As part of a Reuters-sponsored series entitled "Slavery's Descendants," Legacy Family Tree Webinars is making available at no charge a variety of online genealogy webinars.

About 15 webinars from Legacy Family Tree's extensive library will be offered for free each month through this link: familytreewebinars.com/reuters/. A rotating roster of 15 different webinars will be accessible through the end of 2023.

The webinars range from introductions to genealogy for novices to courses exploring African American genealogy. Only live webinars will require registration.

In the first installment of the series, a Reuters journalist reported on a study showing more than 100 U.S. leaders--lawmakers, presidents, governors and justices--have slaveholding ancestors, often called America's "original sin." 

I can identify. In early 2022, while researching probate records of my 5x great-grandfather and a Revolutionary War Patriot, Henry Stahl, I found his estate inventory which listed "1 negro woman and child." In his 80s when he died (intestate) in 1790, Henry was a prosperous widower living in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. The finding was a shock, especially when I found no record the enslaved woman and her child had been manumitted at his death. They were nameless, and I've often wondered what happened to them.

It was heartbreaking (and guilt-inducing) to learn my well-to-do German/Swiss immigrant ancestor could deny the freedom of this woman and child after supporting the cause of American freedom.

You can read the first Reuters article here.