Courtesy of William Holland

Cameroonians marvel over an 18th-century slave shackle that was brought to Africa for a "history lesson" by African-American businessman William Holland, at far left.

Decades after they were taken away, African ceremonial masks have been returned to the communities that venerated them, thanks to an African-American family researcher who bought them through eBay.

Georgia businessman William Holland, who has been tracing his roots in West Africa for more than a decade, carried the three masks back with him last month during his latest trek to Cameroon. That's not all he was carrying: Holland also brought relics from the mid-18th century — the time when his ancestor was taken from Cameroon, loaded onto a ship, brought to Virginia and sold into slavery.

The masks made a big impression on the hundreds of Cameroonians who gathered for Holland's show-and-tell session. But the slave chains made an even bigger impression.

"When we brought the shackles out, that's when they were about to cry," he said. "They were shocked to see an authentic item that brought so much pain along with it."

Holland's frequent trips to Cameroon's Oku and Nso regions have been a learning experience for him as well as for his long-lost cousins. It took years for Holland to narrow down his approximate place of origin, based on DNA tests as well as a study of American and African pedigrees. Along the way, Holland found out that one of his ancestors was a slave who was pressed into service in the Confederate Army, and that more distant ancestors were members of royal families in Cameroon.

During the buildup to his latest trip, Holland combed through online auction sales, looking for artifacts that could help bridge the gap between the African and American history of his family. He worked with Cameroonian contacts to identify two elephant masks that were associated with the Nso people's secret rituals, plus a wooden mask with a human visage that was used by Oku families during funerals.

The masks were sold out of Africa in the 1970s or 1980s under murky circumstances, and eventually ended up in private hands. "It's almost the same thing as the slave trade," Holland observed. "Outsiders go to a middleman and ask them to get something or someone for them. 'I'm giving you guns, I'm giving you cowrie shells, I'm giving you iron bars. Bring me the people to fill this ship, and I'll give you this.' That's what it reminded me of."

Holland spent hundreds of dollars of his own money to buy the masks, as well as other items such as throwing knives, the wrist and ankle shackles and a "monkey wrench quilt" — a type of quilt that slaves used to signal each other that it was time to wrap up their tools and get ready for an escape. Then he headed for the Cameroonian towns of Kumbo, Bamenda and Oku.

Courtesy of William Holland

The Fon of Nso, leader of one of Cameroon's tribal groups, looks on as his aides examine a Cameroonian throwing knife that was purchased on eBay. Some of the aides are looking at a photo of a statue of Ngonnso that was taken from Cameroon to Berlin before 1910. Cameroonian authorities are seeking the statue's return.

Courtesy of William Holland

William Holland, left, gets his picture taken with Cameroonian Prime Minister Philemon Yunji Yang and Emmanuel Motika, a physics teacher from the Cameroonian town of Bamenda who is an extremely distant relative of Holland.

"It's more than just bringing things back," he explained. "It's a history lesson about those who were taken away during the slave trade. The Cameroonians didn't receive this information in school."

Holland's trip caused a sensation in Cameroon: More than 1,000 townspeople turned out to see the American who was bringing their treasures back. In Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, Holland met the prime minister. Journalists clamored for interviews. "It was crazy," Holland said. "It was a media circus."

The chiefs of the Nso and Oku peoples, who are known as "fons," joined up to give Holland a title that combines two honored names: "Shufaay," a title that is typically given to the Nso noble next in line to the king; and "Bailack," which recognizes Holland's connection to a patriarch who came to Oku from Nso centuries ago. "No Nso son or daughter is allowed to shake hands with a Shufaay again, if they are not of the same status," Holland said. "This goes back to the ancient way of doing things." 

All the attention was great — but for Holland, the most important result of the trip was the restoration of pieces of African history to their rightful places. Authorities in Kumbo are building a cultural museum that will eventually house the elephant masks and other Nso artifacts. And family members in the Oku region now have the funerary mask they were missing when their loved ones passed away.

The Fon of Oku drew a lesson from Holland's round of eBay diplomacy — a lesson that's particularly timely for the month of February, recognized in the United States as Black History Month. "He was telling people not to sell these precious things from our society," Holland recalled. "This is wrong. No matter how much money they offer, do not sell."

Holland is already planning his next trip, to the Cameroonian city of Buea in May. He'll be taking over some new history lessons to his ancestral homeland, but he's also hoping to bring back some business: Holland is planning to start up a travel business to put other African-Americans in touch with their roots, and the Africa Travel Association's annual congress in Buea seems like the perfect place for networking.

"I guess you'd call it 'historical tourism,'" Holland said. "Cameroon is really an untapped market for that."

Previous chapters in the African saga:

• 2010: DNA points to royal roots in Africa
• 2011: Family roots get tangled up in Africa
• 2011: Black history saga comes full circle
• 2011: Africans visit their American cousins
• 2011: Genes tell a tale as big as Africa 
• 2012: African-American's roots revised
• 2012: Tribal treasures recovered through eBay
• African American news from theGrio 

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Christine Cox / NBC News file

Researchers say genetic genealogy databases can be leveraged to unlock more sensitive genetic information.

Researchers have shown that it's possible to link your identity to supposedly secret genetic information about your predisposition to diseases, merely by analyzing family-tree databases and other publicly available information.

"It was quite surprising," said Yaniv Erlich, a genetic researcher at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. "When we got the first family, I was surprised. ... It's as if you opened a box that for a long time was locked."

Erlich led the research team whose work is being published in this week's issue of the journal Science. The team's study already has led to a tightening of security measures for federally sponsored genetic databases.

The security-cracking trick relies on the availability of genetic information linked to surnames in a variety of public family-tree databases. DNA samples from males can be tested to look at dozens of genetic markers on the Y-chromosome that change only rarely from generation to generation. If the markers from two individuals with the same surname are a close match, that's a tip-off that the two are closely related, even if they don't know each other.

Tens of thousands of people (including yours truly) make that information public in hopes that someone else will match up with their results. The genealogical markers aren't linked to disease or other specific traits. But under the right circumstances, they could provide an opening for links with other, more sensitive genetic information.

