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Question:My dad's side of the family lives in claiborne county, tennessee.
His mother's maiden name is buis...on her birth certificate it says she's colored....so I was wondering what branch of buis meaning the colored part , comes from....My dad says they're native american....and they have no white roots...which I find hard to believe....but we're also african descent....so any info would be helpful!


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: My dad's side of the family lives in claiborne county, tennessee.
His mother's maiden name is buis...on her birth certificate it says she's colored....so I was wondering what branch of buis meaning the colored part , comes from....My dad says they're native american....and they have no white roots...which I find hard to believe....but we're also african descent....so any info would be helpful!

If you look through the family files at rootsweb, there actually is one line of Buis, whose proven ancestor has the spelling Buys, and his ancestor used Buijs. And yes, that line/ person did come from Holland. Others may (or may not) have immigrated from France. I do see on family search that there are baptismal records also coming out of England, which may or may not come from France.
Ah, more confusion.. you would certainly say that how does THAT apply to me? Of course, it doesn't... which shows that finding where a surname comes from is NOT relevant to where your ancestor comes from. Or, how did grandma have the name?
Consider that in the late 1800s, persons of African ancestry were shunned or discriminated. IF they could claim to be white on the records, that would happen. The same is true that some persons of African lineage would deny it, and claim to be Indian. And, we also have Melungeon lineage, which is disputed by some as not "proven", who were of dark skin, and they were not sure of the exact source.
Presumably, the surname comes from her father, who may well have been from slave lineage. With no moral judgement here, numerous former slaves adopted names of former owners, or from other places.
using the 1880 census index from www.familysearch.org, there were 18 persons with the Buis name, mainly in Tenn, who were listed as Black. I find none listed in the country as Mulatto, but over 200 in the country, who were White. The ELDEST Buis (Black), was born in 1850, and stated his parents were born in Virginia. It is very possible that your grandmother comes from one of these families. We'd be happy to help determine if that is accurate.. it will depend on using her birth certificate, names of her parents, and where/when they were born.
Pre 1850, if you do work back to one of these Tenn (VA roots) families, the probability is they were slaves, and you would want to work to try to determine if their former owner might have been named Buis (it is possible, using alternate records ie property records or wills).
So.. it is up to you, if you are only interested in what is believed to be the origin of the name, or finding how your own family came to use the name. They can be VASTLY different.

It's French,
Buis
French: from French buis ‘box (tree)’, in any of a number of possible applications. It may have been a topographic name for someone who lived by a box thicket, or a metonymic occupational name for a worker in the wood (see Box).
Dutch: patronymic from the Germanic personal name Buso, Boso.
Dictionary of American Family
hope this helps.

Norman French, actually.

Kudos to the above poster.