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Hello guys, I'm new to genealogy and struggling to track down the origins of my family and my people, the Qarsherskiyan community, a group of multigenerational mixed-race families from the Eastern part of the US. We are similar to Melungeons, and so, for obvious reasons, a lot of our family history and records were destroyed or altered or kept hidden for our own good. Now it's making it a real headache for me to learn what I seek to know.

I got a tip from a relative but idk what I'm doing, still new to this, but apparently some of my ancestors 6 generations back were Romani people in the USA, and their descendants in Newport News, Virginia and other areas on the Virginia Peninsula and all over Hampton Roads and the whole Tidewaters Region have intermarried with people of various races and ethnicities, and this is likely where my descendants came from. Does anyone know where to find information on individual Romanis or Romani families in the area during this time? It would be much appreciated.

Hello everyone, I am new to this website and new to genealogy and I'm excited to learn and begin unlocking the secrets of my family history. I belong to a small group of multigenerational mixed-race families from the Eastern USA called the Qarsherskiyans. I've been doing genealogy to try to find the oldest known relatives I have from each racial group I descend from. I've tracked my White ancestors all the way back to Wales and was surprised to learn I may have royal connections way back in my bloodline, but I guess if you go back far enough nearly everyone does. Like many from the Qarsherskiyan community, I learned my Black ancestors were brought on slave ships from West Africa (in my case, Northern Nigeria from the Sokoto Caliphate area) and from Madagascar. I've descended from the Great Dismal Swamp maroons and some of the first Malagasy people in Virginia, and apparently some of my Malagasy ancestors looked Black. I've been diving a bit now into my Romani and Iberian Jewish ancestry, as well as my Native American ancestry. Here I'm kind of stuck.

You see, my Great Great grandfather was Love Tolliver, said to be half French and half Native American, from the Lakota Sioux people. That's all I know about him, from my grandma. I can't get any more information from her, as she was adopted and doesn't know much about her biological family, sadly. I can't find him online and I don't know if he was Louisiana Creole, Cajun, French Canadian, of actual mainland France French stick, or what. For my other ancestors I've looked at so far, it was easy because one of my cousins has already been building a family tree, but we can't find much on Love Tolliver. From my maternal DNA I've inherited some DNA from Great Plains and Eastern Woodland Tribes of Native Americans but it is only a tiny bit, my "full-blooded" Native American ancestor must have been pretty far back, maybe 5 to 7 generations. Does anyone know how I should get information on him?