Your Ancestors Owned Slaves!!

Excuse me but aren’t you ashamed of your family? 

Yes, I do have a few ancestors who owned slaves. The above question asked of me while I was explaining that one of my ancestors was a slave owner.  It’s strange but this wasn’t the first time to been asked that. I blogged on this same question almost five years ago.

     I never gave it a second thought, that is about hiding it. But some felt as though I should keep it to myself as if I had done something wrong. When you are truly passionate about searching to find your family’s history, if you think for one second you’re going to find nothing but angels, royalty, and fame…wake up! That’s why I love the name of my blog “Sweet Tea, Tart Lemons & Memories”. This particular find would fall into that “Tart” category, bitter and hard to swallow. I’ll be honest yes, it was somewhat of a shock and hard to swallow but that was part of my family. Now I want to be completely clear I don’t agree with what he did, I don’t in any way condone it. Yes, it’s wrong in my eyes to own another human being and treat them as if they are a piece of property. But as I explained it to her that was my 3x great grandfather, not me, and during that time in history that was believed to be the way of life.

1863 Cape Girardeau County, Missouri Tax Assessors’ Book

     It’s OUR history and it’s what makes us who we are today. If we all take time to look back into the history of our families we might not like everything that we see. But they are still family and you too don’t have to agree with what took place during that time in history.  You should however take the time to learn about what life was like back then. By doing so you just might begin to understand that not everything is as good or bad as you think.  Laws were different, medical treatments were different and the education system was even different. Many things have changed over time and why have they changed, because we have learned from our past. Granted some changes you might not agree with but these changes were made by viewing our past, our history.