I haven’t said much over the last month, specifically in relation to the racial tension and protests across the United States. Not intentionally. I wanted to say something. But every time I’d start writing, I ended up deleting most of it. Nothing ever felt right.
When I tried to write down what I thought, I realized two things. One, I felt what I wrote would be lost among a million others sharing similar feelings. Not that I’m dismissing my own ideas, I’m just not sure the world needed to hear the same thing. And two, at times I honestly didn’t know what to think. I had never lived in a city with a curfew or witnessed marches within a mile of where I lived.
However, I have been watching and listening. As I thought about everything going on, it dawned on me that I do have something unique to say.
Instead of simply telling you what I think, I want to tell you a story. A very real story that took place nearly 200 years ago.
Unexpected History
When I was a child, I remember some of my mom’s relatives starting on a family genealogy project. Back then, of course, they didn’t have the advantage of the internet. Through family stories, library archives, and state/federal records, they pieced together what they could. Considering the lack of easy access to information, we learned quite a bit.
Fast forward to the age of multiple ancestry websites, personal DNA ethnicity testing, and digitized documents from across the globe.
A year ago I started my own deep dive into my family story. While a lot of what I found matched what I already knew, I came across some surprising things.
Growing up I always thought I was mostly German on my dad’s side and mostly Scottish and English on my mom’s side. Turns out I’m a lot more English than I thought, roughly 60% in fact, and only 30% German. The rest is a mix of other northern European nations.
Beyond the numbers, however, I found some interesting stories about my ancestors. I learned some came to America before we thought, in some cases, not long after the first colonies in Virginia and Massachusetts. One pre-Revolution family had children kidnapped by Indigenous groups as part of raids in Massachusetts. (If you’ve read THE HERETIC’S DAUGHTER, this event was actually mentioned in the book.) I found stories of fighting for a cause they believed in and of leaving their homelands to escape religious persecution. And many more who came to the Central Plains in hope of owning their own land.
Secrets Untold
Then there was the darker side of any family tree thought to be long buried with the person holding the secret.
The stories of those who came to the United States not to seek a better life, but who were taken from their homelands by force.
According to my mom’s records, I knew many of of her ancestors ended up in the South, mostly Virginia and Tennessee, and eventually, Arkansas. With many being farmers, I assumed that at least one probably owned a slave or two. But I never thought about it much. We had no proof one way or the other.
Until I started doing my own research.
Until I found proof.
That’s where this story really begins.
Bob’s Story
Thanks to Ancestry. com and other genealogical sites, I found not only names and dates, but also digitized copies of marriage and birth certificates, military records, and court filings. Some of these dated back even into the 1500s.
As I looked through the documents, I came across a Last Will and Testament for my fifth great-grandfather – George – who lived in the northeast corner of Tennessee. The handwritten will (now typed and digitized for the Ancestry.com database) recorded George’s wishes upon his death, just like any other legal will.
George owned roughly 225 acres of land. The document directed how his land and money should be distributed among his wife and children, with most going to the oldest sons. He also made provisions for his daughters through smaller parcels of land, as well as dividing up household goods upon their mother’s death.
And then I saw this:
“I further will that my wife [Polly], if I should die before her, is to keep possession of my negro boy named Bob to work for her maintenance during her natural life, and at her decease the said negro boy Bob is to be sold and the money for his purchase is to be divided equally among all my daughters…”
There, in plain English, I learned with certainty that someone in my family had owned a slave.
This is Bob’s story.
Or at least the parts I can tell for him. His memory is lost to history, relegated to a single line in a handwritten court record from 1837. I am actively searching for any more information, but I don’t have high hopes. Since he was considered property, he might only ever appear in estate records or land transfer documents. And since I don’t even know what his real name might have been or how he ended up with my ancestors in the first place, even knowing where to start looking is a challenge. Normal family records and government documents for him don’t exist.
Here’s what I do know.
At the time he wrote his will, George (my ancestor) listed Bob as a “negro boy.” George died in 1839, two years after he wrote his will. However, I found a census record from 1840 for his wife. She and the two sons who inherited most of the land appeared in the same household record. On the same ledger, there was one member of the household simply marked under “Slaves – Male 10 thru 23.” No name, just a mark under a category.
As the census indicated, Bob remained with the family from the time of George’s death to when his wife died later in 1840. For at least those three years, Bob lived in eastern Tennessee.
Because the will referred to him a boy in 1837, I originally assumed Bob would have been a young teenager. However, the census category indicated he was between 10 and 23 years old. And, at that time, many whites referred to any young Black male as a boy regardless of his actual age. So Bob could have been anywhere from an early teen to a young adult. But either way, he was a young man coming of age under the ownership of another man.
Questions Unknown
Since finding this information, I have wondered about Bob’s story. I haven’t found any more references to him other than the will and the census notation. I wonder if he was purchased as a child or if his parent(s) had also been owned by my ancestor. I want to know if he had a real name. Often, land owners gave their slaves American names for the sole purpose of keeping property records..
The real question is what happened to Bob. Was he sold like the will instructed, or did he remain in service to the sons who inherited the land? If he was sold, where did he end up? Did he ever have a family of his own?
Did he live long enough to become a free man?
So many questions that will never have answers. If Bob did have a family, it will be nearly impossible to trace them because few records were kept. If it hadn’t been for that single line in a nearly 200 year old book, I never would have known he even existed.
I do know now. I don’t know Bob’s full story, but I can tell the world that he did indeed exist. And that’s a start.
It’s time to tell his story, even the parts I don’t know.
Whose story can you tell? Show the world they matter.
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