How the secrets were revealed
Erlich and his colleagues conducted a three-step process to see how easy it'd be to use that opening. First, they analyzed anonymous Y-chromosome data from a public database for the 1000 Genomes Project, to come up with the DNA coding for markers that are used for genealogical purposes. Then they compared those markers against entries in the two largest family-tree databases, Ysearch and the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation.

The researchers said their analysis projected a success rate of 12 percent for recovering the surnames of U.S. Caucasian males. Another 5 percent would theoretically be linked up with the wrong surnames. They said upper- to middle-class Caucasian males were easier to identify, presumably because they're more likely to participate in the family-tree databases.

Once the surnames were identified, the third step was to look at other publicly available sources to go from the surname to a specific individual: Some genetic databases, for example, include information about the age and the state of residence of an anonymous participant, and even the number of children and their birth order. Those clues were added to information gleaned from other sources, ranging from public-record search engines to obituaries.

The researchers linked five specific individuals in three separate families with supposedly anonymous genetic records. The process took three to seven hours for each family pedigree, the scientists said. Then they traced those three family-tree pedigrees to find other connections between relatives and sensitive genetic data. "In total, surname inference breached the privacy of nearly 50 individuals from these three pedigrees," the researchers wrote.

"We show that if, for example, your Uncle Dave submitted his DNA to a genetic genealogy database, you could be identified," Melissa Gymrek, a member of the Erlich Lab and the Science paper's principal author, explained in a news release. "In fact, even your fourth cousin Patrick, whom you've never met, could identify you if his DNA is in the database, as long as he's paternally related to you."

What is to be done with data?
Erlich and his colleagues made a point not to reveal the identities of those individuals, and said they were not advocating a clampdown on the availability of genetic information.

"Quite the opposite," Erlich said. "We found the gene for two devastating pediatric disorders by analyzing the data in public databases. Using these databases, we gave hope to these families and to other parents. We don't want to take away these databases. ... What we really want to do here is to have this really mature conversation about privacy — to tell people we cannot completely protect the privacy, but also to tell them about the benefits."

For years, experts have worried that sensitive genetic data could be used to discriminate against patients, potential employees or would-be insurance customers. Such discrimination is illegal when it comes to employment or health insurance, but the law doesn't cover life insurance, disability insurance or long-term care insurance. Theoretically, an insurer could search through genetic records and turn you down because you have a genetic predisposition to, say, Alzheimer's disease. 

In a Science policy paper, representatives of the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health said it was time to "re-examine how to balance the protection of research participants ... with the societal benefits likely to be gained through the enhanced research that broad data sharing facilitates."

They said NIH "acted swiftly to mitigate future risks" by working with the NIGMS' genetic repository to shift the data about the age of study participants out of public view and into a controlled-access area of the database.

"That reduces the risk," Erlich said. "It creates another fence."

And what about the genealogical genetic data? Max Blankfeld, vice president for operations and marketing at Family Tree DNA, said his company has been dealing with privacy issues for more than a decade — and doesn't expect the latest research to lead to policy changes. Family Tree DNA has been running the Ysearch database as a free public resource for a decade, but does not force any of its more than 400,000 participants to use it.

"People voluntarily post their information in that database, and therefore it has nothing really to do with the vast majority of the people who take the test and choose to have it protected by Family Tree DNA," Blankfeld said. "This data, we don't share with anyone."

More about genetic ancestry:

• DNA takes on a family's mysteries
• Update on Irish roots: The wearin' o' the genes
• Gene-tracing project gets an upgrade

In addition to Erlich and Gymrek, the authors of "Identifying Personal Genomes by Surname Inference" include Amy McGuire, David Golan and Eran Halperin. The work was supported by the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at Tel Aviv University, and a gift from James and Cathleen Stone.

The authors of the Science policy paper, "The Complexities of Genomic Identifiability," include Laura Rodriguez, Lisa Brooks and Erick Green of NHGRI and Judith Greenberg of NIGMS.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor, and also the administrator of the Boyle Surname Project at Family Tree DNA.

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Nexdim Empire

Atlanta-based family researcher William Holland sits alongside one of the Oku elders, Samuel Nshiom "Pa" Wambeng, during a visit to Cameroon in March. Wambeng passed away weeks after this picture was taken.

If you're an African-American, tracing your roots back to the ancestral continent is hard enough — but tracing them back to the ancestral family? That requires genetic testing, plus family-history scholarship, plus trips to Africa, plus a little bit of faith. William Holland has filled all of those requirements, and to celebrate, he's planning a cross-continental family reunion for Memorial Day weekend in Virginia, where his ancestors were once held as slaves.

"Memorial Day is a time for remembering the loved ones you lost, right?" Holland said. "So it's a good time to remember all those generations that were lost."

It's taken more than a decade for the 43-year-old Atlanta genealogist to fill in the story of those lost generations — a story that leads back to Cameroon, and then even further back to present-day Syria. The historical record is so fragmentary, and the genetic analysis is so imprecise, that Holland couldn't possibly achieve iron-clad scientific certainty about the precise family relationships. But the story that Holland has pieced together is consistent with the genetic tests as well as with the tales told by families in Africa and America. And just as importantly, the story finally feels right.

"What makes this more conclusive is that they had an authentic story that many people could verify," Holland said.

Holland's initial investigative work took him back to the Civil War era in Virginia, where he found that his great-grandfather, Creed Holland, was a slave who was put to work as a wagon driver for the Confederate Army. That led Holland and his brothers to sign up for membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans — which was a controversial move at the time.

But Holland didn't stop there: He wanted to know how it was that Creed's ancestors became slaves in the first place. So he took advantage of a trend that was just getting started back then: genetic testing for the purpose of finding family connections. After a couple of false starts, Holland found enough matches to justify focusing in on a region of Cameroon in West Africa.

When I first started writing about Holland's quest, two years ago, he was following up on connections to royalty in northwest Cameroon's Mankon tribe. Holland visited the tribal leader, or Fon, in the regional capital of Bamenda — and received an African name (Ndefru) from the Fon of Mankon himself during a ceremony. Holland reciprocated the next year by inviting the royal family to a gathering in Franklin County, Va. The idea was to bring together the descendants of slaves and their African relations, and even the descendants of slaveowners. But something about the event felt wrong.

"The rest of the Mankon family really resisted the fact that they were coming over," Holland recalled. "That told me that 'this is not your family, because they should be happy, they should be welcoming you.'"

