Are you sure?
One of the more common things I see and hear from people who are defending the display of the Confederate battle flag is “My ancestors didn’t own slaves.”
Putting aside for a moment that this isn’t really a very good defense of a symbol that has stood for hatred and terror for the better part of 150 years, the main thing I want to ask the people who say that is, are you sure? I mean really, are you sure?
Thanks to a lot of research that was done by my great-grandmother, grandmother, and other members of that side of my family, I have a pretty good idea of the history of the branch of my family tree. I’ve spent some time looking for more details about that history, and every so often I’ll take another look to see if any new information or records have moved online. A couple of weeks ago I was doing just that, looking for a more complete family tree. I have to take a moment here to acknowledge that I am able to have that understanding in large part because of the privilege that comes with being White. My ancestors' names were recorded in many places. Stories about them were written down and kept. They received grave markers in cemeteries that were preserved. The descendants of people who were enslaved don’t usually get to learn those facts about their ancestors.
My grandmother’s family name was Maxwell. We managed to track the family back to the person who (most likely) settled in the American colonies after leaving Scotland some time in the 1750s or 1760s. While stories were spun about Robert Maxwell being a Jacobite partisan or son of one in the 1740s and having to flee Scotland, the reality was probably much more mundane. At that point in time, the ships carrying wool from the colonies to feed the mills of Glasgow and Belfast had to make money on the return trip, and they did it by taking poor Scots and Irish who were looking for a better life to the colonies to start farms, often sheep farms to keep feeding the mills.
Robert settled in the Pennsylvania frontier, and his son Thomas, like many Scots-Irish people following the American Revolution, got involved in land speculation in the western parts of Virginia. While securing land for his family he died in the 1790s, probably in his late 20s. His wife Jane still moved the whole family to Harrison County in what is now West Virginia. Three of her sons helped to establish several towns in that region of Virginia, but her youngest son Robert, my ancestor, left for Ohio some time in the 1820s.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the Maxwells were hillbillies in the truest sense of the word. Whether the term “hillbilly” came from the Irish settlers who were followers of William of Orange, or from a Scottish term for “comrade,” they were all hill folk who came from Scotland and Ireland and found a way to make a living in the Appalachian foothills. This story is not very much different from many other family stories of the Scots-Irish who settled in these mountains following the revolution. I imagine that many of the people who share this family story would assume that their families didn’t enslave people. How could hillbillies be slaveholders? Didn’t West Virginia split from Virginia over this issue? My ancestors couldn’t have held slaves, right?
The thing is, people-- men, of course-- like my ancestors were the first Europeans to come to this area. With the backing of the United States Army they displaced the native populations and carved out land holdings for themselves that made them wealthy. They lived in Virginia and they ran farms. And if you were wealthy and ran a farm in Virginia between 1790 and 1865, you most likely enslaved Black people.
This most recent time that I started digging around in my family tree, I found an article about Franklin Maxwell, who was the nephew of my ancestor Robert Maxwell. Franklin was one of the largest landowners in Doddridge County, and further inherited the lands of his childless uncle Lewis who was a surveyor and land speculator. And there it was in that story: in the 1850 census Franklin was listed as enslaving four people. In 1860 that had grown to six people. Apparently that made him the largest enslaver in Doddridge County. In the census listings there’s a hint of an even darker story. The 1850 census lists a 23 year old Black female and a 3 year old “mulatto” female and 1 year old “Black” male. It’s possible that Franklin enslaved the mother and daughter together, but it’s probably more likely that “mulatto” child was the product of rape. In the 1860 census the now 12 year old girl is listed as Black. There are also now two more younger children who are also listed as Black.
So there it is. My first cousin five times removed was an enslaver and possibly a rapist. Chances are also pretty good that if I did some more digging I would find more of my cousins, uncles, and maybe even grandparents who were enslavers. Given the roots of the Maxwells in that area of West Virginia, and given what I see when I drive through that area, I suspect that I have distant cousins there who are currently displaying the Confederate battle flag on their homes and vehicles. If they’re questioned about that, do they claim that their ancestors “didn’t own slaves”? Do they know about Franklin?
One of the things that I don’t like about how most people do genealogy is that they start with themselves, and then watch as the tree of ancestors grows above them in a bigger and bigger spread. While this does show how so many different people had to come together to make you, it also creates an illusion that the further and further back you go, the more people there are. Of course the opposite is true. There were fewer people the further back you go, so we all have a lot of common ancestors in our individual family trees. We are all more closely related than we might think at first. It also means that each of us has a pretty wide variety of ancestors that ultimately account for a lot of the people who have lived in the world. Chances are pretty good that you can find an ancestor that has done or been involved in some of the most amazing and positive events in history, and you can find one that has done or been involved in some of the worst events in history.
I’m not looking for anyone to feel guilty about what their ancestors did or didn’t do. What I am looking for is for all of us to take a long, hard look at the systems that created and still operate in this country and figure out what we need to do to correct the injustices of those systems without trying to get out of that work by saying “My ancestors didn’t own slaves.”
