"Hendrix’s ancestry was of mixed African American, European and Native American origin. His great grandfather in the strict paternal line was Bertran Philander Ross, a wealthy white graindealer from Urbana, Ohio, who was of Irish, German, and English descent. Out of wedlock, Bertran Philander Ross and his slave Fanny Hendricks became the parents of Jimi’s paternal grandfather Ross Hendricks (Hendrix). Jimi Hendrix was part Cherokee, his paternal great-great grandmother being a full-blooded Cherokee from Georgia. His parents met at a dance in Seattle in 1941 when Lucille Jeter was 16. When she married Al Hendrix the next year, on March 13, 1942, she was pregnant. Since Al had been drafted into the United States Army due to World War II, he was shipped out three days later. Al Hendrix completed his basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, but was stationed in Alabama when his son was born. Because the commanding officer believed that he would go AWOL to Seattle in order to visit his new son, he was locked up in the stockade as a preventative measure, where he remained to receive the telegram informing him of his son’s birth. The baby that would grow up to become the guitarist Jimi Hendrix was born to a father who had six fingers on each hand. Al Hendrix spent the war in the South Pacific Theater mostly in Fiji. During the three years that he was away, Lucille struggled with raising her infant son who was neglected in favor of the nightlife scene. Thus Hendrix was mostly cared for by family members and others during this period."