his life, Holman, 66, gathered stories, birth and death certificates, Census Bureau records, and DNA matches.
Through his legal training he developed a thoroughness, and a knack for connecting with strangers through letters, emails, and in-person meetings.
Little by little he managed to connect with distant relatives, both black and white, piecing together a family history that reflected America’s complex and fraught racial past.
Charles Holman, who spent five decades tracing his family genealogy finds his relatives to have been enslaved by Bushes’ ancestors on a Kentucky plantation
A Kentucky newspaper article linked Bush’s ancestors to those of enslaved members of the Thomas family, Holman’s ancestors. Pictured, former Presidents George H. W. Bush, right, and George W. Bush, left, seen together in 2009
During his research, Holman attended a gathering of white relatives who shared his surname and whose ancestors had enslaved his own.
He visited three plantations where his ancestors had labored without compensation and stood in the tiny, cramped quarters where they likely lived, in the hope he might feel their presence.
The discoveries altered Holman’s perception of himself, his family, and their place in American history.
A few years ago, Holman made a significant discovery in his study in Maryland when he found a 1992 Kentucky newspaper article about a family that included one U.S. president and would soon add another.
The article with the headline ‘President George Bush has Kentucky connections’, traced the lineage of then-President George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush to ancestors predating the American Revolution.
Holman was familiar with the names of Bush’s great-great-grandmother and her parents and managed to match them with deeds and inheritance records he had previously uncovered.
Moses Clark, Holman’s mother’s grandfather
Charles Holman is seen with his family members and President Bush’s cousin Kurt
The connection added a remarkable new dimension to his extensive family research.
‘It was the coming together of things that I had been looking for for years,’ Holman said to the Washington Post.
The newspaper article explained how George Herbert Walker Bush’s ancestors had moved from Virginia to Kentucky in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
Among the president’s direct ancestors were Peter G. Foree and his daughter Lucretia Green Foree Holliday who owned land in Anchorage, Kentucky.
According to Holman’s research, members of the Foree family who known to be the Bush’s ancestors, enslaved members of the Thomas family, Holman’s ancestors.
The article was a breakthrough in piecing together his family tree.
‘It was one of the greatest moments in my life,’ Holman said to The Post.
George H.W. Bush’s third-great-grandfather was associated with at least 11 transatlantic slave crossings from West Africa.
Although slavery was abolished in the USA after the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War in 1865, the transatlantic trade in African slaves continued
Last year, a Reuters investigation looked into the links between slaveholders and U.S. political elites.
The chief of staff for former President George W. Bush acknowledged the findings that suggested there were 25 slaves owned by the Foree family.
‘A great Nation does not hide its history; it faces its flaws and corrects them,’ Bush said at the dedication of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
‘We can’t move closer to our founding promise of equal opportunity without remembering the founding sin of slavery. That disturbing past inspires us to go farther and faster on the journey toward a better future of liberty and justice for all.’
Genealogical research like Holman’s is a popular pursuit for many Americans but for descendants of enslaved people, the task is often challenging due to sparse record-keeping, which frequently consists only of first names recorded in property ledgers.
The fact that Holman was able to draw a direct line between the Bush’s and his own ancestors is astonishing.
‘I think the fact that he was able to put this together was pretty amazing,’ forensic genealogist Katharine O’Connell said.
Holman has revealed he has since written letters to George W. Bush; Jeb Bush; Laura Bush and daughter Jenna Bush Hager who is a television presenter with Today, but has so far not received any replies.
Despite the lack of response from the Bush family, Holman says he has been buoyed by the tales of old he has been hearing which have been passed down through the generations.
One story was about how Robert Anderson Thomas, Holman’s great-great-grandfather saw some cherry pies for the the slave owner’s wife sitting on the window sill when he was overcome by temptation.
‘Robert Anderson Thomas, my great-great-grandfather, saw the pies, could smell them, but knew he would never be able to have a taste of it. They were pies for George Bush’s ancestor, but he was a child and he couldn’t resist,’ Holman explained.
‘He devised an idea that if he could take a straw to the top of the pie, he could suck out the juice and savor some of the pie’s flavor, which he did – undetected.
‘Later, when his mother was serving pies to George Bush’s ancestors, the slaveholder’s wife remarked they were the driest cherry pies she had ever eaten. And he thought it was so funny that decades later, well after he’d escaped and slavery had long been over, he told this story to my grandmother.’
