Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My biggest discovery in genealogy was that all of my ancestors were not slaves. I am a black American and I have a 4 lines of ancestors that were free people of color and not enslaved prior to the Civil War.
Of my free ancestor families, all of them sent at least 1 male into service with the US Colored Troops. One family had 3 enlist out of 4 sons. They lived in Canada at the outbreak of the war. The oldest sons went to PA and enlisted, their home state. The youngest enlisted with the 102nd in Michigan.
Black Americans are always told we are descended of enslaved people and these discoveries made me very passionate about local history in my area. I am from NW Ohio and discovered one of my free lines were amongst the earliest black American residents in this part of Ohio. They moved here in the early 1860s. Prior to that, I have recently been shocked to discover that nearly all of my free lines moved to Ohio from Pennsylvania.
I have been doing a lot of Pennsylvania research lately especially of Dauphin and Lancaster counties. Both of those areas were hot beds in Underground Railroad activity and both had a pretty large and in Lancaster a prosperous free population economically. A large percent of Dauphin (city of Harrisburgh and surround communities) black resident fled that area in the mid 1850s to mid 1860s due to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. Many free black people were stolen and sent into slavery during this era so I believe that the lines of my family from that area moved due to fear of this and because of the war activities. Confederates also routinely stole large swaths of free people in Pennsylvania.
NW Ohio was an area of a lot of abolitionist activities and further away from Confederates and enslavers so I believe that is one of the main reasons why they chose this area.
Another interesting discovery I made about 6 months ago was that one of my gg grandfathers had a love triangle that resulted in a fight and the death of his teenage daughter who got involved on the side of her mother. It was a story I found in a local newspaper. This gg grandfather worked on the railroad in the early 1900s and it was common that rail road workers had more than one family. It was interesting that this gg grandfather was double counted in the census one year as an Ohio resident with his "side piece" and as a Kentucky resident with my g grandfather and his mom and sisters. The side piece was involved in a fight between the wife and the teenage daughter. The teenage daughter was hit by large stick/bat and died due to those injuries. Her mother died about a year later. It was a sad but interesting story.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
11,974 posts, read 25,473,841 times
Reputation: 12187
The most recent people on my family tree to own slaves had a son who fought and died for the Union at Vicksburg. I'd like to think he was like Mary Todd Lincoln and grew to hate slavery but the reality is many slave owning Kentuckians were pro Union.
My parents both grew up poor, especially my mom. As a child her parents couldn't afford to buy her a real doll so they'd cut out a magazine picture of a doll and glue it to a piece of cardboard! I couldn't believe that just a few generations back many of my ancestors owned thousands of acres of land and owned slaves. I figured we were working side by side Black slaves, not owning them. Not sure where all that money went.
I have a brick wall starting at a g g grandfather. Turns out he was something of a local moonshining gang banger, he murdered a man and spent the rest of his life as a fugitive, including several name changes. The only surviving picture of him is in a 1920s coupe loaded up with moonshine.
Both of my paternal grandparents also had bloody incidents. My grandmother stabbed a woman for mocking her child (my aunt), but in Eastern Kentucky that didn't necessarily mean going to jail. Her husband, my grandfather, was hunting with 2 of his cousins when the 2 got in an argument. One shot and killed the other and then forced my grandpa to help dismember the body and hide it. Sounds unbelievable, but Eastern Kentucky back then was a very violent place ruled by the concept of "honor". Kind of a greener version of Afghanistan, lol.
Last edited by censusdata; 05-29-2016 at 02:50 PM..
I couldn't believe that just a few generations back many of my ancestors owned thousands of acres of land and owned slaves. I figured we were working side by side Black slaves, not owning them. Not sure where all that money went.
I think that's one of the most continuously surprising things I encounter... Finding wealthy or at least fairly well off ancestors devolve into poor ones so fast. It's so easy for generations to drop in classes and very hard to move back up.
My parents both grew up poor, especially my mom. As a child her parents couldn't afford to buy her a real doll so they'd cut out a magazine picture of a doll and glue it to a piece of cardboard! I couldn't believe that just a few generations back many of my ancestors owned thousands of acres of land and owned slaves. I figured we were working side by side Black slaves, not owning them. Not sure where all that money went.
The money was lost when the slaves were freed. Don't forget how valuable they were.
Also, as large estates were divided among many children, the value of a share was often not that much. If you look at old estate records, there was land and slaves and some livestock, and often not much more. Money, if mentioned, is only small amounts. Add a few household goods and the value of crops and that would be it.
The estates I have seen have mostly been from the South, and it does not seem that, in my family at least, that the idea that the oldest male inherited everything held true. Some even specify that after the death or marriage of the widow that everything was to be sold and the proceeds divided among the children or their survivors.