Putting aside for a moment that this isn’t really a very good defense of a symbol that has stood for hatred and terror for the better part of 150 years, the main thing I want to ask the people who say that is, are you sure? I mean really, are you sure?
Thanks to a lot of research that was done by my great-grandmother, grandmother, and other members of that side of my family, I have a pretty good idea of the history of the branch of my family tree. I’ve spent some time looking for more details about that history, and every so often I’ll take another look to see if any new information or records have moved online. A couple of weeks ago I was doing just that, looking for a more complete family tree. I have to take a moment here to acknowledge that I am able to have that understanding in large part because of the privilege that comes with being White. My ancestors' names were recorded in many places. Stories about them were written down and kept. They received grave markers in cemeteries that were preserved. The descendants of people who were enslaved don’t usually get to learn those facts about their ancestors.
My grandmother’s family name was Maxwell. We managed to track the family back to the person who (most likely) settled in the American colonies after leaving Scotland some time in the 1750s or 1760s. While stories were spun about Robert Maxwell being a Jacobite partisan or son of one in the 1740s and having to flee Scotland, the reality was probably much more mundane. At that point in time, the ships carrying wool from the colonies to feed the mills of Glasgow and Belfast had to make money on the return trip, and they did it by taking poor Scots and Irish who were looking for a better life to the colonies to start farms, often sheep farms to keep feeding the mills.
Robert settled in the Pennsylvania frontier, and his son Thomas, like many Scots-Irish people following the American Revolution, got involved in land speculation in the western parts of Virginia. While securing land for his family he died in the 1790s, probably in his late 20s. His wife Jane still moved the whole family to Harrison County in what is now West Virginia. Three of her sons helped to establish several towns in that region of Virginia, but her youngest son Robert, my ancestor, left for Ohio some time in the 1820s.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the Maxwells were hillbillies in the truest sense of the word. Whether the term “hillbilly” came from the Irish settlers who were followers of William of Orange, or from a Scottish term for “comrade,” they were all hill folk who came from Scotland and Ireland and found a way to make a living in the Appalachian foothills. This story is not very much different from many other family stories of the Scots-Irish who settled in these mountains following the revolution. I imagine that many of the people who share this family story would assume that their families didn’t enslave people. How could hillbillies be slaveholders? Didn’t West Virginia split from Virginia over this issue? My ancestors couldn’t have held slaves, right?
The thing is, people-- men, of course-- like my ancestors were the first Europeans to come to this area. With the backing of the United States Army they displaced the native populations and carved out land holdings for themselves that made them wealthy. They lived in Virginia and they ran farms. And if you were wealthy and ran a farm in Virginia between 1790 and 1865, you most likely enslaved Black people.
This most recent time that I started digging around in my family tree, I found an article about Franklin Maxwell, who was the nephew of my ancestor Robert Maxwell. Franklin was one of the largest landowners in Doddridge County, and further inherited the lands of his childless uncle Lewis who was a surveyor and land speculator. And there it was in that story: in the 1850 census Franklin was listed as enslaving four people. In 1860 that had grown to six people. Apparently that made him the largest enslaver in Doddridge County. In the census listings there’s a hint of an even darker story. The 1850 census lists a 23 year old Black female and a 3 year old “mulatto” female and 1 year old “Black” male. It’s possible that Franklin enslaved the mother and daughter together, but it’s probably more likely that “mulatto” child was the product of rape. In the 1860 census the now 12 year old girl is listed as Black. There are also now two more younger children who are also listed as Black.
So there it is. My first cousin five times removed was an enslaver and possibly a rapist. Chances are also pretty good that if I did some more digging I would find more of my cousins, uncles, and maybe even grandparents who were enslavers. Given the roots of the Maxwells in that area of West Virginia, and given what I see when I drive through that area, I suspect that I have distant cousins there who are currently displaying the Confederate battle flag on their homes and vehicles. If they’re questioned about that, do they claim that their ancestors “didn’t own slaves”? Do they know about Franklin?
One of the things that I don’t like about how most people do genealogy is that they start with themselves, and then watch as the tree of ancestors grows above them in a bigger and bigger spread. While this does show how so many different people had to come together to make you, it also creates an illusion that the further and further back you go, the more people there are. Of course the opposite is true. There were fewer people the further back you go, so we all have a lot of common ancestors in our individual family trees. We are all more closely related than we might think at first. It also means that each of us has a pretty wide variety of ancestors that ultimately account for a lot of the people who have lived in the world. Chances are pretty good that you can find an ancestor that has done or been involved in some of the most amazing and positive events in history, and you can find one that has done or been involved in some of the worst events in history.
I’m not looking for anyone to feel guilty about what their ancestors did or didn’t do. What I am looking for is for all of us to take a long, hard look at the systems that created and still operate in this country and figure out what we need to do to correct the injustices of those systems without trying to get out of that work by saying “My ancestors didn’t own slaves.”
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