Posted on 07/16/2022 2:53:26 PM PDT by nickcarraway
In March 2008, I was 13 when my dad and I watched the TV miniseries “Roots,” which follows the fictional story of a man born in 18th century Gambia who is sold as a slave in America, and the many generations who come after him.
It inspired me to ask questions about my own family’s past. Suddenly I started searching online, interviewing older relatives, and exploring libraries and archives. Surprisingly, more than half of Americans can’t name all four of their own grandparents, and over 20% of black Americans have never looked into their family tree. But, as a result of my research, not only can I name all of mine, I can trace my family tree straight back to the 1790s.
SNIP
Huldah’s children also illustrate the importance of self-reliance and entrepreneurship in my family. Her son Edward B. Merritt, born in 1871, worked in real estate at a time when the majority of blacks in much of the nation labored as farmers or domestics. His son, John Sherman Merritt, was a homeowner in Greenwich, Conn., who worked four jobs to support his young family. John’s daughter, Adele Matilda Merritt, enjoyed a privileged Greenwich childhood complete with charm school, a penchant for photography, and later- international travel. And Adele’s daughter — my grandmother, Joyce Marie Watkins — was a small business owner who settled in Yonkers, NY.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
This was what happened in my own family. A cousin on my paternal side's Mother was from a wealthy family. Her brother held slaves. He mistreated one and his sister (cousin's Mother) took the woman to live in her household. The former slave woman became the Nanny and is pictured in old family photos standing in the center of the group holding a baby. That baby she was holding grew up to nurse her through dementia to the ripe old age of 95. When she died, she was buried in the family cemetery.
Be careful, Woke’ Warnock may be lurking about.
During “The Depression” it was common in Oregon for wives and the children to move into farm laborer cabins in the Summer. The women would cook and work in shifts while the older kids worked the fields for pay. The husbands would stay back in the cities with their jobs or in the woods logging.
Also in Oregon on the Coast during WWII, the shortage of labor meant that two sisters came up with an interesting system. They offered a salmon cannery owner an alternating schedule so while one sister worked, the other sister took care of the kids and made meals for both families. The cannery owner accepted and immediately had offers from other women to fill his many available positions. Soon the other canneries followed.
That was Maury…not Jerry. Ha ha.
My dad was the most close mouthed person I ever met about his family.
I met Mom’s family very young and knew who my grandma and uncles and cousins were on her side.
On dad’s side I knew no one as he was raised by his deceased mom’s family in a location far away from the rest. One day, I was 4 or 5, I asked where he was born. He told me of a town I never heard of a long way off.
When I was 40, I noticed he was gone and asked mom where he was. She said he had gone to a family reunion in Oklahoma.
“WHAT! I didn’t know we had family in OK or I would have wanted to go with him.”
When he got back, he never said a word about it. He died not long after.
At a reunion with his uncle’s family, I got the name of a Texas resident who was doing research on dad’s family. I got a copy and found we had kin all over Texas and Oklahoma we knew nothing about!
I never understood why he never talked about them.
I understand what you are saying. They were assets, and expensive assets at that.
But, no matter how well they were treated, one person “owning” another is abhorrent and should not happen in any civilized world.
This is a wonderful article. His entrepreneurial antecedents participated actively in forming this country.
This lady was from the Gullah culture if living on that island
Same reason most mothers of grown sons that I know complain that their sons never call them. It's a man thing for many guys, I guess.
Well then you would be exempted in reparations
I will assume you are right about that, since the same would hold true of pets today. House pets are “generally” treated better than outdoor pets in homes across America today.
The point I was trying to make was not to excuse slavery, it was to point out the issue was not as universally evil in practice as it is commonly referred to today.
I think the household pet of today is the best example, as I mentioned earlier. I know people who love their pets more than they do their real-life children. The same was true of slave owners 200 years ago.
A bit off topic but this is a cool story about a guy raised in Southern VA, moves away and becomes successful and returns to buy an old farmhouse and finds out it is the original plantation his ancestors were bound to as slaves.
Well done! It’s so exciting to see someone trace their ancestry back. LOVE genealogy!
>>I never understood why he never talked about them.
EXACTLY! My mother refused to talk about my father and her mother refused to talk about HER parents. Which meant massive effort to learn what they could have told so easily. Yet my brother wants to know NOTHING about our ancestors, so it’s intensely frustrating. My mind just has trouble comprehending why someone doesn’t want to know about the genetics that made us part of who we are today.
And we’ve got Texas, too. Used to catch fireflies in a Confederate flag.
bkmk
Its true that relationships could be and sometimes were quite close....for example childhood playmates etc.
Of course the opposite was also true.
Unfortunately, you can’t even MENTION the first part ie that many got along quite well without any hate and in fact with considerable warmth between them, without having one of the usual race hustlers come along and claim that you’re somehow “justifying” slavery by bringing it up.
“Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat!” - Muhammad Ali
If I wasn’t so deep in finding my own ancestors I would try to find out if that John Stewart was my South Carolina ancestor. I have two John’s in my line before they migrated to TN. When I was a small child we lived on my grandfather’s land in an old shanty. There was a family of blacks who also lived on the land as share croppers until the great Depression took all the males to Detroit to work and left the grandmother alone. My parents brought her to live with us. Not as a servant (she was old) but as part of the family. She was the love of my youth. She shaped my life in so many ways. She was the one who told me about Jesus. I was devastated when WWII took our family to Ala. I don’t know what happened to her after we left. She was loved and I have so many precious memories of her. It breaks my heart that so many have taken away the truth of my love for that adopted grandmother. It’s not virtue signaling.
Before the idea of freedom for people to chart their own course, ALL were slaves. The King or Queen of England allowed some to own land, the rest were sharecroppers. Being a slave in Biblical times, was akin to being an employee.
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