During follow-up trips to Africa, Holland learned more about the reason for the Mankon tribe's reluctance: Their ancestors were among several ethnic groups in that region of Cameroon who played a murky role in the slave trade of the 18th century. "Mankon didn't trade in their own people, but they were the middlemen for people [from other tribes] going down the coast," Holland said. "The Europeans would come to the coast and provide them with whiskey and guns to make people fight."

Some of this information came from the leaders of a different group, the Oku, who live in a region of Cameroon about 20 miles northeast of Bamenda. After visiting the region, hearing the tales of the elders and double-checking the genetic results, Holland feels confident that he now has the right story.

"You felt the sense of coming back," Holland told me. "You felt the welcoming that you should have gotten. They were running down the hill to come and meet us. That's how it was."

One of the Oku elders, Sam "Pa" Wambeng, told Holland that the Oku and other groups trace their heritage back to 7th-century Syria. When Islam took hold in the region, those groups made their way through the Middle East and Africa, eventually settling in Cameroon. In addition to the Oku, the settlers included the Mboum, Nso and Foumban peoples. 

Wambeng and other elders said there was a widely respected member of the Oku tribe named Bailack who lived in the 1700s. Bailack had several wives and scores of sons, but many of them were abducted and passed on to the European slavers during the reign of a ruthless fon named Ney.

"They say 70 individuals were taken directly from the family," Holland told me. "They would have been the children of Bailack. Two or three escaped, and that's how they continued with the family. The family has spread to more than eight villages in Oku, despite the number captured as slaves in the reign of Ney."

The time frame for that abduction, in the 1770s, matched up with the time frame for the voyage of Holland's great-great-great-great-grandfather to Virginia, where he was sold as a slave. And the rest is American history.

Courtesy of William Holland

Residents of an Oku village turn out to welcome William Holland during his visit to Cameroon.

Courtesy of William Holland

William Holland (at right) and his brother Marvin flank the Fon of Oku during a visit in March.

Courtesy of William Holland

The house of an Oku patriarch named Bailack was built in the 1700s and is still standing in a Cameroonian village.

Do the genetics support Holland's status as Bailack's great-great-great-great-great-grandson? The evidence isn't indisputable. Thirty-one of the 36 genetic markers on the test that Holland took match up with the results from the Cameroonian clan. Genetic genealogy is a matter of probabilities, and the more markers two people have in common, the more likely it is that they're closely related. Thirty-one out of 36 is not super-close, but close enough for Holland to feel as if he's on the right track.

"The results from different family lines show that there were strong mutations that occurred in the 1600s and the 1700s. Given the amount of time from 1772 to this generation, it fits in a time frame where you can have those mutations occur," Holland told me. "I'm no geneticist by any means, but it sounds logical that could happen."

It's logical enough that Holland has scheduled another gathering, this time with members of the extended Oku clan as the special guests. It's due to take place around 1 p.m. ET on May 27, at the Franklin County Recreational Park near Rocky Mount, Va. Holland hopes that some of his long-lost relatives will be in attendance — but one of the dearest friends he made in Cameroon won't be there. Pa Wambeng, the elder who told the story that Holland has now made his own, passed away just a few weeks ago.

"I'm very honored to have gotten there and met him," Holland said, "because if we put off our trip, it would have been too late."

Previous chapters in the African saga:

• Sept. 8, 2010: DNA points to royal roots in Africa
• Feb. 1, 2011: Family roots get tangled up in Africa
• Feb. 28, 2011: Black history saga comes full circle
• July 3, 2011: Africans visit their American cousins
• Nov. 4, 2011: Genes tell a tale as big as Africa 
• African American news from theGrio 

Holland says the Memorial Day weekend reunion will serve as a memorial for "all the ancestors who traveled this path that affected our family line," including Pa Wambeng as well as Grace Ngum Tamufor, the recently deceased daughter of the previous Fon of Oku.

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Courtesy of William Holland

William Holland, a family researcher from Georgia, tours a village in the Oku region of Cameroon.

Over the past year, William Holland's African-American family tale has grown in the telling, thanks to genetic testing and a whole lot of trans-Atlantic travel. The latest twist is a doozy: The Georgia resident has turned his research into a story that goes back to the seventh century.

Holland says he has found links to ancestors who lived in the Cameroonian region of Oku, who were captured by neighboring tribes and taken as slaves in Virginia. His story illustrates how the descendants of slaves can go beyond a painful chapter of American history and find their place in the broader sweep of world history. But the outcome isn't as precise as a paternity test.

"You have to put together the science and the history to make sense of it," he told me after his latest trips to West Africa. "To be honest, this is not an easy thing to do. You have to understand history, you have to understand migration patterns, you also have to understand culture. Most people would say, 'This is too much, because it's too complicated.' I would say this is a master's degree-level task."

Real families, real feelings
And it's not just an academic exercise. We're talking real families here. A year ago, Holland thought the genetic linkages showed a strong tie to royalty in a Cameroonian region known as Mankon. But after additional genetic tests and consultations with historians in Africa — including Samuel N. Wambeng, Nji Oumarou Nchare and Aboubakar Mgbekoum — he has focused on Oku instead. In fact, some of the people living around Mankon just might be the descendants of tribes that were involved in the slave trade.

"In Mankon, there were people who were dealers in trading people," Holland said. "They didn't trade their own people, but they were trading people from outside their community. So now it makes sense that I was not directly related to the palace in Mankon. Did my people come from there? No. Did they pass through there? Yes."

Even though the abduction from Africa happened in the 1770s, that part of the story has sparked bad feelings between Holland and some of the Cameroonians he came to know. "I didn't speak to them for a month," Holland told me. "It's still painful. ... Have you ever had a bad dream about being chained up in the bottom of a ship?"

Solving family mysteries
Unraveling history can leave scars, but it can also solve family mysteries. For example, the historians told Holland something that meshed with his memory of his sister's nickname. "Her name is Delores, but we always call her 'Nene,'" he said. "In Oku, 'Nene' basically means 'Mother.' That name was given to her by my father. These are very old names."

