Many people use discovering their ethnic background and ethnicity to discover themselves and their identity. This is especially true in the melting pot that is the United States.
Few people in the world, however, have as great a story to tell about their ancestors as Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star of Hamilton.
The Latin Ethnicity of Lin-Manuel Miranda
Miranda is from a Puerto Rican family on his father’s side. Lin Manuel Miranda, a man of intriguing heritage, returned to his ‘Hamilton’ role for the first time in years to raise money for Puerto Rico.
For the first time in years, Lin Manuel Miranda reprised his ‘Hamilton’ role to raise funds for Puerto Rico (Source: Twitter) Luis Miranda, his father, grew raised in an impoverished Puerto Rican hamlet. Despite this, he studied hard and got a full scholarship to New York University after graduating from the University of Puerto Rico.
Miranda was born and reared in a predominantly Latino area in North Manhattan, but spent every summer with his grandparents in Puerto Rico. CheatSheet’s post claimed that both of his parents were born in Puerto Rico and moved to the United States. However, according to another article from The Guardian, this is not the case.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Ethnicity Has a Surprising Background
Miranda’s ancestry grabbed the interest of a famous genealogist, Megan Smolenyak, who spent months researching the actor’s family tree before discovering a particularly heartwarming anecdote, according to The Guardian. Smolenyak was researching into Miranda’s past when she came across the account of David Towns and his girlfriend Sophie, a formerly enslaved person from Virginia, and the mixed-race children they had together.
Davis Towns was a late-eighteenth-century white man. Those were, without a doubt, trying times for people of color. Nonetheless, for the lady he adored, he went above and above. A white man and a formerly enslaved lady spend their entire lives attempting to escape slavery. The laws would change every time they believed they were safe, forcing them to relocate.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Ethnic Affiliation Miranda’s great-great-great-great-great grandpa, Towns, was born in the late 18th century and lost both his parents and wife at a young age, according to Virginia Smolenyak’s research. Towns served as a private in the Virginia Militia during the War of 1812.
It’s unclear when, when, or how he met Sophie, but the couple relocated to Louisiana in 1815 since Virginia would never have permitted an interracial couple to live a normal life. Enslaved persons in Louisiana, on the other hand, were able to buy their freedom, so the couple had a chance.
They stayed in the United States for a decade before migrating to Mexico, which had abolished slavery and was encouraging immigration at the time. The fact that most multiracial offspring of this age were the consequence of rape, a completely imbalanced power dynamic, or both is a terrible reality. However, the Townses relocated from Virginia to Louisiana, then to Mexico, where the entire family could finally be free.
Sophie died in 1838, and the couple lived together until then. The couple had nine children together throughout their time together.
Mexican Ethnicity was passed down through the generations
The family includes Juan (later John), Miranda’s fourth great-grandfather, according to a census recorded in 1835. The Mexican government at the time preferred that the race columns be left blank.
Towns and Sophie’s son, Juan/John, married Mary Ann Smith, an Alabama-born daughter of African Americans, according to Smolenyak. Later generations descended from this pair would marry Mexicans or others of Mexican descent.
Apart from the Purto Rican ethnic history inherited from his father’s side of the family, Miranda’s ethnicity could be traced back to Mexico and even the United States, though the latter was still in its infancy at the time.
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