I am a great great-grandson of Lawrence Cain. My DNA results estimate that I have 6% African ethnicity. Most people are surprised to find out that my paternal grandfather’s parents (and my great-grandparents), Thomas and Mary Cherry, were considered black in the 1900 U.S. Census. Mary Cherry is Lawrence Cain’s daughter and my father’s grandmother who was born in South Carolina and moved to New Jersey in the 1920s. We were told that Mary’s father was a state senator and that he was part Cherokee Indian. However, I learned relatively recently that we were not part Cherokee at all.
After graduating college in Virginia in the 1980s, I immediately started on a 30-year career including 20 years at Microsoft. I never spent much time thinking about my ancestors or racism, as I was focused on my career and raising twins with my wife. In 2018, I decided to leave the corporate world behind. It was only a few years ago that I found out about the “family secret” and I now had the time to research the facts and uncover the truth. This book uncovers this forgotten truth and provides a chronological account of Senator Lawrence Cain’s life and times.