The DNA tests that Holland has taken mark marked the beginning of Holland's story, not the end. Most recently, Holland took a Y-chromosome test from Ancestry.com that looked at 46 genetic markers, and then he plugged the results into a database on the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation website. In some cases, comparisons with African test subjects in the database produced 33 matches out of 36 common markers.

"Normally they'll say, 'We're not related to someone,'" Holland observed. "Now the results show that, guess what, something must have occurred in those days for them to have nearly the same DNA as myself. Thirty-three out of 36 is pretty high."

Holland followed up by contacting the likeliest candidates for his kin.

"Genetics will only get you to the airport, but now where do you go?" he said. "You have to really find all the links. I'm lucky to have the information to find the links to the old names. With the names, people in Africa can say, 'This person was from this kingdom.' It's just like when people decide to go back to Scotland or Ireland, depending on whether your name begins with an 'M-A-C' or an 'M-C.'"

I can relate to that: I took a Y-chromosome test a decade ago in hopes of tracing my genetic roots in Ireland. I still haven't found a match close enough to confirm family ties in the old country, but the historical record provides enough information to make for a good tale about my great-grandfather's escape from western County Clare in 1847, during the Great Famine.

From Arabia to Virginia
Here's Holland's story, based on his visits to Ghana and Cameroon as well as the genetic results and the reports from the historians:

"We left Saudi Arabia around 622 when the time of Prophet Mohammed was implementing Islam.  A war ensued, and the Mboum people left and went to Egypt, then to the Sudan, then in the Tigray area of Ethiopia.  The city was in a town called Axum. Please note the Tigray province and the current tribal name of Tikar/Tikari.  From Ethiopia, the Mboum people went to the valley in Lake Chad in the north of Cameroon and arrived finally in 933 in the Adamawa region. The village that was set up in the Adamawa region was called Ngan-Ha, and Nya Sana was the first Fon [king]. The story told to me was that he (Nya Sana) was the youngest of the leaders that arrived from Ethiopia, but became the king because he retrieved the most powerful idol that fell from the sky.  There were a total of four leaders that came from Ethiopia, and all got their hands on one of the idols that fell from the sky.  These idols were in Mecca (Makah) in Arabia that flew from there and headed to Egypt then to the Sudan, Ethiopia and finally to Ngan-Ha.

"Took Gokor ruled from 1186 to 1217, as he was a direct descendant from Nya Sana. Princess Wouten (Wou-Ten or Betaka) ruled around 1201-1246, during which she founded the Tinkala kingdom. So the tribal name change was from Mboum to Tinkala and finally to Tikari/Tikar. The Tikar kingdom was created around 1300.  The migration pattern was from Ngan-Ha to Tibati, Ina and finally Bankim or Kimi.  Kimi and Bankim are names that are used interchangeably when referring to this ancient area of various tribes in Cameroon. Around 1387, Fon Mbe left Bankim due to chieftancy disputes, and also he did not want to be killed while ruling. Nchare Yen supposedly had the right to become the next Fon, but was passed over by his half brother. Mbe, Ngonnso and Nchare Yen were siblings from the same mother and father. They left in fear, founding the kingdoms of Bankim, Foumban and Banso.  Ngonnso founded Banso, while Nchare Yen founded Foumban.  Nchare was the youngest of the siblings.

"I believe my common ancestor [linked to the royalty] lived around 1550, during the time when Fon Ngang was on the throne.  He ruled from 1540 to 1588.  According to the SMGF DNA results, the time period for the common ancestor was about 440 years ago. Also, there is a possibility that it could have been in Foumban. The eighth Fon of Foumban founded Banka, and his name was Ngapna (1590-1629).  The familes that are in Banka and Bafang must have descended from the Prince of Ngapna. 

"The Wambeng family of Oku descends from the third Fon, who was named Ney. Oku was founded around 1650, so the third Fon would be close to accurate for the 1770s time period. The people of Bali were hired by the coastal slavers, who gave them guns to capture individuals for the Virginia plantation owners. Bali is not too far away from Mankon.  I asked the elder about this whole scenario, and he told me the year adds up to when Ney was ruling.  Those who were captured, including my ancestor, were guards of the palace.

"The Bali people came with guns and created quite a scene, resulting in the capture of my ancestor. They were taken to the coast, and the rest is history.  Meanwhile, in Foumban, the 11th Fon also lost children due to the fighting that was going on at the same time.  It's very possible that when all of them arrived in Bimbia, they knew they were the same people, but spoke different languages and could not communicate with each other.  I was told that the slavers arranged things intentionally so that you would be separated if you spoke the same language/dialect, to prevent insurrection on the ship. 
 
"Because of Ngonnso, the kingdoms of Oku, Banso (Kumbo) and Mbiame are related, and also Kom would have to be included.  There is a good relationship between all of them today, and who knows? Maybe a big party would happen if we all go back to meet the family in Oku."

So now what? Holland is still working on the later chapters of his family's story — the part that includes his slave ancestors in Virginia, including one ancestor who was taken into the Confederate Army for a time. But the chapters that excite Holland the most are the ones that go way back into the past.

"I guess I'll always have a curious gene in there, a gene that makes me want to find out," he told me. "Will I stop after this? Hopefully there's be a different thing to work on. I'd like to go to the east — to Egypt, and Ethiopia."

Earlier chapters in the African-American saga:

• Sept. 8, 2010: DNA points to royal roots in Africa
• Feb. 1, 2011: Family roots get tangled up in Africa
• Feb. 28, 2011: Black history saga comes full circle
• July 3, 2011: Africans visit their American cousins 
• African American news from theGrio

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also add me to your Google+ circle, and check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Courtesy of William Holland

Marvin and William Holland, from left, sit beside Ntomnifor Richard Fru during an African-American reunion in June. Genetic analysis suggests that the Holland brothers are distantly related to Fru's Cameroonian family.

Thanks to 21st-century genetic testing, William Holland is finally able to show some of his African cousins what happened to his slave ancestors back in the 18th century. The climax of Holland's quest came last weekend, when about 60 African-Americans and Africans gathered at Franklin County Recreational Park in Virginia for a teach-in about his family's ocean-spanning, three-century saga.

