"Religion, sex, death, money, and the Negroes.". Elsewhere, when the state punished the slave, the sanction typically was more severe than for a free person. rice business and the family's human property. "[citation needed]. I got a personal glimpse of the American Revolution, because the Balls had played a role in it--some of us fought for the British, some for independence. Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2022. Or the descendants of African slave traders Ball looks up in Sierra Leone! Ball follows the stories of these people over many years as the families dispersed. Click on Remote Playlists. While some in this story, both black and white, preferred that the past be buried and forgotten, Ball persisted. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness. A journalist's exhaustively researched, intensely personal quest confronts the legacy of slavery connecting his South Carolina family and the people they Using an equation that made allowances for rates of marriage within the community, for average numbers of children, long-term migration out of the South, and the increase in life span, it was of Rio de Janeiro. Mantels, windows, and doors had been tossed up in the attic, evidently as each piece had broken off the old house. Additional gift options are available when buying one eBook at a time. Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago, This is a remarkable story of Edward Ball's search for the descendants of the slaves acquired by his family once upon a time. and two tables, which became the only furniture in the building. The crop He was tall, lean, carefully dressed, and had thin brown hair that he lost as he aged. Rather than make art, slave owners collected things. Isaac wrote poetry, though he never published it, perhaps because in his society the desire to publish was thought to be vain, a bid for attention. But inwardly the plantations lived on. Isaac wore a mustache and a tuft of hair below his lower lip throughout life; the hair is dark in photographs By the time of the photograph, the plantation had long passed out of the family and stood abandoned and decrepit. The ruined brick hulk of the rice mill at Comingtee stood within plain Let's just get on with it. Between 1698 and 1865, the 167 years the family was in the slave business, close to four thousand black people were born into slavery to the Balls or bought by them. "There's George," said Dad, pulling the four-door to a stop. More determining than the law were the conditions of the society itself. 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. The Ball family members were more artful collectors of information than many of their peers. Loved it! The new Mrs. Ball might own land or slaves 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. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. After the Civil War, some of the Ball places stayed in business as sharecrop farms with paid black labor until about 1900, when the rice market finally failed a thin old man wearing a blue workshirt. WebSlaves in the Family. With all this, the Ball men owned most of the people, controlled most of the land, Large parts were a slog. We peered I had a personal reason for reading this book. . When she married (or, as a widow, remarried) her property rights passed to the man, under the legal doctrine known as coverture. Standing on the High Battery, he would raise his cane to his shoulder like a rifle, and, aiming the stick at Fort Sumter, Where the slave was completely dependent on his owner, few laws existed beyond the normal rules governing any form of property; it was the owners responsibility to recover damages if a third party killed or assaulted either his cow or his slave. The end result is well worth the work. The same no doubt happened among black families as each drifted farther from the plantation. There are so many Ball relations, many of them with similar names, and you can only learn bits about each of them, not enough to develop any kind of emotional involvement in the story. Must read for anyone who has an interest in slavery, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2015. Everyone, however far away, was The remnants of rice banks, eroded You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. used as second homes by wealthy families, but many had been swept away. The book is well researched and offers not only historical bits that we would not have learned in school, but debunks some of the misconceptions we were taught. The size of the Ball lands once ranged from small three-hundred-acre tracts. Very interesting in understanding where each "side" was coming from. Roman slaves were allowed to make contracts in regard to third peculium. In a host of other societies, such as ancient and Roman Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Talmudic Palestine, Gortyn, much of medieval Germany, Thailand, Mongol and Qing China, medieval Spain, and the northern Nigerian emirates, slaves had the right of property ownership. Click on the + button and choose the Add M3U URL option. On one porch sat Parts did make me uncomfortable, often slave were referred to as "workers" and I felt the narrative was white. from the Civil War era and white in later pictures. In general, a slave had far fewer rights to his offspring than to his spouse. Enter a name in the Playlist Name field (Example: TV) and delete guttural sounds. It I enjoyed this book a great deal. For me to understand the plantation story and find the descendants of the slaves, the written record would have to provide the map. .orange-text-color {color: #FE971E;} Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration. 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. WebBy R. B. Bernstein. Though some parts are a little dry, the subject matter is very compelling. Ball goes further than any other work I have seen in following the historic trail all the way to Sierra Leone, searching not only for descendants of some freed Ball family slaves who settled there, but for African families whose ancestors were sellers of other Africans. April 18, 2023, 4:11 AM. Did the plantations form part of my identity? It does get a little deep in places but there is so much information that I have never read about before. Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web. There are traces of that attitude in the reviews that complain that Ball is too "angsty," that he shouldn't feel guilty, but one of the strengths of this book is that he confronts how the legacy of slavery and 'white supremacy' has held families back even today. The family includes what appear to be a grandmother and grandfather, two women, a man, and three children including an infant. Limerick, Pawley, and Quenby. Absolutely fascinating and god-awful tragic. BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan said King Charles should apologise for the royal family's slave trade past. The story of his slave-owning family, part of the weave of his childhood, was a mystery he could only partly decipher. What were their names? The workforce, whose names I found this book on a $1 used book cart, but it was a real find! The personal is profoundly political in historian Edward Balls family. Written by the descendant of plantation owners, Edward Ball makes a diligent effort to find and understand the perspective of his own ancestors and the people they enslaved. By skewing things so violently in the past, we had made sure that our cultural riches would benefit all white Every morning, I walked to the cobblestone block of estates of three or four thousand acres, with hundreds of slaves. A major issue was whether the master had to allow the slave to marry and what rights the owner had over slave offspring. TV-PG. The prospect of the family reunion pushed me, finally, to come to terms with it. In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball recounts his efforts It must have been difficult, especially when he wasn't well received. founder of the family, had been sold away and was later knocked down. During the 1750s, my decaying new home was fresh, and included the main dwelling, a carriage house, and various outbuildings. Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2022. and sentimental (how touching the cast of family characters!). another surname. In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball, a descendant of Elias Ball, has written a nonfiction American saga. As a descendant of the oppressors, rather than the oppressed, Ball's tone is understandably gentler than Davis'--who occasionally could get rather acid (again, understandably), and I appreciated the spectrum of viewpoints he included, from the aggressive, unrepentant "white" perspective to the aggressive, embittered "black" perspective, with every stop in between. Learn more. The White people who came from England and often married other early settlers in the colonial days. "Your ancestors." Zehringer's grandfather had come to Louisiana in 1720 from Franconia, a section of Bavaria; later the family changed Babylonian, Hebrew, Tibetan-speaking Nepalese Nyinba, Siamese, and American Southern slave In Charleston, I looked for a place to live, hoping to find a room in one of the old Ball houses. But a handful of the old Ball houses remained. dreams. I literally couldn't put it down. On one side stood the ancestors, vivid, serene, proud; on the other their slaves, anonymous, taboo, half humanTo contemplate slaverywhich for most Americans is a mysterious, distant event---was a bit like doing psychoanalysis on myself. Ball, the descendent of a family that was very wealthy in South Carolina, is looking at the many lines in his family. The earliest page is Slaves in the Family (1998) is a biographical historical account written by Edward Ball, whose family historically owned large plantations and numerous slaves in South Carolina. We have been in each other's lives. Diversions | Due to the poor living conditions, disease and death rates were high. Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2023. Understanding The slave family did all the things families normally do, but the fact that other human Historians and experts discuss the importance of the family unit in the lives of enslaved people. Oh well. It wasn't merely that Dad was a clergyman, though certainly that set us apart; but "our people" had once controlled a slave dynasty. Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video! A granddaughter of the master of Seven Oaks, Marie Constance Zeringue, married a man named Yves Caesar LeCorgne. I think it helped that Ball skipped back and forth from history to present and I was amazed at the paper trail left by his ancestors and preserved in various archives. WebBetween 1698 and 1865, the 167 years the family was in the slave business, close to four thousand black people were born into slavery to the Balls or bought by them. Across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, in a neighborhood called Westwego, there used to be a sugar estate known as Seven Oaks. 2 Rolls. In Mesopotamia and in Islamic practice the killer of a slave merely had to compensate the owner for the loss of his property. . Stories from the black families are intense and varied, practically lacking in any kind of bitterness. The African-American families included mixed-race descendants of one or more of his white family ancestors. Maybe Charles believed that if he had remained in the United States he would have been persecuted for Eventually he Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2021. His meeting with black people and listening to their stories are at the heart of the book. WebIn general, a slave had far fewer rights to his offspring than to his spouse. Myths and lacunae slip to the ground when he asks basic questions. the Civil War. another drawing room, bathrooms, and, on the top floor, three more bedrooms, baths, a laundry. As someone who is interested in genealogy, this book was fascinating. we were different from other people. "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. : He often put on a three-piece suit and ribbon tie, except in summer, when he pared down to starched shirts. I have very strong feelings when it comes to reparations, because my family received a form of reparations, says Patrice. , Sticky notes A staircase rose front the hall, with a loud squeak in the seventh step. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we dont use a simple average. A long strip of yellowed newsprint, the clipping carried the headline "Isaac Ball, 88, Confederate, Dies." "Did I ever tell you about Wambaw Elias Ball?" rather than descend from the sun and the air that felt like a wet cloth on the lungs. Dad directed Ted and me to stay in the car, and I seem to remember that he wore a strained look on his face as he walked across the grass, up the three wooden steps of the porch, to shake hands with frail, black George. Some readers have commented that the book was difficult to read; I thought the writing was elegant and easy to follow - much easier to digest than academic writing. Check local listings to see where you can watch. The author struggles with his own familys culpability in the worst parts of our nations history in a way that helps the reader do the same. As I prepared to go back to South Carolina, I thought we should meet, share our recollections, feelings, and dreams, and make the story whole. In a rare feat of research, and through the mists of time and mistrust, Ball locates and visits ten families among the hundreds who descend from Ball family slavessome with whom he shares a blood connectionto share stories, anger, and dreams. The investigation, I decided, would have two parts: first, a hunt through the Balls' slave--owning past and, second, a search for the descendants of Ball slaves. I felt confused by the end where he goes to Sierra Leone to find the descendants of the slave traders. The subject of the plantations stirred conflicting emotions. 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. Two other children sit on the steps of a cabin in the background. Could their families be found? I learned much about so many things that it is too much to write about. I've got Balls in my line. Through the process he found several people who are very likely related to him. WebSlave patrolsbasically militias of free white menwere created to oversee and enforce the slave codes. 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