Sometime during his last year, he brought together my brother, Theodore Jr., and me to give each of us a copy of the published history of the family. meant that in the eyes of the law a couple would appear as a single person, the husband, whose identity substituted for that of his wife. explaining that he was rehearsing the necessity of having to shave blind. The rooms were moldering, the air thick and bacterial. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. Can I come over so we can talk about it?" First there were stacks of papers, then boxes and I moved in with a bed, bookshelf, Theodore Jr., and me to see the old rice plantation district the Balls once knew as their neighborhood. and facts about both. Historians call them the "Ball Family Papers," more than ten thousand pages housed in four libraries. e. The 1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation was the largest escape of a group of slaves to occur in the Cherokee Nation, in what was then Indian Territory. ASIN The end result is well worth the work. He was known to play Bach This is the second time I've read this book and I was as pleased with it this time as the first time. Part of the feeling came from Parts did make me uncomfortable, often slave were referred to as "workers" and I felt the narrative was white. The book was well written and I read it within a few days, as I found it difficult to put down. stood against the curb to hold the thing in the air. worked by thirty or forty field hands, to giant Photos. $26. I was excited to read this, given what the author was trying to do, but it was a little disappointing. These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Perhaps the most interesting were the interviews with the current and just immediately past generations both black and white and their stories and reactions to his wanting to find out how it really was. another drawing room, bathrooms, and, on the top floor, three more bedrooms, baths, a laundry. In Muscovy and China, slave owners could sell or will children apart from their parents, but marriages were inviolable. Essential Source to Understand Americas Fractured Identity, Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2021. I learned a lot, and then the emotions came--it was hard to fathom some of the events that took place. : It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness. tour, to an old church and down some dirt lanes, felt strange. .orange-text-color {font-weight:bold; color: #FE971E;}Enjoy features only possible in digital start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more. "There are five thing, we don't talk about in the Ball family", he would say. Please try your request again later. deposit the lode in archives around the South, until nearly all of them came to rest in public hands. . The author explores genealogy and history, via interviewing descendants from both groups. It must have been difficult, especially when he wasn't well received. Click on Remote Playlists. Cheryl B, Insightful, but a Challenging Book to Read, well-written, powerful confrontation with evil and family. knows how rare that is. Now "Slaves in the Family" tells the true story of the This was the only part of the book where Ball seemed to have an agenda. While Ball tries to explain the motives of the slave owners (it boils down to money and power), he certainly does not romanticize plantation life. is reissued by FSG Classics, with a new preface by the author. Web(CNN) -- Between 1698 and Emancipation, the Ball family of South Carolina owned 235 plantations and close to 4,000 slaves. three hundred people lived in slavery there. (the two did not always come together), and a village of people could be her dowry. Every morning, I walked to the cobblestone block of Edward Ball, the descendant of South Carolina slave masters, sets out to trace the lineage of the slaves who lived on his ancestors' plantations. I was able to follow all of the complex genealogy and most of the historical information; it was kind of like a college course for me in the beginning. The same no doubt happened among black families as each drifted farther from the plantation. On the way back to Charleston, Dad stayed quiet about George. WebThe thesis of Edward Ball 's book Slaves in the Family is that there is much to be learned from having an honest conversation about the legacy of slavery in the United States but These may seem like big numbers, but they are a tiny current in the sea: nearly four million black Americans were affected by the Emancipation Proclamation. I read through the Ball papers, beginning with the story of the first Elias Ball, who died in 1751, at, (C) 1998 Edward Ball All rights reserved. As someone who is interested in genealogy, this book was fascinating. , Publisher "There's George," said Dad, pulling the four-door to a stop. In his later years. Their plantations were among the oldest and longest-standing plantations in the South. Absolutely fascinating and god-awful tragic. The book is so well written that it holds your attention even though there is a lot of genealogical material in it. He often put on a three-piece suit and ribbon tie, except in summer, when he pared down to starched shirts. Myths and lacunae slip to the ground when he asks basic questions. The prospect of the family reunion pushed me, finally, to come to terms with it. Soon Dad took my brother, children to join a faction of exiled Confederates. In the Ball family, the tale of Wambaw Elias and his slaves passed as a children's story. This is a very interesting and awesome story of how slaves became part of the white families, even though it was never talked about. We felt Edward Ball was brave to tackle this topic, despite his unpopularity with his family and some readers. A forestry company had bought much of the family land and planted pine trees. Remember your ancestors may have been slaves and finding that out opens up certain realizations. 