In my last installment of Finding Mary, I learned from my cousin Bobbi Jo*, that her ancestors, and therefore mine, were slave owners.
I must note that Bobbi Jo has been most generous with her time in assisting our search for our mom’s biological family. From our original contact on March 22, 2020, our communication grew. After several weeks we began daily phone conversations. These conversations were focused on figuring out how we were related; proving our third-cousin status from 23andMe, and building family trees for the both of us.
In fact, Bobbi Jo has an extensive family tree going back more than 400 years. She did not have that family tree on an ancestry site until I assisted her with it. Bobbi Jo’s generosity grew to hosting me at her home in Charleston, S.C. and becoming my tour guide to all things South Carolinian.
During one of our late night phone calls, we began to have a different conversation. She wanted to share with me who her family was and from what kind of people she descended.
She began telling me that she is a descendant of William Henry Cory. I had never heard of that name before and eagerly listened. Apparently, Cory was a survivor of the “Charge of the Light Brigade” made famous by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
It depicts the “heroic,” if not foolhardy actions, of the British Light Cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian troops, during the battle of Balaclava in October 1854 in the Crimean War. The charge cost 110 British soldiers their lives and left 160 injured— roughly 40 percent of the brigade’s strength. (Source www.History.com).
Bobbi Jo proudly stated that “William Henry Cory then immigrated to South Carolina in the United States, where he became a spy for the Confederate Army and he is buried in St. Helena’s Church Cemetery in Beaufort, S.C.” She further told me of various other relatives buried in that cemetery who were officials of the Confederacy from that area.
She went on to tell me that she was related to the Fripp, Sams and Chaplin families. These were large slave owners who owned entire islands off the coast of Beaufort. John Fripp, for example, owned 130 slaves housed in 52 slave dwellings, and owned an island bearing his name. The Sams’ plantation was primarily at Dataw Island. (Source www.Datawhistory.org).
These were not her only slave-owner relatives, and not the only plantations and slaves they owned.
I was reeling from these revelations. I had always seen my family as Northerners from Lynn. Some of my family fought in the Civil War and “of course” fought for the Union Army. Now I had to confront a legacy that included slave owners and ancestors who fought in the Confederate Army.
Upon hearing my concerns, Bobbi Jo said that indentured servitude in the North was much, much worse than slavery in the South. Women were raped in indentured servitude in the North and she said they “treated their slaves well in the South.”
To say that I was appalled would be an understatement. Comparing slavery to indentured servitude was an obscenity to me.
American slavery consisted of slave traders forcibly capturing Africans and transporting them to the United States over hundreds of years; owning human beings and forcing them into a lifetime of slavery; selling enslaved people and “passing” them down from generation to generation of slave owners to their children by wills (mostly breaking up enslaved families when sold).
American slavery consisted of rape of enslaved women by slave owners.
Indentured servitude saw people of mostly European descent voluntarily gaining transport to the New World by signing a contract for a specified period of time — usually up to seven years — and then becoming citizens. In some cases, these indentured servants would gain property at the end of their contract.
I told her I was in full disagreement with her comments. From there it was a bitter conversation.
I wondered the next day what my connection with Bobbi Jo would continue to be. I considered her an enigma: She was a patron of the arts who was supportive of young African-American painters, basket weavers and poets with whom she sometimes shared meals.
She occasionally attended events at Mother Emanuel Church, a historical African-American church in Charleston and center of the Civil Rights movement in South Carolina (and where a white supremacist murdered nine parishioners in cold blood in a mass shooting).
Bobbi Jo was troubled by Confederate statues being torn down. She said “that is our history,” and was offended by the removal of those statues. She also was in contact with another cousin of “mixed-race” ancestry named Sofia* who Bobbi Jo referred to as a mulatto woman. This is a disrespectful term used against persons of biracial heritage.
Bobbi Jo told me about Sofia’s search for her family history and shared Sofia’s contact information with me. I reached out to Sofia and discovered that she is an indomitable researcher who had written more than 17 chapters detailing her family’s life and history in Charleston. Her research documented common relatives with Bobbi Jo.
It was Sofia who convinced Bobbi Jo to have the South Carolina Historical Society come to Bobbi Jo’s house in Charleston and copy some hundreds, if not thousands, of family records (including records listing names of people who were slaves of her family) that Bobbi Jo kept in her two houses — one in Charleston and the other in Beaufort.
The Beaufort house has been in her family since 1810. Sofia urged Bobbi Jo to copy the records to spare them from potential hurricane damage. Bobbi Jo would not allow the records to be taken from the house for copying and safe keeping even with the Historical Society’s offer to give her digital copies.
Even though wills showing the passing down of slave ownership from fathers to children is irreplaceable and crucial to African Americans determining their ancestry, this documenting of records held by Bobbi Jo has not resumed.
But there is hope for preservation of these records and others. In 2022, the Center for Family History of the International African American Museum, located at 13 Calhoun St. in Charleston (the site of Gadsen’s Wharf which was the disembarkation point for more than 40 percent of all American slaves) is scheduled to open.
The museum will house the Center for Family History, which will be an amazing place that assists ancestry searches for African-American families, preserves records and teaches genealogy-research skills. I hope Sofia and I can convince Bobbi Jo to share her multitude of records. Some answers for families of enslaved ancestors will only be solved in those records.
Perhaps, like my family, you will find that your family’s ancestors owned slaves and find yourself confronted with the question of what to do with that knowledge. If the records are in your possession, please consider sharing them with the developing resource that is Center for Family History of the International African American Museum.
Edward Ball is another resource for families facing a slave ownership legacy.
In addition to being a Yale University professor, Ball is a prodigious author who has written various books on this subject such as “Slaves in the Family,” “The Sweet Hell Inside” and “Life of a Klansman.”
His writing lays bare the history of his family as slaveholders in his award-winning book, “Slaves in the Family,” published by Macmillan Publishers in 1999. He reviewed thousands of hours of Ball family records and visited descendants of people his family had enslaved.
The truth about American slavery, its impact on African Americans, and the denial by his family members alive today is laid out in stark and undeniable terms. I believe that this is an eye-opening book and worth the read.
What I have discovered about my mom’s Southern roots and family, including the slave-owning parts of her family’s history, have encouraged me as well to look back at the history of my Lynn roots.
*The writer has used a pseudonym for privacy purposes.
NEXT: The sacrifices my family, among thousands of other North Shore families, made toward the abolition of slavery.
