Canadian Family Discovers Jamaican Jewish Roots

Courtesy of Caroline Morgan // Courtesy of David Dossett

Right: David Dossett with his grandfather John B Sampson

Sarah Boesveld in the Feb 17, 2012 edition of the National Post  claimed that David Dossett discovered that his family's roots were black and Jewish.

The title of the article is fairly dramatic: When digging into their past, a family finds out that instead Protestant and Scottish, they are Jamaican and Jewish.

However, this video explains Dossett's background a bit more. A Jamaican genealogist tells Dossett that when a Jewish man married a non-Jewish woman in Jamaica it was common for the family to be raised in the religion of the mother -- so by the time of Dossett's great-grandfather the family was no longer Jewish.

Really, all the article seems to be saying is that one of Dossett's great-great-grandfathers was Jewish and that one of his great-grandfathers was half black but passed as white once he moved to Canada.

It's an interesting discovery to make about one's own family but considering the fact that we all have 8 great-grandparents and 16 great-great grandparents, it's not so significant to outsiders.

Dossett adds in the comments to the Post article. They have been included below. But first, here is the article from the National Post:

About 20 years ago, David Dossett watched his grandfather politely shut down a woman who called to say she was a relative and that their family had come to Canada from Jamaica and that they were black. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Mr. Dossett said to his granddad, businessman John B. Sampson, who seemed amused by this idea. 



Their family — Mr. Dossett’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side — had come to Canada from Scotland in 1907 and settled in Toronto. 


No one disputed that. But while doing some casual family tree sleuthing online a few years ago, Mr. Dossett, an IT manager and father of four, stumbled upon a tree that looked a lot like his. 


As it turns out, it belonged to the woman who called his grandfather that day — Jenny Sampson from Illinois. 


And so began Mr. Dossett’s “obsessive” hunt for a family’s past that had remained a secret for over 100 years. 


In the end, he discovered his family is not Protestant and Scottish, but Jamaican and Jewish. 


Not everyone is pleased about the discovery — much of which was broadcast last week on an episode of The Generations Project on Brigham Young University TV. 


Mr. Dossett spoke with the Post’s Sarah Boesveld from his hometown of Kingston, Ont.:



Q Jenny Sampson had been doing research independently before you began to question your family’s roots and identity. What had she found?


A When I was looking at her family tree, it was describing my family, it was describing me. And the tree said the family was Jewish, that they lived on an estate in Jamaica called Gaza. The name “Gaza” sounds very Jewish, so I’m thinking “Wow.” I contacted the person whose name was on the website — it ended up being her husband — and Jenny emailed back, explained the whole thing — that her family had come to Toronto in 1907, that they came as mulatto Hebrews. When it really sank into me that this was true I started thinking “What are the odds that my family is from Jamaica?” The odds turned out to be pretty good.


Q Jenny also told you there might’ve been a child left behind in Jamaica by your family.


A That played a huge part in my obsession — how could a family that you belonged to be that callous? To think that they left someone behind because she was black, that tortured me for a long time. There had turned out to be three girls born in Jamaica and of course three died [of natural causes]. It was a relief to know they weren’t left behind intentionally — the death rate for infants was really high in Jamaica at the time.

Q You’re a white man, fair haired. Was there any hint at all that your relatives were black Jamaicans?

A You wouldn’t know that we’re Jamaican, but things started to make sense in recent months. My grandfather, a wealthy insurance and real estate businessman, always had olive skin, always wore pinstripe suits and never jeans. And he’d always go down to Florida, where he’d spend much of his time indoors, never took his hat off. My wife and I went to visit him down there in 1985 when my son was small and so we got a close-up look at his routine. I remember when I visited him many years before that, if he came to the beach he wasn’t there for very long. My mother always used to say his skin was so dark because he went to Florida.

Courtesty David Dossett

David Dossett

Q Why do you think your family kept their heritage a secret even years after they immigrated?


A Deep down inside I think people [in my family] are concerned about having Jewish or black heritage. My mother’s cousin was concerned her father, my great-uncle the decorated war hero [and top-ranked army official] Franklin Augustus Sampson, would be looked down on if it was revealed our family lied about their heritage. But what are they going to do? Yank medals away from people? He’s dead. My grandfather lied about his heritage because he said he was born in Toronto, not Jamaica. A lot of people lied when they enlisted in WWI, lied about their age, lied about their ethnicity. One of my cousins found out many years ago through a blood test that there was either Asian or African blood in her system. When she took the blood test, she went into grandfather’s office, she threw it down on his desk in front of him and said “Explain this.”


Q How did your mother react?


A She doesn’t believe it. She says we’re from Scotland, but doesn’t provide details. She’s going through stages of dementia, but even without that she wouldn’t believe it. Jenny told me her mother is no longer speaking to her. If this had happened maybe 20 years earlier, I could have been a little concerned about it too.


Q Did you feel betrayed at all that your family kept this from you?


A Initially I was, but then I became aware of why this was done. I think what I find most discouraging is the way people were treated when they came to the country, if they weren’t from this white background. We have a past we don’t like to talk about. It’s too bad that Canada wasn’t as open a country as it could have been.


Q What else did you learn about your family?


