Slave Owners’ Family Members Found by Black Genealogist Were Sold by the Jesuits

The monthly Genealogical Forum of Oregon’s African American Special Interest Group will be Saturday, Nov.19, from noon to 2 p.m. The presenter will be Patricia Bayonne-Johnson, who has discovered her ancestors who were enslaved and then sold by the Jesuits of Georgetown. The public is invited to attend via Zoom.

Register for the meeting here.

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Jesuit Enslaved Ancestors

After retiring, Patricia Bayonne-Johnson took a genealogy course and began researching her family in earnest, starting with the Bayonne family and then the Hicks/Estes family.  In 2004, as the Hicks/Estes family was planning a reunion, she learned of her Butler family members who were enslaved by the Jesuits of the Maryland Province. Bayonne-Johnson descends from six people who were enslaved by the Jesuits.  In 2011, she began writing her blog, African Roots, and included posts about the Butlers.  Her blog was discovered by Richard Cellini in November 2015.  Cellini is founder of the independent research institute that helped locate, identify and trace direct descendants of 314 enslaved people sold in 1838 to fund Georgetown University.

Patricia Bayonne-Johnson, a native of New Orleans, is the family historian for her maternal and paternal sides of her family.  She has traced her family's roots back to enslavement and the last enslavers of most of her lineages.  She graduated from Southern University, New Orleans, with a BS degree in Biology.  Bayonne-Johnson is a past vice-president and lifetime member of the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California.  She was the president of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society from January 2016 to January 2019.  Bayonne-Johnson is a board member of the GU272 Descendants Association.  She is also a member of the National Genealogical Society, Louisiana Genealogical and Historical Society, Le Comite des Archives de la Louisiane, and a volunteer in the Genealogy section of the Spokane Public Library.