3 Oct 2022. the spelling of its name to Zeringue, the better to glide through the French-speaking caste of Louisiana slave owners. had manners, others none; some had money and status, some neither. Standing on the High Battery, he would raise his cane to his shoulder like a rifle, and, aiming the stick at Fort Sumter, Fafa Demasio. Does this item contain inappropriate content? He is not afraid to reveal the truth and this makes his "story" so authentic. shows the ways that slavery lives on in black and white memory and experienceand illuminates the uncertain path to redress. someone bought it. Check local listings to see where you can watch. Job Market | The slave revolt He had about a hundred and fifty slaves, and he was a mean fella.". A yellowing photograph of the Seven Oaks mansion used to hang in the hall of our house. Which the author is white, but I guess I expected more care with the descriptions, maybe if it was written more recently it would have better better in this sense. It is a work about slaves in the family. the water, Fort Sumter, the old defense bulwark built on all island at the entrance to the harbor. Finding that his family plantations kept extensive records, he traces slave families and individuals held by his ancestors. bit like doing psychoanalysis on myself. Sorry, there was a problem loading this page. More than twenty years after this celebrated work of narrative nonfiction won the National Book Award and changed the American conversation about race. . Its walls and mantelpiece, made from thick cypress, glowed like all old page. Slave owners rarely became artists. pointing over George's head to some mile-away place. Forums | It is an unprecedented family record that reveals how the painful legacy of slavery continues to endure in America's collective memory and experience. The youngest was less Between 1698 and 1865, close to four thousand black people were born into slavery under the Balls or were bought by them. How many people might be descended from Ball slaves? founder of the family, had been sold away and was later knocked down. WebThe slave auction was the epitome of slavery's dehumanization. dreams. Charles could not hear the defeat of the Confederacy; after the war, he fled the country for Brazil, leaving behind his wife and six On Tuesdays episode of Dr. Phil, "'Should We Allow Reparations to Black Americans?'" and sentimental (how touching the cast of family characters!). (The War Between the States is With all this, the Ball men owned most of the people, controlled most of the land, fields were put to rest. Each plot was surrounded by a "rice bank," art earthen levee several feet high and perhaps two hundred yards long on four sides of the field. Simply, Ball slaves were people owned by members of the Ball family whose, lives could be traced in the surviving files. He writes movingly about the treatment of the slaves and about his encounters with their descendants. They were construction workers, realtors, schoolteachers, lawyers, secretaries, homemakers, professors, physicians, students, and librarians. A few societies, such as late Assyria and Muscovy, allowed slaves to testify in court, but most did not. Oh well. Babylonian, Hebrew, Tibetan-speaking Nepalese Nyinba, Siamese, and American Southern slave Two blocks from the empty Branford-Horry House stands a pink stucco building, the South Carolina Historical Society, repository for records of former rice planters, including some of the Ball papers. Enter a name in the Playlist Name field (Example: TV) and delete all existing data and all spaces in the Playlist link Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app. Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball is an impressive book, demonstrating years of research, interviews and exploration. I have a few of his manuscripts. on to try to explain it. Though the paper record had gaps, it answered the need for detail better than hearsay could. Through painstaking research and wonderful storytelling Ball tracks down his ancestors, both white and black, and tells the story of slavery in this country from the point of view of one prominent family. When the Revolutionary War reached the South, Wambaw Elias, instead of joining the American rebels, went to the British commander in Charleston, There was a problem loading your book clubs. Four French doors opened onto the piazza, which overlooked the street like an outdoor room. It wasn't merely that Dad was a clergyman, though certainly that set us apart; but "our people" had once controlled a slave dynasty. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold. and in-laws owned more land and people. Sadists, even psychopaths, who could not cope with their right of total dominance over another human being, might appear anywhere, as might kindly masters. I enjoyed this book a great deal. I also felt shame about the broken society that had washed up when the tide of slavery receded. The story of his slave-owning family, part of the weave of his childhood, was a mystery he could only partly decipher. Enslaved people were sold to the person who bid the most money, and family members were often split-up.READ Marie "the Ball slaves," a puff of black smoke on the wrinkled horizon of the past. It does get a little deep in places but there is so much information that I have never read about before. WebOpen the settings menu. The Ball family hails from South CarolinaCharleston and thereabouts. that preserved their property rights when they left to marry, and they affected the families they joined. Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. It subtly challenges whites to revise self-serving views of the past You won't regret reading this book. Homicide of a slave by a stranger was a revealing test of a societys attitude toward the slave. While it got a little long at the end, the story closes with Ball standing on a dock in Sierra Leone, where the slaves were shipped by thier African captors to the waiting European slave ships. I've got Balls in my line. Webt. It takes a lot of courage to cold call black people and be like, "Hi, my great-grandfather owned your great-grandmother. They assembled people, land, My brother, Ted, and Oral tradition suffers from scarcity and omission. Must read for anyone who has an interest in slavery, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2015. The progeny of a single couple, Isaac (the Confederate) Ball and his wife, Mary Louisa Moultrie Ball, numbered about 150 and lived in fifteen states. Some societies did not allow third parties to assault slaves with impunity. I have very strong feelings when it comes to reparations, because my family received a form of reparations, says Patrice. Charles Rowley later went into the military, became a commissioned officer, and when the Civil A granddaughter of the master of Seven Oaks, Marie Constance Zeringue, married a man named Yves Caesar LeCorgne. At the other extreme, in the American South material conditions were sufficiently favourable to provide comparative comfort for both masters and slaves. Some signed a prenuptial agreement Most of the rest were wiped aside in waves of demolition that began in the 1900s. Journalist Ball confronts the legacy of his family's slave-owning past, uncovering the story of the people, both black and white, who lived and worked on the Balls' South Carolina plantations. After a century of intermarriage among the few white families on the Cooper River, the Balls were kin to most of their neighbors. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Edward Ball, Winner of the 1998 Nonfiction Award for Slaves in the Family", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slaves_in_the_Family&oldid=1114331625, National Book Award for Nonfiction winning works, Articles needing additional references from May 2021, All articles needing additional references, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 5 October 2022, at 23:57. This double search--at This book by Edward Ball took me a week or so to read. Similar to KINFOLK, there were so very many people covered that I lost track of who was who, but since it was my second book in this vein, I rolled with it this time and just took each anecdotal history as it came. I have traced my family history back a long way and found the link to those in this book. A long strip of yellowed newsprint, the clipping carried the headline "Isaac Ball, 88, Confederate, Dies." 253 pp. "One day you'll want to know about all this," Dad said, waving his hand vaguely, his lips pursed. Losses in some areas exceeded even that 61 percent. the library to read the family records, housed in climate-controlled rooms like specimens of an extinct bird. Business | Who were their loved ones? This is the story of the author's research into his family's past as slave owners and slave traders. Elsewhere, however, it was different. Absolutely fascinating!! Babylonian, Hebrew, Tibetan-speaking Nepalese Nyinba, Siamese, and American Southern slave owners thought nothing of breaking up both the conjugal unit and the nuclear family. My new Charleston home had no resemblance to my former New York apartment. For half an hour my brother and I sat simmering on the hot vinyl seats of the car, swatting mosquitoes. the waters of Charleston harbor. This is an important book. "Wambaw Elias was a Tory," Dad began. The ending felt forced. I learned much about so many things that it is too much to write about. The picture showed a whale of a building in Greek Revival style; six two-story columns lined each of the four facades, making twenty-four Doric columns all the way at Seven Oaks (built in 1840) were the property of one of my mother's maternal ancestors, Michael Zehringer. Site Index | I don't understand how anyone could justify owning, imposing, theiving life from others, even if they are related to me. In North America, India, Rome, Muscovy, most of the Islamic world, and among the Tuareg a fundamental principle was that the slave could not own property because the master owned not only his slaves body but everything that body might accumulate. WebSlaves in the Familytalks about a man (Ball) who does an extensive research on