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Hello,
I’ve been searching for an ancestor of mine for a while though to be honest it was always in the too hard basket.
I’m not asking people here to look things up for me as i basically have nothing much to go on.
Due to the fact indigenous people in Australia didn’t have official records everything i know has been passed on through word of mouth.
I was always told i had African heritage, something i always believed but of course had no proof. The family tree that got passed around from about 40 years ago had three men listed in different branches saying “American whaler” or “American sealer”. Some (though not directly linked to me say “American Indian” or “Mexican Indian”).
One particular ancestor for me said “American Negro or “West African”.
My sisters and I have searched with the name we were given and haven’t come up with anyone who this man could be, until i found an American whaler with a similar name (probably pronounced the same but different spelling) being in the right area at the right time. We can’t seem to find anything on that man to rule him out. We’ve searched crew lists from New Bedford and New London etc and although there’s similar names none of them are the two names we’ve been told or that i found on the whaler’s index.
My dna matches connected with several people in the US, and one of them replied to my message saying it does look like we’re related 5 - 6 generations back which fits for this ancestor. They haven’t replied to my last message so i guess i won’t be getting help from that angle.
Since would have been born around 1820, and on a ship in 1840s with his daughter born in Western Australia about 1850, and because of slavery i’m guessing there probably weren’t records for him anyway, or for his parents.
I don’t know where else to look for information. If anyone can suggest where else to search that would be great but i’m wondering if, in your experienced opinions, yous think i should just let this one go. I guess i would like to know what his name was, and where he originated from in the US.  maybe i should just be content with the dna test showing the word of mouth stories were true.

Hey everyone,
I haven’t been researching my family for  while because i kept hitting roadblocks.
Recently there was a discussion about my great grandmother’s biological father. Her mother was Aboriginal and her father was possibly one of 3 men. My uncle told me he was sure her father was a Chinese man because she was always teased about having an Asian look.
I thought, knowing it was a long shot, if Asian appeared on my DNA results it would hopefully give us an answer.
It didn’t appear on my results. So never mind, mystery not solved there.

A couple of other things did come up though that i would like some opinions on.

Previously it had been suggested that my 3xGgrandfather was Romani based on a couple of things on his convict record when he was transported to Australia. There was nothing definitive though. But now South Asian has appeared on my DNA test. I wasn’t looking for this answer when i did the test but now we’re thinking he probably was Romani (and i’d be thrilled if this was the case).

The main thing i would like some opinions on, though, is due to the fact there’s no DNA test for Aboriginal people, the best they can do for the ethnicity estimate is list a neighbouring group. In my case, this is Melanesian. I was expecting Melanesian to come up as a result knowing they would actually mean Aboriginal. However, my result said Papuan and Melanesian. Papuans are Melanesian so i’m wondering why it would list them both separately. Papuan showed as a higher percentage than Melanesian. To me this doesn’t make sense as i’d have thought Melanesian would be higher and Papuan as a more specific Melanesian group.
Does anyone have any idea why these two would list separately and why Papuan would have a higher percentage than Melanesian?

Or perhaps it doesn’t really matter because my Papuan/Melanesian result is really Aboriginal. I doubt that i have any Papuan ancestry due to the fact my Aboriginal family are from the South West of the Australian continent and Papua is to the North West of the continent, unless it’s from thousands of years ago when New Guinea island was still part of the Australian mainland, but it’s still a long way to travel. Of course, it’s possible but not likely.