I know my ancestry on both sides all the way back to the 1600’s. Danes and Norwegians and not a slave owner among them. Those Mormon ancestors were pretty much isolated from slaves out in the Utah territory from 1850 until after the civil war. Perhas an isolated brother or cousin could have married a descendant of a former slave owner but my direct ancestors did not. While in Europe they were too poor to own slaves (if any existed in Europe then), they were more likely to have been slaves or indentured servants themselves.
Well, I never said all. I said most. And fact is, the family trees of most Americans are not as insulated as your own.
My father’s lines were either late German immigrants, 1830s and 1840s, or Northerners of mainly English descent. It would be hard to find slaveholders among them, and it’s easy to find abolitionists and Union Army soldiers.
But as soon as he married my Mom, the picture changed. Her side is full of Tidewater Virginia lines, folks who came west with Daniel Boone and stayed on the forefront of the American tide moving west. And the wills and such documents from the 1600s and 1700s, and a handful all the way up to 1860s, contain human “property.”
Auntie Dem, do know the status of your ancestors in
1600 BC? That is a serious question. The idea that
slavery is a bad institution is relatively new.