The 42-year-old Holland, who lives in Atlanta, left his job at Coca-Cola and turned his focus to the family quest nine years ago. The quest is particularly difficult for African-Americans like Holland because their ancestors came over in chains with their African identity erased. Holland eventually figured out that his great-great-great-great-grandfather was brought over from Africa around 1772 and sold to a Virginia plantation owner. He even discovered that his great-grandfather, Creed Holland, was forced to serve in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

But traditional genealogical research couldn't give Holland any further clues as to his African origins. Exactly where did his ancestors come from? Did he have any present-day cousins back in the old country? That's where genetic tests could point the way.

Holland had his DNA analyzed for markers that just might match up with African kin who had taken similar tests. Records held by the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation suggested that he might be related to the king of a region in Cameroon's Northwest Province, named Fon Angwafo III. When Holland visited Cameroon and laid out his records for the king and his counselors to inspect, he was welcomed as a long-lost relative. In fact, during a follow-up visit with other family members, Holland was ceremonially named Ndefru, after Fon Angwafo's father.

The Africans told how they lost their kin during the days of the slave trade — but when the African-Americans told how their ancestors lost their identity through slavery, Holland's Cameroonian cousins just couldn't believe it. So Holland invited "the Fon" and his family to come over to America and learn more about the other side of the slavery story.

It took months to make all the arrangements, and Fon Angwafo III himself couldn't make the trip because of political obligations at home — but late last month, the Fon's wife, Queen Kiko Anna Angwafo, finally arrived in America along with the king's son and nephew to see the region in Virginia where Holland's ancestor ended up. Holland and his family were the Africans' hosts for a family reunion on June 25. Cameroonians from the Mankon region ruled by the Fon and from the nation's West Region attended the event as well.

Courtesy of William Holland

African-Americans and African visitors wear traditional garb at the Frontier Culture Museum's West Africa farm exhibit near Staunton, Va. From left are William (Ndefru) Holland, Regina and Kamari Holland, Marvin (Tsi) Holland, Prince Peter Tseghama Angwafo, Willie Mae (Mankah) Holland, Queen Kiko Anna Angwafo, Ntomnifor Richard Fru and Eric Bryan, the museum's deputy director.

Courtesy of William Holland

Queen Kiko Anna Angwafo picks up a pestle at the Frontier Culture Museum's West Africa village exhibit.

One of the highlights was a visit to the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, Va., where a replica West African village has been built to give visitors a taste of life before slavery.

But the climax came when the Africans were taken to the old Holland plantation, where William Holland's ancestors lived as slaves (and took on the last name of their owners).

"The whole purpose was to tie in the missing links," Holland told me. And by that measure, he judged the reunion to be a great success. The Cameroonians saw a blacksmith shop from the Civil War era. They soaked in the history as they toured the plantation's old chicken house and slave kitchen. They walked around the graves where slaves and their owners were buried.

"They totally understood," Holland said. He quoted them as saying, "Now we know you weren't joking around when you told us about this. ... It's very clear now, the pain and suffering you went through when you came to America."

And there was a bonus: A descendant of the slave owners, John Sherrard Holland, served as the Africans' tour guide.

Courtesy of William Holland

William Holland's family and his African visitors meet with John Sherrard Holland, a descendant of the plantation owners who held William Holland's ancestors in slavery.

"It was a great honor and a pleasure to do that," the 55-year-old operator of a hunting preserve told me later. He went to school with members of William's family, and "we've always had the best of relationships," he said.

As for the dark past of slavery, John Sherrard Holland said that has been left far behind. "It's history," he said.

But William Holland said that history is worth reflecting upon once more, particularly at a time when America is celebrating Independence Day. He noted that when Americans heralded their freedom in 1776, his African ancestor had been unfree for four years. "Just imagine what he was thinking," Holland said.

"Is it time for celebration?" he asked. "I don't know. But now we're trying to do justice to that heritage — and that's something to celebrate."

Previous chapters in the tale of William Holland's roots:

• Sept. 8, 2010: DNA points to royal roots in Africa
• Feb. 1, 2011: Family roots get tangled up in Africa
• Feb. 28, 2011: Black history saga comes full circle 
• African American news from theGrio

 For further information about genetic testing for genealogical purposes, check out this guide on Cyndi's List, or this entry on Wikipedia. If you happen to be a Boyle looking for genealogical information, take a look at my Boyle family website. You can also connect with me via Facebook or Twitter. And if you really want to be friendly, ask me about "The Case for Pluto."

Funium

FamilyVillage features cute characters that can be "immigrated" into the game along with their vital records.

Family Village is a Facebook game that lets you create cartoon characters representing your forebears, associate them with vital records and documents, send them through "immigration" into a virtual world — and then put them to work. Think of it as a CityVille populated by your ancestors.

"This is not meant to be a genealogy game,” said Jeff Wells, the chief executive officer of Utah-based Funium. “It’s a game that incorporates genealogy."

Funium is rolling out Family Village on Facebook in semi-stealth mode. "We're up to around 14,000 or 15,000 installs, which is relatively small in this environment. Our objective is millions," he told me this week. Then, knowing my background, he invoked a metaphor close to my heart: "We're pushing the shuttle to the launch pad."

I've paid for genetic tests and document searches in hopes of uncovering more of my Boyle family roots. I've traveled to Ireland to check parish records, and riffled through countless rolls of microfilm looking for clues. But I've never played a Facebook game, and I'm not sure Family Village will get me started. But then again, I'm really not the target audience for the game.

"It's not supposed to do your genealogy," said Wells, who previously served as the CEO of the GeneTree DNA testing company. "It just makes genealogy more interesting. This is meant for the masses. My intent is to get people who are disinterested in family history interested."

Updating the family quest
In the pre-Facebook age, genealogy was traditionally ranked among the country's most popular hobbies (right up there with stamp collecting). But today, online social networking takes up increasing amounts of leisure time. In February, comScore reported that the average Internet user spent more than four hours a month on social-media sites. In a sense, Family Village and similar genealogy apps (such as the popular "We're Related" Facebook app) represent efforts to update the hobby for the 21st century.

"We have incorporated family history into the social gaming environment," Wells said. "That's the first time that's been done."

Funium via Business Wire

Family Village lets you build a community for the relatives that "immigrate" into the Facebook game.

