Charles Holman, an African-American attorney, had been meticulously researching his family tree for over fifty years when he discovered a surprising piece of information that connected him to the Bush presidential family.
Throughout his life, Holman, 66, collected stories, birth and death certificates, Census Bureau records and DNA matches.
During his legal training, he developed a thoroughness and talent for connecting with strangers through letters, emails, and personal meetings.
Little by little, he was able to make contact with distant relatives, both black and white, and thus a family history emerged that reflected America’s complex and fraught racial past.
Charles Holman, who has spent five decades researching his family tree, discovers that his relatives were enslaved by Bushes’ ancestors on a Kentucky plantation
A Kentucky newspaper article linked Bush’s ancestry to enslaved members of the Thomas family, Holman’s ancestors. Former Presidents George H. W. Bush, right, and George W. Bush, left, are pictured together in 2009
During his research, Holman visited a gathering of white relatives who shared his last name and whose ancestors had enslaved his own.
He visited three plantations where his ancestors had worked without pay, standing in the small, cramped spaces where they likely lived, hoping to sense their presence.
These discoveries changed Holman’s view of himself, his family, and their place in American history.
A few years ago, Holman made a major discovery in his study in Maryland. He found an article in a Kentucky newspaper from 1992 about a family that included one U.S. president and would soon have another.
The article, headlined “President George Bush has Kentucky ties,” traced the ancestry of then-President George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush to ancestors that predate the American Revolution.
Holman knew the names of Bush’s great-grandmother and her parents and was able to match them to deeds and estate records he had previously discovered.
Moses Clark, Holman’s mother’s grandfather
Charles Holman is seen with his family members and President Bush’s cousin Kurt
This connection added a remarkable new dimension to his extensive family research.
“It was the coming together of things I’ve been looking for for years,” Holman told the Washington Post.
The newspaper article explained how George Herbert Walker Bush’s ancestors moved from Virginia to Kentucky in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
The president’s direct ancestors included 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, known to be Bush’s ancestors, were slaves owned by the Thomas family, Holman’s ancestors.
The article was a breakthrough in reconstructing his family tree.
“It was one of the greatest moments of my life,” Holman told The mail.
George HW Bush’s great-great-grandfather was involved in at least eleven transatlantic slave voyages from West Africa.
Although slavery was abolished in the United States after the Confederacy’s defeat in the Civil War in 1865, the transatlantic trade in African slaves continued
Last year, Reuters investigated the ties between slave owners and the American political elite.
Former President George W. Bush’s chief of staff acknowledged the findings indicating the Foree family owned 25 slaves.
“A great nation does not hide its history; it faces its shortcomings and corrects them,” Bush said at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“We cannot move closer to our founding promise of equal opportunity without remembering the founding sin of slavery. That troubling past inspires us to move further and faster on the journey toward a brighter future of freedom and justice for all.”
Genealogical research like Holman’s is a popular pursuit for many Americans, but for descendants of enslaved people it is often a challenge due to limited records, often consisting only of first names recorded in property registers.
The fact that Holman was able to draw a direct line between the Bush family and his own ancestors is astonishing.
“I find it amazing that he was able to put this together,” said forensic genealogist Katharine O’Connell.
Holman revealed that he has since written letters to George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Laura Bush and her daughter Jenna Bush Hager, who is a television host on Today, but has yet to receive a response.
Despite the lack of response from the Bush family, Holman says he is encouraged by the old stories he has heard that have been passed down for generations.
One of the stories involves Robert Anderson Thomas, Holman’s great-grandfather, who saw cherry pies on the windowsill for the slave owner’s wife when he was overcome by temptation.
“Robert Anderson Thomas, my great-great-grandfather, saw the pies, could smell them, but knew he would never taste them. They were pies for George Bush’s ancestor, but he was a kid and he couldn’t resist them,” Holman explained.
He came up with the idea that if he could poke a straw into the cake, he could suck out the juice and enjoy the taste of the cake, which he did without anyone noticing.
“Later, when his mother served pies to George Bush’s ancestors, the slave owner’s wife remarked that they were the driest cherry pies she had ever eaten. And he found it so funny that decades later, long after he had escaped and slavery was long over, he told the story to my grandmother.”