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I researched this question many years ago because my daughter was given a ‘hero’ to write about from Colonial times. Turned out he had invested in a few slave ship voyages, like 2. So we investigated and discovered the largest such Jewish slaver was probably Aaron Lopez. His story is fascinating on its own: his family had been forcibly converted in Portugal and then reclaimed their Jewishness when they came to America. The numbers are pretty clear: he was involved in 21 slave ship voyages, meaning as an investor. The total from that one city in the same time was 347. This was Newport, RI, which is home to Touro Synagogue, the oldest standing synagogue in the US. Newport was home to a number of Jews, including a number whose families had been forcibly converted back at the end of the 15thC. These Jews had accumulated in Newport from other parts of the New World, meaning the Caribbean and S. America, so they had connections in the existing Triangular Trade.The history of Jewish involvement in the Atlantic Slave Trade is really one of Christianity, not Judaism. In the early days of the Trade, when the annual numbers were in the low thousands, the King ran the Trade through a contract awarded as a Royal monopoly. That was typical of many businesses in many countries. Some of the relatively early recipients of this ‘favor’ were conversos, meaning former Jews who became Christians. So, back when the numbers were small, some former Jews were big in then small slave trade. As The Inquisition took hold, the distrust of the Christianity of formerly Jewish families grew, and they no longer were players in the trade.In the 18thC, the British dominated the slave trade. That was a major accomplishment of Queen Anne: the treaty which ended the massive European wars - look up John Churchill - gave the United Kingdom something like a 30 year monopoly. Want to find taint in history? One can make the argument that the UK, which was ‘founded’ in Queen Anne’s reign, needed the economic jolt of prosperity from slaving to make the political unification work. To be blunt, places like Liverpool, which are now mostly known for the soccer team and The Beatles, were built by the slave trade. Jewish involvement in the British century of slaving was marginal. Some Jews invested, of course, but they did not finance or own a large percentage of the trade.In the Americas, nearly all the ‘Jewish’ involvement was either actually Christians whose families were converted, but who are now pointed out as Jews because that’s convenient, or Jews whose families were originally from Spain or Portugal, and who had existed in the overseas slave societies run by the Christians. I point this out to say that this kind of Jew blaming is common: Christians forced Jews to convert; Christians ran the slave trade, and now they blame Jews for being involved as though they werent converts, as though the Christian countries had nothing to do with it. The sad reality is that, as usual, Christians have a hard time looking in the mirror and prefer blaming others. The only reason Jews became involved with the slave trade is Christianity, not the other way around.The best general book about the slave trade remains this: The SLAVE TRADE: THE STORY OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE: 1440 - 1870: Thomas, Hugh: 9780684835655: Amazon.com: Books. Hugh Thomas thoroughly debunks the lie that Jews ran the slave trade.As a note, Aaron Lopez was an American patriot whose backed the American Revolution. This despite being repeatedly denied citizenship in the colony of Rhode Island because he was Jewish. He moved to Massachusetts, where the court granted him citizenship, probably the first Jew to become a ‘naturalized’ citizen there. So you can see the legacy is complicated. Touro Synagogue is not only the oldest in the country, but they have a letter from George Washington in which he promise religious tolerance. And yet, a man involved in the slave trade helped lay a cornerstone. He was also good friends with extremely important Christian figures, including those associated with places like Yale.

Sadly, Mr Lincoln does not have any living descendants, but he is my distant cousin through our New England forebearers, the Holmes.Before becoming interested in genealogy, I was a life-long history buff. I was never so much interested in the wars, or politics. I was fascinated by how ordinary people lived in previous centuries. I loved learning about their family life, cooking, clothing, medical care, and entertainment.Then one summer, I took a random course for my Master’s in Education. The course focused on how technological changes, such as electricity, running water, and the automobile, changed the daily life of the average person in the late nineteenth century. It was easily the most interesting class I had in all my years of higher education.This was well before the Internet, but from that time I began to devour social history. I loved traveling in historic areas, and I collected quite a library from used book stores long before Amazon.Fast forward to the economic crash of 2008. My sister, an RN with a specialty in informatics, was laid off. She was out of work for more than a year and during that time, she resurrected the family history research that our mother had done prior to her passing. She began adding to it with the information now so easily available online.She placed our family tree on a well-known subscription website. While I recalled some of the things our mother had told me about our family, I found it very hard to picture. For lack of a better word. It just seemed like so many names, and more names. How would you ever remember who all the people were?Then one Christmas Day, she sent me an invite to her family tree. The website simplified the family tree in a digital format. Suddenly, I saw my family history laid out in a clear format, and with the opportunity to add to it. I couldn’t sign up fast enough. Now I was able to connect my own relatives with the social history I had been studying for years.My life has never been the same!To answer your question, discovering my ancestor’s stories is not just fascinating, it has been addictive.I am fortunate to be descended from some relatively well documented families who came to the colonies in the 17th century. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut kept fairly good records of their people.Many of the court records are hilarious!For example: my ancestors were directly involved in the longest running lawsuit in the history of the US.Everardus Bogardus was an early NY colony resident, a Dutch minister, who owned a church on land in what later became Manhattan. He died in the 1600’s. Decades later, after the land became very valuable, multiple lawsuits were initiated about the disposition of the property.The lawsuits continued unabated for some 150 years, into the 1930’s, when a descendant group, now thousands of people ( Everardus had a lot of kids, and those kids has a lot of kids ) received a small recompense, having been victims of mail fraud.From my perspective, it seems that many generations of lawyers profited from naive people hoping to capitalize on Everardus’ land in Manhattan.This is just a tiny sampling of what I have learned in researching my family history.It hasn’t all been pleasant- one sixth great grandfather was convicted of counterfeiting in Rhode Island. Another was hanged in Connecticut for sexual misconduct with little boys.My advice : don’t research your family history, if this type of information will upset you.Keep in mind, I have learned I am connected to many of our US Presidents, and too many historic figures to even mention. Most good, a few bad.It has been fun, to put it mildly.Summary: there is no such thing as an uninteresting family history, there is only the family history you haven’t found.Yet.