Family Village is also built to incorporate information from We're Related, Family Link and other online genealogical resources. As you create game characters, you can add in data from your own genealogical records, about birth, death, marriage and all the other family-tree basics. The game platform is designed to suggest archived documents or other resources that may relate to your relatives. Some resources come free, while others can be purchased using Facebook-based micropayments.

Like CityVille, Family Village offers plenty of items to buy, including houses and landscaping, pets and vehicles, and even monuments with national-origin themes. (So your ancestors were English? Buy a Union Jack or a London Bridge for your family's virtual digs.) You can either kick in real-world money for purchases, or have your characters toil away at their virtual jobs to build up reserves of virtual cash.

Wells said the initial reviews from beta-testers have been positive. Funium's news release cites the case of Sandra Gwilliam, a grandmother who plays Family Village with her children and grandchildren. "If people can play the game with their ancestors, it makes the ancestors seem more real," Gwilliam said.

What about privacy?
Personal privacy is a big concern for online genealogy as well as for Facebook usage. For example, you wouldn't want to have your mother's maiden name freely accessible for any old friend to see. And your living relatives wouldn't appreciate having their basic stats displayed without their consent.

Wells said Family Village addresses the privacy issue by letting users control how much information they want to make public. "We follow all the Facebook privacy and security provisions," he told me. "We don't share anything more than what Facebook would allow. and their provisions have become pretty strict lately."

By default, a Facebook user visiting your Family Village community would have limited access to the data associated with the characters who populate the place. "If you elect to, for that person visiting your village, you could give them authorization to see your family tree," Wells said.

The game may also alert players to check particular databases or documents, based on the information they've provided, but Wells said "we're not accessing any information that they're not confiding on the Internet."

Family Village may not be as high-tech as Y-chromosome or mitochondrial DNA testing, but Wells said the goal of the game has much in common with genetic genealogy. "We want to make sure that, at the end of the day, people learn that we are part of one great family tree," he told me. "For those who aren't interested necessarily in DNA or genetics, we can still accomplish the same thing by having people realize that we have many, many cousins out there."

So what do you think, cousin? Feel free to share your thoughts about the family quest and/or Facebook games as a comment below.

More about genealogy:

• Black history saga comes full circle
• Pilgrims and Indians in her family tree
• DNA takes on a family's mysteries
• The wearin' o' the genes

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Courtesy of William Holland

Atlanta genealogical researcher William Holland, left, stands alongside the Queen Mother for the Ghanaian village of Adidokpoe-Battor (center) and William Akpaglo. The two Williams share genetic markers, suggesting that they are distantly related.

Based on his genetic profile, William Holland considers himself a descendant of noble families going back more than a millennium. Between then and now, however, his ancestors were dispersed around the African continent — and some of them were brought to America as slaves. That's the branch of the family to which Holland and his family belong.

Now, Holland is bringing the centuries-old saga of his family full circle by inviting his long-lost relatives to come from Africa to America. If Holland's plan works out, African royalty will meet face-to-face with the descendants of slaves and slave owners in Virginia.

"It's something that's never been done before," Holland told me today, on the last day of Black History Month. "It's something that should not be missed."

The genesis of Holland's plan goes back to the trips he's taken over the past year to fill in the gaps in his genetic heritage. Y-chromosome tests suggested that his ancestors were related not only to a royal family in the West African nation of Cameroon, but also to a noble family in Ghana, hundreds of miles away. 

"I'm overwhelmed now," said Holland, who is the great-grandson of a slave who found himself serving in the Confederate army during the Civil War. But Holland isn't too overwhelmed to make a kind of sense out of his tangled genetic tale.

This month, during a visit to his genetic relatives in Ghana, Holland pieced together a story of a grand migration. A comparison of his Y-chromosome markers with those of the families in Ghana and Cameroon suggested that their most recent common ancestor lived perhaps 50 generations ago, or roughly 1,000 to 1,500 years ago. His Ghanaian hosts, members of the Akpaglo family, told him that their ancestors migrated southward from Sudan and settled in the Oyo Empire. Holland assumes that his Cameroonian ancestors were part of that migration as well.

"From there, they split up," he told me. One ancestral line eventually took root in Ghana, another in Cameroon. Holland has now been to both nations to track down his pedigree. Armed with the genetic results, he was initiated into two African families.

In Cameroon, Holland was given a royal name ("Ndefru"). In Ghana, the Akpaglo family gave him three more African names during a seven-hour ceremony. Holland's new names include Togbe ("old wise man," even though Holland is in his 40s), Korsi ("born on Sunday," which he was) and Degboe ("brave person who went away and returned").

"I'm satisfied now — now that I have four names," Holland joked.

But he's not finished yet. Holland still wants to share the experience he had with his fellow Americans, and at the same time give African visitors a taste of America. Holland says some of his friends and relatives back home in Atlanta are irked by the idea that they were somehow sold into slavery by their African ancestors. His African friends and relatives say that's not the way it was. So Holland is trying to organize a daylong reunion and seminar on May 22 in Virginia, where his ancestors worked as slaves, to give Africans and Americans a chance to talk through their history together.

Holland has invited Fon Angwafo III, who heads the Mankon tribal group in Cameroon, as well as family representatives from Ghana. He's hoping that his African-American relatives as well as the descendants of the Virginia family who held his ancestors as slaves will be on hand as well.

"You hope to enlighten your family about Africa and what happened in the slave trade," Holland explained.

Holland has already heard that "the Fon" has accepted his invitation, and he's pretty sure someone from Ghana also will be coming. It's not a done deal yet, but if everything works out the way Holland hopes, one man's quest to find his family roots will turn into a meeting of the clans from across oceans of time and space.

Holland says his newfound African kin can hardly wait. "They're past excited right now," he told me. All in all, not a bad way to end Black History Month.

Feel free to recount your own family quest in the comment section below. For more coverage of Black History Month and beyond, check in with msnbc.com's corporate cousins at TheGrio.com.

Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book about Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."

Courtesy of William Holland

William Holland, a genealogical researcher from Atlanta, dances to the left of Fon Angwafo III, the king of the Mankon tribal group in Cameroon, during a ceremony.

When William Holland traveled from Atlanta to Cameroon to dig into his family roots, the quest succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: A blend of genetic testing and genealogical sleuthing connected him with one of the West African nation's royal families. The king of Mankon, a region in Cameroon, embraced Holland so completely that the American was ceremonially given the name of the king's father. 