A There were a lot of things right in front of me that I just didn’t realize. When I looked at ship records, I saw that they came with $500, while many others came with more like $10 or $5. Five hundred dollars was quite a sum back then — the equivalent of a year’s salary. They had moved to Kingston, Jamaica, from I believe the Mandeville area towards the western side of the island just north of Alligator Pond and left after a devastating earthquake there. That money was everything they had. They were industrious, hard-working people with money, and still that wasn’t good enough, they couldn’t be who they were.


Q You say there are likely thousands of other families out there who may actually be of black heritage despite their families’ white complexions.


A In the late 1800s there was a mass exodus of Jews from Jamaica. The perception was that they were becoming too powerful, so laws were passed to limit what they could own and how much they could acquire. I bet there are a lot of people out there that aren’t searching because they just don’t know. Maybe they just assume they’re from Scotland. Other than myself going to Queen’s University, no one in my family has a kilt, I don’t like bagpipes, I don’t eat oatmeal, I don’t like haggis. Nothing about me would indicate I’m Scottish except for my appearance — I have reddish hair because my grandfather married an Irish woman. They were very pale and I burn quite easily.


Q Was it worth digging up your family’s true heritage even though it upset your family?


A Oh yeah. Oh I think so. It has to be told. We have kind of a double standard here. This is a very open, accepting society, but when it comes down to finding this out about your own family, sometimes you find that it’s not always the case. It shows me more than ever this story has to be told because I’m sure we’re not the only family like this. When I found out people were kind of upset about it, it just made me more determined to bring it out. I guess I’m just kind of a contrarian.


National Post
sboesveld@nationalpost.com
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RACIAL PASSING

When David Dossett’s family stepped onto the SS Sampson in 1907 as half-black, Jewish Jamaicans and stepped off of it as white, Protestant Scots, they were far from the only people to “pass” into a new racial identity. “Racial passing,” when a member of a racial group trying to become accepted as a member of a different racial group, happens all the time amongst myriad cultures, says Rosemary Sadlier, president of the Ontario Black History Society.

"There were people from the American south, people born here at the turn of the century who were passing because that was how they could get a job, that was how they could move up,” she said. “There were people passing for white working at Eaton’s when Eaton’s was not hiring black people, there were people passing for white working on the railroad in higher positions because they could pass for white.”
While it still happens today, passing was more common up until the 1940s in North America, before hiring practices and laws were first updated to battle racial discrimination.

Canada’s first black doctor, Anderson Ruffin Abbott, is among one of our nation’s most notable “passers.” His great-grandaughter, Catherine Slaney, only found out he was black in 1975 when sociologist Daniel Hill — an Ontario ombudsman and father of singer Dan Hill and author Lawrence Hill — went to interview her uncle about the family’s past for his book The Freedom Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada.

“Those passing as white [in Canada] were not from the Caribbean but descendants of blacks who had immigrated to Canada during the Civil War and after that,” said Ms. Slaney, author of Family Secrets: Crossing the Colour Line. While there was no segregation law in Canada, discrimination was still rampant and those who passed along colour lines often felt unrooted, Ms. Slaney said — they didn’t share the Caribbean culture of black immigrants and so they often joined white mainstream society.

In the U.S., children and descendants of black slaves often passed, more notably Thomas Jefferson’s child Eston Hemmings, whom the U.S. president fathered with half-black slave descendant Sally Hemmings, who reinvented himself as a white man, Eston H. Jefferson.

During World War II, blond and blue-eyed European Jews who could pass as Aryans would do so in order to avoid being killed or shipped off to concentration camps.
And then there are examples of white people who passed as a racial minority. Grey Owl, the native environmentalist, was actually a white British man named Archibald Belaney.
National Post

Note: There is a great deal of controversy about Thomas Jefferson's alleged relationship with Sally Hemmings

From: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/17/when-digging-into-their-past-a-family-finds-out-that-instead-protestant-and-scottish-they-are-jamaican-and-jewish/

David Dossett writes in the Comments to this article in the National Post.


As I discovered, the family was Jewish by race, not by religion. They came from a long line of Jamaican Jews. All of the family except the mother were identified as "Hebrew" on the ship manifest of the SS Admiral Sampson that left Port Morant August 28 1907. Alice, the mother, my great-grandmother, was a Methodist. There was confusion because initially I believed that Hebrew referred to their religion, but it was their race. Most certainly the family was at one time Jewish, by faith, but it may have been one or two generations up. But you can see the strong Jewish heritage, especially as you climb higher up the family tree into the past.Not very far though.  My great-great grandfather was Charles Abraham Sampson (1829-1898). His siblings and half-siblings had names like Horatio Sampson, Jacob Sampson, Aaron Sampson, Solomon Sampson. Charles' father was Isaac Sampson. Isaac's siblings were Aaron, Abraham and Solomon Sampson. Their father was Jacob Sampson (1790-?). There is an old abandoned Jewish Sampson Cemetery dedicated to Aaron Sampson by his wife Rebecca, at Gaza at Rowes Corner near Alligator Pond in the Village of Watson's Hill. Many of my relatives are buried there, and it is, without a doubt, a Jewish burial place. .You can see what it looks like here http://vimeo.com/16841280