The money was lost when the slaves were freed. Don't forget how valuable they were.
That's a good point... also we should remember that a lot of wealth was lost in the South, either due to direct wartime damage, the loss of so many young males and the effect on the economy, the adoption of Confederate currency that hit massive inflation and lost value.... etc, the list goes on.
With that said I've seen many cases of lost wealth a generation or two down that isn't tied to the Civil War.
Quote:
Also, as large estates were divided among many children, the value of a share was often not that much. If you look at old estate records, there was land and slaves and some livestock, and often not much more. Money, if mentioned, is only small amounts. Add a few household goods and the value of crops and that would be it.
The estates I have seen have mostly been from the South, and it does not seem that, in my family at least, that the idea that the oldest male inherited everything held true. Some even specify that after the death or marriage of the widow that everything was to be sold and the proceeds divided among the children or their survivors.
I've seen the same thing, things are usually split up as evenly as possible.
A generation or two of that it doesn't take long for the money to disappear if a generation can't increase value. On top of subsequent generations only getting a piece of the original land etc and not benefiting from the cheap land their parents or grandparents got... also populations becoming more dense each generation down. Hence so many jumping further west to take advantage of the latest and greatest of government encouraged (state or federal) cheap land opportunities (or from land speculators of course too).
So much of American's ancestors became subsistent based on government subsidized land.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
11,974 posts, read 25,473,841 times
Reputation: 12187
In my family most people stopped owned slaves before the Civil War, those ancestors were further back in the Carolinas and Virginia. I've only came across 2 that continued owning slaves when moving to Kentucky by the early 1800s. They got huge tracts of land in Kentucky for serving in the Revolutionary War but it was in hilly topography not suited for plantations. It seems the poverty came later on, though at least one set of great grandparents still did pretty well enough to run a boarding house in Cincinnati that catered towards other Kentuckians up their for work. They gave my grandparents 70 acres to live on which kept my mom and her siblings from being extremely poor.
I've got some of those eastern Kentucky ancestors too. They sure got into a lot of fights. Supposedly, my gggg grandfather came into Kentucky on Daniel Boone's third trip there. I can only assume they needed to be rough and tumble to make it there. I've been trying to figure out who fought for which side in the civil war. I know that there were brothers fighting for both sides. Interestingly, even though most of my ancestors that fought in the civil war were southerners, so far all have fought on the Union side.
I was interested in the slave ownership also. Apparently, my ggggg grandfather in what is now West Virginia had a mulatto slave that he presumably fathered. In his will, he wrote that he believed that all men should be free. He had a few slaves, but his will only released the young man he presumably fathered. This man was 23 years old at the time he was freed. He lived in Kentucky, but was born in what is now West Virginia. He became a land owner. What is interesting about him is that each generation of his family became more white. Blacks and whites were not allowed to marry so this young man lived with a white woman and fathered children with her. The children moved a little further away and in doing so were able to marry. They married white spouses and later generations continued to marry white spouses. Someone has written a book about it which is how I found out about it.
My family tree doesn't always branch the way I had assumed it would. Some of the descendants of the mulatto slave married back into the family where I know my line of descent. I haven't found out if I'm related to that branch of the family, but it wouldn't surprise me if we were.
My own family tree is pretty boring, but I did find my husband's gg-grandfather was killed in a feud in Manchester, KY. The story made the papers all over the country. There was even an article about it in the New York Times.
Is it possible that your Great GF fought on both sides?
One of my 3rd Great GFs did just that. Originally a REB, he was captured in Chattanooga. Soon after he was given an option to join the Union navy (I think it was the navy) and he did just that..
I also have another 3rd Great GF that was captured in Chattanooga and spent the rest of the war at Rock Island, IL POW camp. He was one of the original prisoners brought to the island in Nov of '63. He didn't leave until May of '65. I have a copy of his 'Sworn Allegiance to the Union' documents which he had to sign before he was pardoned and released. I often wonder how the heck he got home.. probably took a boat down to Memphis and rode a train or hiked the rest of the way.
I am not an expert genealogist (need to get some professional help someday) but went on familysearch.org (I think) and plugged in my husbands family because his gt-grandmother was a big shot in her day and wrote a book detailing how far her (actually her spouses) family went back. The funniest thing happened on the search--it kept going back and back and back, seriously right through ancient history and ended with Noah I think. My reaction? how can that possibly be true.
I also started doing my own family history and even though my husbands family history in Delaware goes back to 1600's pre-Revolutionary times my family might have gotten there before his with a Dutchman who bought many acres and slaves. Not totally confirmed that he is an true ancestor yet but working on it even though sorry to hear of slavery. There are some black families still in that area with a version of his surname (Loper is theirs-Lowber/Looper was his).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
