Documenting a Slave’s Birth, Parentage, and Origins (Marie Thérèse Coincoin, 1742–1816): A Test of “Oral History” By Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG, FNGS To prove identity, researchers prefer an original document in which someone with primary knowledge and sound memory makes an unbiased, direct, factual statement. Such documents are rare, however. Asserting identity requires fi nding and reassembling pieces of a life, fi tting them into a nuclear-family puzzle, and testing it against an extended family and a still larger community puzzle. This progressive expansion from one fragment of a person to a panorama embracing families and crossing community, national, and generational bounds is the essence of genealogical research. ocumenting ages, birthplaces, and identities for American colonials can be challenging, and fi nding adequate evidence for slaves even Dmore so. The problem can grow exponentially when a colonial slave is a local legend commemorated in the popular press by writers who did not fully investigate their stories—and by scholars who trusted oral accounts. When that slave is also credited with creating a National Historic Landmark and other structures in the Historic American Buildings Survey, separating myth from reality is essential.1 © Elizabeth Shown Mills (
[email protected]) of the Samford University Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research is a past president of both the American Society of Genealogists and the Board for Certifi cation of Genealogists, as well as a former long-time editor of the NGS Quarterly. Her 2004 historical novel Isle of Canes, which follows Coincoin’s family for four generations, is based on three decades of research by Mills in the archives of six nations.