Welcome to the never ending Road Well-Travelled!

Gypsies of the Americas

 Gypsy Queries & Oral Tradition  

Welcome to the never-ending road well-travelled! Latcho Drom! (Safe Journey)  Roma, or Gypsies,  were in the Americas along with the very earliest settlers, and have retained their traditions for a millennium.  There are written records of the Portuguese "dumping" Gypsies in South America, and legends of them doing the same at what is now Port Royal, SC, long before the English came. Gypsies originated in India, migrating to, and through, Europe in the Middle Ages.  We here provide a gathering place of Gypsies in all of  the Americas, and for those of us with known or suspected blood connections.  We welcome oral tradition!  We welcome submissions from all of the Americas.

Many of us have known or suspected bloodlines from Gypsies (Roma), and Romanichals (who are Roma as well).  Often these are stated within our families as being (American) "Indian," probably because these are thought more "acceptable."  Mostly because of past persecutions, which still occur, despite that fact that they are nearly everywhere, Roma prefer to remain anonymous and unrecognized, except to each other. They are your unsuspected neighbors.  They are an unknown proud minority. These circumstances make it difficult for those with bloodlines to obtain information on their elusive ancestors.  I shall try to keep this web site useful for Roma and non-Roma with known or suspected bloodlines.

Roma, or Gypsies as they are often called by non-Roma, have clear origins in India, early characterized by Europeans with dark skin and black hair.  A thousand years of co-existence in Europe has resulted in some integration and today Roma may be found in all sizes, and with all shades of skin and hair.  The Patrin web site (off site), is based in Europe, and has excellent basic information.

Many Gypsies do not send their children to school, or only for a few years, for fear of losing their culture (Well, can you really blame them? Do we Gadjo actually have any culture anymore in the USA?  Our "culture" seems to be vulgarity and materialism.).  The few who do attend school are sworn to secrecy.  This means that many Gypsies do not write well.  Do not think ill of them for this.   To my knowledge, only the Jews incorporated a strong ecclesiastical education element into their culture.

I reworded these pages as "Roma," which is more correct, but the majority of hits of the pages from search engines were for the words "American Gypsy," so I have changed them back.  Sigh. The Geocities server reports search engine hits with the words used to find the page.  Fear not.  It only tells me how you arrived, nothing else, nor am I interested, except to make these pages more accessible.

WAYFARING STRANGER Linda Griggs' excellent article.
These English have been unmercifully harassed
Contemporary Gypsy & Traveller Lore (a Romanichal perspective)
Zeigler Gypsy record 1835, Barnwell County, SC.  This is one early record!
Barbara (Barbla) Catrina Fazedin, Spanish Gypsy in America, her journey. (an oral tradition)
Gypsy Burials and Cemetery Records The Road That Has No End (off site)
Gypsies in Rockingham Co., VA Gypsy Deportations to America
Gypsy Surnames in the USA   Gypsy Surnames (Google cache page, no longer extant)
A New Book: "The Gypsy American" (available through WalMart on line)
This is "News?" or why Gypsies & Travellers prefer to remain anonymous!
Gypsy Web Sites Latcho Drom, a movie
The Zincali-An Account of the Gypsies of Spain Borrow 1843 (entire book online)
The Ludar (off site) The first Gypsies in North America (off site)
Garai Gypsies
Gypsies in Texas (off site) A Photo Essay (off site)
History and Thought of Western Man, Rich East High School, Park Forest, Illinois (off site)
University of Louisville Gypsies Mini-course Syllabus English 311 (off site)
Early Gypsies in New York (off site) Gypsies in Utah (off site)
We are Roma and not Gypsies (Canada, off site)
The Gypsy Message Board (off site) Gypsy Chat (off site)
Kathy Stephens' web site (off site) The Marginalisation of Gypsies England (off site)
Electric Library Encyclopedia (off site) The Columbia Encyclopedia (off site)
American Gypsy: A stranger in everybody's land (movie)
The Afro/Gypsy Connection (off site) The Gypsies (off site)
Fortune Telling, Matchmaking and Mummery footnotes (off site) some of these are quite old
Gypsies of California (off site)
These English have been harassed! Lamentations of our harassed English kin!
All information on this web site is copyrighted to the original submitter

American Roma Records Home Page

SCGenWeb Home Page

Anyone with information on Gypsies in the Americas, please contact me.

References

Copyright ©2001 Dr. Frank O. Clark.  This document is copyrighted and may not be sold, nor given to anyone who may attempt to derive profit from same.  I have saved all of the links, so please let me know if any are taken off line and I can reproduce them here.