Willie would turn out to be the linchpin of this story. He was born in May of 1905, and we found him in the
1910 census for Georgia, listed as a son of a couple
named Nathan and Emily Head, but we soon began to wonder
if the census was correct. When we compared Ciara's DNA profile to millions of other profiles in publicly available databases, we discovered that she
has multiple matches to people who are related
to her through Willie Head, and through Willie's mother, Emily. But when we tried to
connect her to Nathan Head, we noticed something unusual. Turn the page. - Wow. It says-
- How many matches do you see?
- Zero. Zero. Now I'm gonna explain- What you about to tell me right now? - What it means.
- Okay, let's go. Nathan Head is not your
biological ancestor. That means that Nathan
is not Willie's father. Willie, unbeknownst probably to Willie, had a different father. Oh, wow. Have you ever heard any
family stories about that? Mm-mm. No. We now had a question in front of us. If Nathan Head wasn't
Willie's biological father, then who was? There were no further records to guide us. Our only hope was DNA. Our genetic genealogist, CeCe Moore, noticed that while Ciara
did not have any matches to Nathan Head, she did match a number of individuals who could only be related to her through the man who had
actually fathered Willie. And all of these people
had one thing in common, they were white, leading to an inescapable conclusion. Your biological
great-great-grandfather was white. That's crazy. I think about my grandfather's hair. Oh, yeah? He had "good hair?" As he got older, it got a little more, you know a little more coarse, but I look at some of the
photos that I did get to see from when he was younger with my grandma, and it was fine hair.
- Yep, now you know why. Yeah, that's amazing. It was one thing to know that Willie's father was white, another to actually find his name. But turning back to the DNA databases, CeCe was able to do just that. By building family trees
for each of the matches that she'd found, and connecting one of
them to Ciara's ancestors. So you wanna meet your
great-great-grandfather? Yes. And this is a fact, beyond a doubt. - Turn the page.
- I'm ready. Would you please read the name in the box directly above the name of
your great-grandfather Willie? Walker Lafayette Head. You just met your great-great-grandfather. What's crazy is that they both had the last name Head.
- The surname Head. - Wow.
- But they weren't related. Walker was white, and Nathan and Willie were Black. Wow. Even though Walker and Nathan don't share a biological connection, their lives were intimately intertwined. In the 1870 census, we found
Walker as a five-year-old boy living in the home of his father, a white farmer named Thomas Head. The census also shows a Black
family living on the property, likely working as sharecroppers. They have the same surname
as the white family, and one of them, a six-year-old boy, was called Nathan. So that's Nathan Head, the man everyone believed
was Willie's father. He's listed along with his parents living in the household of
the white farmer Thomas Head. So that means that
Walker and Nathan grew up in the same house together. Wow. And at some point when
both men were about 40, Walker slept with Nathan's wife, and conceived your
great-grandfather Willie. We don't know anything about
the nature of the relationship between Walker and Emily, but as we looked into the circumstances surrounding the birth of their child, we noticed something curious. After growing up together
on the same farm, Walker and Nathan parted ways. By 1900, Nathan and Emily were living in Monroe County, Georgia, while Walker was living
roughly 80 miles away in Butts County. We wondered how Emily
and Walker ever managed to conceive a child, and found our answer in a mortgage deed filed by Nathan Head. It describes crops that he
was planting in Butts County the year that his wife became pregnant. So Ciara, what that
means is that Nathan Head was farming in Butts County, Georgia, in 1904.
- Wow. The same county where
Walker Head was living. So if you could go back in time and say, "Nathan, no, no, no, don't go there." And Nathan said, "I'm going there." He went there and his
wife went somewhere else. And you see the name of the man whose land Nathan was farming? Lands of Whit Torbet. Whit Torbet. So we believe that Whit Torbet was a man named Robert Whit Torbet, and according to the 1900 census, his family owned land that
was in close proximity to the land owned by Walker
Head, your white ancestor. So, Nathan Head is renting
land from this white guy who lives right near Walker Head, who would conceive a
child with Nathan's wife and lead eventually to you. - Wow.
- Is that amazing? That's amazing, that's crazy. So we can only speculate, but what do you imagine the
nature of the relationship? You think it was consensual? Yeah, I do. I'd definitely like to believe there was some connectivity that happened. People fall in love, you can't control it. Desire is colorblind. Oh yeah, I mean, love is love.
