the living past
Aug. 30th, 2003 02:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kirkcudbrightIt's been hard to miss the coverage of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington. But it wasn't until I read this piece that it re-entered my consciousness that I'm a descendant of slave owners. Not in the metaphorical sense that I'm a white middle-class American, in a society built on past iniquities, and all that. No, I mean it in the most literal sense - my ancestors owned plantations and the human beings who worked them.
My grandmother, Sarah Stanyarne Johnstone, was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, about 60 miles up the coast from Charleston. Her grandfather, William Clarkson Johnstone, was a sixth-generation rice planter. His father, William Andrew Johnstone was, well, I'll just quote you from the family history:
(Mighty progressive of him, like Thomas Jefferson...)
Naturally, they lost big time in War. Andrew was shot in his house in 1864 by a band of deserters. William C, his son, my great-great-grandfather, lost his own plantation at the end of the war (at age 36), but regained it with his wife's inheritance and borrowed money. I recall reading somewhere about bales of cotton and other trading good being stored in the grand ballroom, because they weren't having any balls in those days. A few years back, I went to the museum in Georgetown, and I saw the scrip that was printed after the war to pay the plantation employees (black and white).
Anyway, my great-grandfather, William Henry Johnstone, was born shortly after the War (on the plantation), and left South Carolina in 1904, to become a dirt farmer in Kentucky. My grandmother was 13 at the time. She eventually married a northerner, a flinty Scots-American from New York state. And my mother's family was all Anglo-German from Wisconsin.
So where am I going with all this family history? I don't know, really. I've lived all my life in Massachusetts, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. And these weren't the family stories I grew up on. I went to South Carolina a few years ago for a family reunion, the first time I'd been there in my adult life. But it was a reunion for the descendants of William H, the one who left South Carolina 99 years ago. We're not in touch with the ones who stayed - hell, I can barely be troubled to keep in touch with my first cousins, let alone third cousins.
Likewise, I don't feel any connection to South Carolina, after a century and a couple generations. I mean, the people are nice enough as individuals, but the politics are horrifying. Of course, the politics in California are horrifying...
Anyway, it's time for me to re-read (or finish reading?) Edward Ball's Slaves in the Family.
My grandmother, Sarah Stanyarne Johnstone, was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, about 60 miles up the coast from Charleston. Her grandfather, William Clarkson Johnstone, was a sixth-generation rice planter. His father, William Andrew Johnstone was, well, I'll just quote you from the family history:
Through wise management, Andrew was, at the beginning of the Civil War, one of the largest land and slave owners in the Carolinas. He owned and made his winter home at "Annandale," the rice plantation on the North Santee River where it empties into the Atlantic; he owned much of South Island and other plantations. He owned and made his summer home at "Beaumont," near Flat Rock, North Carolina. He also owned property in Charleston, Cannonboro, Greenville, and other parts of South Carolina. At the outbreak of the War, he owned over 200 slaves, valued at about $400 each.
...
But worldly possession was not the characteristic for which Andrew was best known. His correspondence (on file in the South Carolina Library, Columbia), indicated his deep religious tendencies, his love for, and attention to others, especially his parents, and his interest in and care of the Negroes entrusted to his ownership by the customs of the day. He maintained schools, churches, and medical care for them, and when their condition merited it, he gave them their freedom.
(Mighty progressive of him, like Thomas Jefferson...)
Naturally, they lost big time in War. Andrew was shot in his house in 1864 by a band of deserters. William C, his son, my great-great-grandfather, lost his own plantation at the end of the war (at age 36), but regained it with his wife's inheritance and borrowed money. I recall reading somewhere about bales of cotton and other trading good being stored in the grand ballroom, because they weren't having any balls in those days. A few years back, I went to the museum in Georgetown, and I saw the scrip that was printed after the war to pay the plantation employees (black and white).
Anyway, my great-grandfather, William Henry Johnstone, was born shortly after the War (on the plantation), and left South Carolina in 1904, to become a dirt farmer in Kentucky. My grandmother was 13 at the time. She eventually married a northerner, a flinty Scots-American from New York state. And my mother's family was all Anglo-German from Wisconsin.
So where am I going with all this family history? I don't know, really. I've lived all my life in Massachusetts, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party. And these weren't the family stories I grew up on. I went to South Carolina a few years ago for a family reunion, the first time I'd been there in my adult life. But it was a reunion for the descendants of William H, the one who left South Carolina 99 years ago. We're not in touch with the ones who stayed - hell, I can barely be troubled to keep in touch with my first cousins, let alone third cousins.
Likewise, I don't feel any connection to South Carolina, after a century and a couple generations. I mean, the people are nice enough as individuals, but the politics are horrifying. Of course, the politics in California are horrifying...
Anyway, it's time for me to re-read (or finish reading?) Edward Ball's Slaves in the Family.