But now Holland is facing an embarrassment of genealogical riches: Since he first came upon his royal connection, he has determined that he's genetically linked not only with nobility in Cameroon, but also with a different clan in Ghana, hundreds of miles to the west.

"I think I'm getting toward the end of it ... but with this group, you have thousands of thousands of people," Holland told me as he headed for another extended-family reunion in Ghana.

Holland's experience demonstrates how the search for family roots in Africa doesn't always result in the neat succession of generations that was portrayed in the 1977 miniseries "Roots." It also suggests that Black History Month, which Americans observe every February, might more aptly be called Black Histories Month.

"Who was the ancestor that all of us are from?" Holland asked. "Who was he? That's the question I want to answer, but I don't know how to ask. This one man created thousands of people, but who was he? This one man ... he was something!"

Tracing African roots
African-American roots are notoriously tough to trace back from America to Africa, for an obvious reason: When traders brought shipments of slaves across the Atlantic, families were sundered and the old names were forgotten. Owners typically gave slaves their own family names — which is what happened to William Holland's ancestors.

Holland has gone through more than his share of twists and turns as a genealogical researcher: Years ago, he found out that his great-grandfather, Creed Holland, was a slave wagon driver who was forced to serve in the Confederate infantry during the Civil War. That led Holland to sign up for membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans — a move that didn't exactly sit well with some whites and some blacks.

Nine years ago, Holland thought his ancestors came from Nigeria. But since then, there's been a revolution in the use of genetic testing to firm up genealogical ties. Holland took a DNA test offered by GeneTree and pored over records compiled by the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, GeneTree's nonprofit sister organization. SMGF's database was suited to Holland's search because it combines genetic matching with genealogical pedigrees. If your DNA markers match up with someone else in the database, the pedigree of the person you match just might provide new clues for family sleuthing.

The database was particularly attractive for Holland because the foundation's testing teams went out to gather DNA samples from people in countries around the world, including African nations. This offered a way for Holland to "leap across the ocean" and find genetic connections to families in the old country, even if he couldn't trace the precise line of ancestry.

Royal cousins
The genetic links led Holland to turn his search from Nigeria to Cameroon, where he came upon a doozy of a connection. The DNA matches suggested that he was related to the Mankon king, Fon Angwafo III, as well as other noble families in that country. Thanks to the SMGF database, Holland could show his assumed African kin detailed genealogical information when he visited Cameroon in March.

Courtesy of William Holland

William Holland says he sees a resemblance between his father Sam Holland Sr. (left) and Fon Angwafo III (right).

"The Fon" and his aides examined the records ... and welcomed Holland as a long-lost relative. He was so welcome, in fact, that his whole family was invited to come to Cameroon in November as guests of the king.

The Holland entourage — William, his 80-year-old mother Willie Mae Holland, his brother Marvin and his sister Wanda — received the royal treatment. "I get treated better there than I do in the U.S.," William Holland told me. One of the most thrilling moments came when the king gave each of the Hollands a Cameroonian name. William was named Ndefru, after Fon Angwafo III's father, Ndefru III. "The name goes back to the 1500s," Holland said.

One of the most sobering moments came when the visitors were shown three or four huts where captured Africans were kept prior to their departure for America.

"You try to hold back, but tears flow out of your eyes," Holland told me. "You couldn't control it. You just knew, in 1772 or thereabouts, you knew what was going on. You could only imagine those people who were going down to the coast, what they were thinking. When they got down there, they'd think, 'Uh-oh. This is not good.'"

Holland said his African hosts stressed that the tribe's long-ago chiefs did not hand over their ancestors for payment, and they hoped that the Americans would not hold their African kin responsible for the horrors of slavery. They also had a question for their American cousins: "How was it not possible to keep your family name?"

Holland had to explain that traders and slave owners worked mightily to separate families and clans, to erase the ties that united the slaves brought to America's shores. "Your name was taken away from you as soon as you got off the boat," Holland said.

Courtesy of William Holland

American visitors are surrounded by their hosts in Cameroon. The Americans are, from left, William Holland (dressed in blue-and-white-patterned traditional garb), Willie Mae Holland, Wanda Lee Chewning and Marvin Leon Holland.

 When it came time for Holland and his family to return to America, the family researcher's head was bursting with the lore of Cameroon and the Mankon people — and yet he realized that he had just scratched the surface. "I saw just a tenth of what really goes on in terms of tradition," he told me. "You have to be there for a year or more to learn all the culture."

New connections
The funny thing about DNA is that it can link a whole tree's worth of genealogical branches. After his trip to Cameroon, Holland delved once more into the genetic database, and found potential connections to families in Ghana as well. Does that mean the Cameroon connection was incorrect? Not really. Because of different migrations through the generations, it's possible to have genetic cousins spread over a wide geographic range.

"Most of the migration periods in Africa began in the 1300s or 1400s. That goes back 28 generations, give or take," Holland said. "You keep the same DNA because you have the same ancestor, from Sudan or Cameroon or present-day Ghana. The same Y-chromosome is there."

One Ghanaian family in particular was a "very high match," Holland said, and so he struck up a correspondence. "I have spoken with the family, and they said, 'How'd you get this information?' So I sent them the pedigree, and they were shocked," he said.

Holland felt such a strong connection that he flew from Atlanta to Accra last week to meet yet another set of prospective cousins. He wasn't disappointed.

"So far, so good," he told me last week during a phone call from Ghana. "Everything is matching up. They look like me."

The news was still good today when Holland checked in again. "It's kind of strange how much everything is matching up," he said. Holland is due to get back to Atlanta just in time for the Super Bowl this weekend.

Before he left for Ghana, Holland told me that he felt ready to move on to the next phase of his family odyssey. "The next step now is, you want to go and educate people on both sides of the water," he said. "Americans need to know what it's like in Africa. And the people in Africa, they still don't know what happened to those people who went down to the coast, hundreds of years ago. It was a one-way ticket."

Well, it's not a one-way ticket anymore — at least not for Holland.