the genealogy of both his family, one of the wealthiest and well-known slave holding family in South Carolina, and the families of the slaves which were owned by his ancestors. "Slaves in the Family" recounts Edward Ball's painstaking research into the history of his family, the first of whom settled near Charlestion at the end of the 17th century. Paradoxically, by describing , Word Wise Most societies, such as those in Athens, Rome, Kievan Rus, Thailand, and Louisiana, did not allow slaves to contract independently with third parties, although some allowed the slave to make a contract on his owners behalf. Very interesting and engaging read. Some other people in his family get angry about it, urging him not to do it, and most other people in his family seem content to just tell themselves that their ancestors were nicer than the average slave owner. The sugar fields, workers, and mansion a thin old man wearing a blue workshirt. The Balls live side by side with black families for six generations, but the story, as I knew it, was divided in two. Edward Ball is a great writer, he doesn't just throw fact after fact at you like a lot of writers of this type book. This book made me realize that many whites, including myself, have another part of their family history in the US that is buried and needs to be discovered. in the 1830s by an heiress named Ann Ball. BALL FAMILY were embossed. : Their children and grandchildren were Ball cousins, in the same family realm, and ties thinned slowly. Ball is telling these many stories and sharing what others know about the history. Ball, a descendant of one of the largest slave-owning families in the South, discovered that his ancestors owned 25 plantations, worked by nearly 4,000 slaves. It covered with beige stucco that was cracked and chipping away. Did the plantations form part of my identity?. guttural sounds. To judge from its place, the bank was once part of Comingtee and had been built by Ball slaves. The subject of the plantations stirred conflicting emotions. Whether a slave was needed for cooking, for childcare or as a concubine, during the late Roman republic at least, supply was high and trade was brisk. Zehringer's grandfather had come to Louisiana in 1720 from Franconia, a section of Bavaria; later the family changed "Your ancestors." twenty of them along the Cooper River, north of Charleston. Built in the 1750s, the three-story house had three drawing rooms, five bedrooms, five baths, a kitchen, a ballroom, a library, an attic, a basement, and forty-eight windows--and was now entirely empty. Ball is quite a good writer and manages to bring to life the dry facts he found in the records. Chose it as part of my Black History education. I wish many descendants of slaves could read this book and know that their distant cousins can indeed experience some of the emotional toll of the diabolical system that harmed so many people--yet inadvertently brought us the many cultural riches that gleam in the American fabric. WebSLAVES IN THE FAMILY. Maybe Charles believed that if he had remained in the United States he would have been persecuted for Rather than make art, slave owners collected things. the normal encouragements of parents who wanted their children to rise. Author, Edward Ball, takes on a monumental task of tracing not only the roots of his slave-owning family, but also those of the slaves. I remember the suffocating heat that seemed to radiate up from the ground I was totally impressed by what the author did. The progeny of slaves and the progeny of slave owners are forever linked. Some voices surprised me, like one ex-slave's loyal, self-abasing yet sincere letters to his former masters (of which his descendant was embarrassed). Try again. A workable definition of the Ball family for the purposes of my investigation soon appeared: they were men and women born with the name, women who took the name Ball with marriage, and one generation of the offspring of Ball daughters who had acquired It also helped be better understand the African-American experience. After this encounter, the rest of the day's Copies of a few documents of later date (August 18, 1856-September 8, 1858) are included. (Why has no one written a novel about them yet?). Ball is also interested in the people these plantation owners purchased who worked the land and kept their homes. 2 Rolls. "His plantation was on Wambaw Creek. I heard about this book through reading Thulani Davis' MY CONFEDERATE KINFOLK, and I'm glad I followed up. In the family of my mother's father, the Rowleys, were more slave owners. Should the federal government pay reparations to the descendants of enslaved people? The park contains a grove of oaks with overhanging moss and an octagonal bandstand, and is framed on two sides by During slavery, the family had more than a dozen city residences in addition to the plantations out of town. (Georgia Archives Microfilm #231/16-17) This microfilm publication reproduces six volumes of correspondence of the Secretary of the Navy relating to African colonization, January 5, 1819-May 29, 1844. Eventually he I came across an interview that was done with the author on an old Oprah Winfrey show. A few wrote memoirs or poetry, but the family mainly turned out letters and account books. in Semiotics. Click on Remote Playlists. He has taught at Yale University and has been awarded fellowships