Yes, it is 100% certain for me over a long time-frame. My father’s side of the family and my last name come from the first colony at Jamestown. Jamestown didn’t have traditional U.S. slavery at first but my great-x grandparents who weren’t that wealthy had a slave/adopted Indian boy named Chanco that clued them in on a massive Indian attack the next day meant to destroy Jamestown altogether. Most of the colony was spared but hundreds still died.
From there, my family had almost 250 years more slave ownership as they moved South and then west. My great-great-great grandfather was hacked to death by his slave as a matter of fact in Mississippi. Slave ownership ended at the end of the Civil War although their sharecroppers weren’t a complete change.
I feel the need to point out that you don’t need to have any Southern geneology whatsoever to be descended from slave owners. Most of the early U.S. allowed slavery even in areas like Massachusetts and New Hampshire. It just wasn’t as useful in the North and tended to be abolished earlier than in the South. Boston was a huge slave trading port and slave ownership even here was allowed at one time.
I am positive about one branch of my family being descended from slave owners. My maternal grandfathers family is the product of a slave owner and one of his slaves. According to some books written about the relationship and family lore he freed her, lived with her and eventually left a modest estate to her (that she never collected). I think the will thing was more of a statement than something he actually felt would be enforced.
According to a history of early NYC my ancestors did own several around the year 1700. Sad to say, it was a common situation among the early Dutch settlers; not only did some individuals own slaves, but so did corporations like the Dutch West India Company.
I thought about mine. My mother’s family is Brahmin (scholar caste), and my father’s is Vaishya (farmer caste). Neither are likely to have had slaves…the ones that had slaves were the Kshatriyas (warrior caste). In all likelihood, my father’s ancestors might have been slaves, or at least serfs.
Ahhh, you are correct – Austria was not part of the Prussian Empire. My mother’s family are all from Austria, for some reason I always assumed that it had been part of Prussia. I stand corrected
Yep. I recently posted an inventory of an ancestor’s estate that names and evaluates his slaves. Of the 16 lines of my family in the gr.gr.grandparents generation, 5 owned slaves (2 owned 20 or more, the rest owned 5 or less). I’d love to find descendants of these slaves, particularly if they have any ancestral stories.
I also had a great-great-uncle who had a lifelong monogamous relationship with a woman who was his father’s slave. It began in the late 1850s and lasted until his death 60 years later. They had many children and caused a major scandal when he not only bequeathed them the bulk of his property but referred to them as “my natural sons and daughters” in his will (natural being a legal euphemism at the time for “illegitimate”; legitimate would be “my lawful children” whether biological or adopted). I don’t think there’s any harm to her reputation in saying that the actress Nell Carter was a descendant of this couple.
Well, there was a social class of people that were considered property, back in the day. I would think that is pretty close to slavery, even if it wasn’t exactly the same as the kind that existed in the US.
The dictionary translates the Korean word I’m thinking of (nobi) to “servant,” but they weren’t getting paid and were treated as property, which seems closer to the definition of slave to me.
My father’s side is descended from a prince of the Chosun Dynasty, and my mother’s side is a family of scholars (ie, the nobility, back in the day), so it seems safe to say that both sides owned people-as-property until the Japanese invaded.
My ancestors in North America were, AFAIK, all Union northerners, or Canadians.
But I have at least one ancestor who was a free Irish settler in Tasmania in the 1830’s, which certainly makes it possible that the family was part of the genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines.
On one side, I am descended from someone about whom the vanity-published biography “John Rosser: Gentleman of the Old South” was written. So, pretty much yes. Also on that side were a bunch of Barkleys. Given that results of miscegenation were often given the name of the master, it’s quite possible that I’m related to Charles Barkley
On my other side, I’m descended from Russian serfs. Who, basically, WERE slaves.
Not that I know of. On my dad’s side, the Mayflower ancestors stayed in MA until my branch went to Ohio (for reasons unknown to me), and eventually landed in KS.
On my mom’s side, the branch that briefly lived in Kentucky didn’t go until after the Civil War, and from what I’ve found, wouldn’t have had the money/land to afford slaves even had they been there prior. I did have a gggggg-uncle of some sort who died with Custer, which icks me out.
I’m more interested in the pre-USA history right now - I’ve got Scots on both sides, and 11 tartans so far. Keith (2 tartans), Thomson (originally MacTavish, 5 tartans) and Gray (4 tartans, though they were lowlanders). My wardrobe of late has revolved around matching things to my tartans!
If you are an American of English descent, it is almost a certainty that at least one of your ancestor’s owned at least one slave at some point in American history.
My namesake line (male line) were all farmers in an area that had legal slavery but none of them owned any slaves according the the tax rolls. I take some amount of pride in that.
I have found that my 6 g’s grandmother (not of the namesake line) in her will owned one slave and granted him his freedom upon her death in 1853.
But realize when you go back that far, you have 64 total 6 g grandparents, or 32 families who are probably spread across several states, if not countries. If you found out everything you would have slaveowners, murderers, saints, sinners, whackaloons, predators, and pillars of the community…