More about genealogy:

• Pilgrims and Indians in her family tree
• Genealogists discover royal roots for all
• Prince William's fiancee has Yankee lineage
• DNA takes on a family's mysteries
• Database catalogs slaves' treks
• Tracing genetic 'Roots' to Africa
• Cyndi's List: African-American genealogy
• Special report on genetic genealogy

Correction for 3 p.m. ET Feb. 4: Creed Holland was William's great-grandfather, not great-great-grandfather, and Willie Mae's age went from 79 to 80 years in November. Best wishes to Willie Mae, and thanks to William for pointing out the errors. Sorry about that!

Stay tuned for an update after his return from Ghana, and feel free to recount your own family quest in the comment section below. For more coverage of Black History Month, check in with msnbc.com's corporate cousins at TheGrio.com.

 Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about Alan Boyle's book about Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."

J.L.G. Ferris via Library of Congress

This traditional depiction of the first Thanksgiving in 1621, created by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris in 1932, shows Pilgrims and Native Americans sitting down together for a meal.

Lindsy Stewart Cieslewicz, a stay-at-home mom and dance educator in Utah, has reason to be doubly thankful this Thanksgiving season: She just found out that she's a descendant of the Pilgrims as well as the Native Americans who attended the first Thanksgiving in 1621.

"It's been exciting for my little family to be involved in this," the 34-year-old told me. "It takes us back not only to historical figures, but also to the Wampanoag tribe. We don't look Indian by any means, but to feel that, you get a sense of how varied and rich your culture can be without your even knowing."

The detective work was done by GeneTree, a company that blends genetic testing with genealogical research to firm up the links to ancestors. GeneTree draws upon more than 110,000 sets of pedigrees and DNA records that have been collected over the past decade for the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation.

Cieslewicz vaguely remembered contributing her information (as well as a DNA sample) to the foundation's database about a decade ago, just as I did, but she didn't give it much thought until GeneTree decided to sift through the database looking for Thanksgiving-themed connections. Cieslewicz was one of 297 people in the database whose ancestry could be traced to William Bradford, who was governor of Plymouth Colony for the first Thanksgiving. But out of all those people, Cieslewicz was the only one who was also related to the Wampanoag.

GeneTree

Lindsy Stewart Cieslewicz, a dance educator living in Utah, traces her ancestry to Pilgrim leader William Bradford as well as to members of the Wampanoag tribe that shared the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims.

The pedigree laid out by GeneTree shows that Bradford was one of Cieslewicz's 10th-great-grandfathers, while her ninth-great-grandfather on a different line was a member of the Wampanoag tribe living during the era when Chief Massasoit worked out an alliance with the English. The exact identity of Cieslewicz's Indian forefather isn't known.

"There had been a family rumor passed down by my grandfather that we were related to Native Americans," Cieslewicz said. "My grandfather, who was an author and historian himself, never believed it. So that was a funny thing that we all laughed about, because my grandfather passed away exactly a year ago -- and he would have been really interested to hear that the family rumor was actually true."

How rare is it?
Statistical studies have shown that virtually everyone in the Western world is related to Charlemagne, who ruled over the Holy Roman Empire 1,200 years ago. But geneticist Scott Woodward, who's president of Utah-based GeneTree, says Cieslewicz's case is more unusual.

"Almost everybody can trace their lineages through one of these royal-type lines when we get 700 or 800 years into the past," he told me. "It's a little rare when we go back just 300 years, and it's more rare when you have to go through two of those lines."

Believe it or not, tracing Native American ancestry can be tougher than figuring out whether or not your ancestors came over on the Mayflower. "We know it's fairly rare, and one of the reasons we know that is because Native American records and the connections into that population are very rare," Woodward said. Even if the connection was known, it was often hidden -- in part because of the stigma that was once associated with being of "mixed blood."

Nowadays, however, having a little controversy in your family tree can add to the appeal of doing genealogy. For example, researchers recently determined that the descendants of the defendants in the Salem Witch Trials include actress Sarah Jessica Parker ... as well as Scott Woodward himself.

"When I found out that I really am connected to one of those accused witches, it made the story come alive for me," Woodward said. "And when we notified Lindsy about her connection, her words were, 'This is the most exciting e-mail that I have ever received.'"

A new perspective
Cieslewicz confirmed Woodward's account. She said the rest of her family -- including her husband and their five children -- were excited as well, especially with Thanksgiving just around the corner.

"We always go and collect books for the different holidays with my children," she said. "We sat down to read one the other day, and it was the children's story about Thanksgiving. I said, 'Wait, look, we're related to this side, and we're related to that side.' What an amazing thing to be able to sit down with my children and talk to them about the Thanksgiving story, and be able to say, 'One of these Pilgrims is your great-grandfather, and a Native American was also.'"

Cieslewicz said her brother mused that if the first Thanksgiving didn't turn out the way it did, neither of them might have existed. "It sure makes me glad that they decided to have dinner together instead of killing each other," she quoted him as saying.

Courtesy of William Holland

Atlanta researcher William Holland was accepted as a long-lost relative of Cameroon's royal family, based on DNA testing and pedigree analysis.

Holland said his newfound genetic relatives in Cameroon's North West Province were planning a full schedule of celebrations and tours over the next three weeks. One of the places they'll be staying is the palace of the Mankon tribe's chief, His Royal Highness Fo Angwafo III.

"I don't know how we're going to take all this," Holland told me just before the family's departure for Africa. "My mother said, 'I think I'm going to run.'"

He said his family tree includes links to three prominent families in Cameroon, and representatives from all three clans were due to greet the visitors from America. Another high-ranking figure was due to show up as well, to render an apology of sorts. The way Holland explained it, Africans from the area around Bamendjinda in Cameroon played a part in the slave trade of the 18th century. Holland said the present-day chief in Bamendjinda, Jean-Marie Tanefo, wanted to tell Holland about the circumstances that brought his ancestors to America in chains durng the 1770s.

"It's hard to put your finger on it," Holland said. "You have a family you're related to, and then you have a family that wants to make up for something they did wrong. I'm a little nervous, a little excited -- all rolled into one."

If I hear anything from Holland while he's on his trip, I'll be sure to pass it along.

More about genealogy:

• Genealogists discover royal roots for all
• DNA takes on a family's mysteries
• Prince William's fiancee has impressive Yankee lineage
• Special report on genetic genealogy

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.