by the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the New York Public Librarys Cullman Center. Limerick, Pawley, and Quenby. : By a conservative estimate, in the year 2000 there would be at least seventy-five thousand living descendants of former Ball slaves in the United States, and by a slightly By the time of the photograph, the plantation had long passed out of the family and stood abandoned and decrepit. At the start of the 1900s, the family began to It gives insights into the history of plantations in the South and on the complicated, nuanced interpersonal relationships between enslaved people and the families that owned them that Ive never read anywhere else. Dominating the street side was a large wooden porch, what in Charleston is called a piazza. Edward Ball is descended from one of the largest slaveholding families in the South. When I was twelve, Dad died and was buried near Charleston. It was a rare society that permitted a slave to serve as a witness against his owner, but some societies, such as ancient Nuzi and Muscovy, allowed slaves to testify against, even to sue, third parties. The Ball women stayed closely involved with their parents' home even after they departed for a husband. The front door opened into a wide central hallway, on either side tip of a peninsula that forms the oldest part of Charleston, there is a delicate little park called White Point Gardens. Additional gift options are available when buying one eBook at a time. .orange-text-color {font-weight:bold; color: #FE971E;}View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look. Loved it! A distant cousin, long dead, had written the manuscript, and the book was printed in 1909 on rag paper, with a tan binding and green cloth boards. WebGreen Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, members of the vanguard 1847 pioneer company, were enslaved to Mormon families at the time of their pioneer journey. , Sticky notes : Learn more. Please try again. Brief content visible, double tap to read full content. Slavery traders tried to cheat Africans with impure Cornish copper, says study. The author explores his family origins, dating to his English immigrant ancestors to America and their becoming major planters in South Carolina. From this place it is possible to see, far out in His Ball cousins This award winning (national book award) was sheer pleasure to read. The brutal deprivation of rights was expressed in the Alabama case Creswells Executor v. Walter (1860); the slave, said the court, had no legal mind, no will which the law can recognize. Dr. Phil and his guests debate whether reparations should be given to Black Americans. : Sitting on her backporch, listening to her unfiltered, affectionate, loving even, reference shocked my young-adult-in-the-70s heart in such an explosion that I am pretty sure guilt will cover me for the rest of my life. On the spine the words On one porch sat Dad used to call him Isaac the Confederate to distinguish him from the seven other Isaacs in The treatment of slaves in expansive, dynamic societies was likely to be worse than in more stable ones. Download Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball in PDF EPUB format complete free. This book makes great reading for anyone interested in genealogical research, slavery and the history of the American South. "[citation needed]. The family stories he tells and the way he connects families through history - his own and those of others -draws the reader through a dark period of American history that still evokes strong emotions today. America was beginning to work through the tragic parts of its history, and the Ball name, once admired in a small corner of the country, seemed likely to become a casualty of that process, painted with infamy. Archives | : he might say. Unable to add item to List. That provision found its way into the Code of Justinian. plaster. , Edward Ball, a descendant of Elias Ball, has written a nonfiction American saga. (Rowley is my middle name.) The book discusses slavery on the rice plantations of South Carolina and larger issues of the slave trade, changing political climates, etc, but the focus is on this man's family and the families they owned. Some of the South's plantations were now I find myself repeatedly recommending it to people. Just across the stream from Comingtee lay another former Ball place, Dean Hall, whose big house still stood in good shape. We have been in each other's lives. There was more uniformity across systems regarding legal relationships between slave owners. 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Intermarriage among the oldest and longest-standing plantations in the Ball family Papers, '' Dad began the,... And exploration to those in this book was well written and I it. Of intermarriage among the oldest and longest-standing plantations in the air KINFOLK, and they the! The better to glide through the French-speaking caste of Louisiana slave owners and traders... The prospect of the slaves and about his encounters with their descendants an impressive book, demonstrating of..., north of Charleston in the hall of our house took place I remember the suffocating that! Understand Americas Fractured Identity, Reviewed in the United States on July 15,.... To some mile-away place its walls and mantelpiece, made from thick cypress, glowed like all old page Africans!