I come from a very low-middle class family. My mom worked as a traveling sales lady and my dad was a carpenter at Electric Boat in Groton, CT. My dad left when I was 8 years old. Not on his own accord though. My mom wanted the divorce and that was that. She wasn't going to work it out or anything of the sort. I will never forget the night that my dad told me.He asked me to come downstairs to the basement where his workbench was. He sat me on top of the stool and looked at me and started crying. I never saw him cry like that in my life, not even after 2 separate diagnosis of cancer (1 that he beat). He wanted me to understand what was happening. What did I know? I was all of 8, and he said, "Adam, I have to go. Your mom and I are separating".Still crying, I told him it will be okay and hugged him. I don't recall if I had cried or not. I already knew this was happening because I overheard conversations and my mom had meet someone else while working on the road. His name was Tom, from Cape Cod and he had money. I am not sure if this was the catalyst of my emotional decay, but rarely have I ever cried since.I used humor to cover these scars. I won class clown in 8th grade, then went on to win class clown my senior year of high school. I suppose you can gauge how big the scars were/are by my wins. Then again, I love being the center of attention.My dad stayed with friends and family because the judge order him to send the majority of his weekly paycheck to my mom for child support. I can remember him staying in at least 3 separate houses while growing up. Every time he got a $.10 raise, my mom would take him back to court for half of it. That was life in a divorce though.Visitation with my dad was every other weekend by court order. I was always excited to see him and I knew that we would go to Taco Bell at least once because he could feed us for $3 back in the early 90's. I can remember his shitty little silver Toyota station wagon that had a couple hundred thousand miles on it. We would be shuttled from Jewett City, CT to 45 minutes away in Charleston, RI. He had started dating a woman he worked with when I was about 10 and she helped him become stable. He had previously tried to work things out and reunite with my mom before dating my step-mom, but it never happen.There were times that my dad struggled to pay the full child support each week because of no over-time, rent, or something that came up. He was legit though and gave up so much to make sure he came and got us. I can also remember the times that he couldn't give my mom the full amount and she would use us against him, denying weekend visits. I despised her for those actions, even to this very day.There was a point where he didn't have enough money to take the 3 of us all at the same time. We would see him each time he dropped one of us off and they would come and go, but I would only get a weekend with him every 6 weeks. We always went fishing because he loved it and it was free.The time we spent apart jaded me a little more each time. Not against him, but that my mom had cast him away for another dude, then another one. I had dudes in and out of my life from 8 years-old to 18.My mother loved us all and I know that, and she made mistakes. I don't want to take that away from her, but she was young. I was born when she was only 17 years old. I don't get to choose who my parents are, but her actions back then changed me. Now, we don't really have much to talk about and if we do, it's mostly about the website I built for her company. Back to dad though...My dad told me as I got older that he loved me every time we spoke or saw each other. I asked him why he did that and he responded that his father never said he loved him. All 78 years of my grandfather's life came down to this one thing. A simple "I love you". When I became 16 years old I immediately got my driver's license. I had an awful car (Chevy Colt) for a summer, but it died and I bought a Mazda B2000 pickup for $350. My dad met me half way, inspected the vehicle, gave the thumbs up and I paid the man and drove it home.From then on, there weren't "every other weekends", instead I routinely drove to his house whenever I wanted. My younger siblings still visited on the schedule and I would bring them there as well.My dad loved fishing, making things out of wood, and having us around. We were his life, and I don't mean that lightly. That man gave everything he had to us and made it a point to tell all three of us how much we meant to him. I am still finding out things I didn't know during conversations with my step-mom. We are close still and continue the weekend talks. She hasn't even changed the voicemail that me dad recorded. So sometimes I get the recording and I listen to it all the way through before hanging up. His voice is seared into my brain.My dad didn't want to me to go into the Air Force, but he saw me off at the airport as I left to San Antonio for basic training anyways. Every re-enlistment he told me to get out and come home. He waited in Rhode Island for me to come home. We talked every weekend for 18 years. Sometimes, even more. Each time he told me that he loved me. I could write a book about this man and how he defined me as a man, husband, and father.I was coming back from Saudi Arabia in 2002 and during that flight back there had been a plane crash around Germany. My dad thought that I might have been on that and by the time I got home and checked voice mail, he had left this emotional message. He thought I was dead, but hoped that I was alive. I immediately called him and the relief could have been felt for miles it seemed. He was my BFF.I tell my kids every day, every phone call, and every chance that I love them. It's not just words, it's how I feel. I want to know that no matter the circumstances, that I love them unconditionally and my father was the greatest man that ever lived.I haven't been home in almost 4 years now. One day I am going to have to face his ashes, but not today.