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.

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.