“This Ancestor Went to Market…”
For 2023, I’m writing responses to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompts provided by Amy Johnson Crow on her ”Generations Café” website and Facebook page.
My 6th great-grandfather owned a lot of land in colonial Virginia – specifically, in Stafford County. His land was in Overwharton Parish – currently the home of Marine Corps Base Quantico, about 35 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.
Along with his land, he also owned human beings – his will orders the disposition of 19 souls, but I don’t have a specific number of the number of persons he held in bondage over the course of his life.
This means that he participated in the slave trade – the market in which the value of human beings was determined by market supply and demand.
This part of his will is related to his 10th child, my 5th great-grandfather John Botts. Earlier sections of the document provide for the distribution of his land, personal property, and other enslaved persons. As the last child of the family, John did not receive any land from his father. He lived for a few years on property owned by his older brother and then took off for Kentucky, where he was living by 1790. He undoubtedly took Solomon, Anthony, Sarah, and whatever “increase” she may have produced between 1776 (when Seth died) and 1790.
It is popular to say, these days, that slaveholders were the product of their times, and that we shouldn’t judge them by modern standards. I don’t buy that – there were plenty of abolitionists even in the earliest days of chattel slavery in colonial America. They knew that this was wrong. They just couldn’t figure out a way to stay wealthy without slaves, so they rationalized the “peculiar institution” for several hundred years. In 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following:
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.”
NOTE: Jefferson did not free the enslaved persons he held in bondage. He couldn’t afford the financial hit. He fathered children with one of the enslaved persons he held.
Through my research, I have discovered that Seth Botts also fathered children with one of his enslaved persons. Here’s something I wrote about that in 2022.
I am not responsible for what Seth Botts (and other slaveholders) did. That is between them and their God. But I am aware of the benefits I gained from Seth’s wealth. His white descendants (including the generations between him and me) reaped the benefits of free labor for decades while his black descendants were held in bondage for almost another century before being freed to make their way in a society that generally wanted nothing to do with them. My ancestors took advantage of military bounty land programs and things like the Homestead Act and various Oklahoma Land Runs. Seth’s black descendants had little access to these benefits.
Seth’s white descendants (including my father, who served in World War II) could take advantage of the GI Bill and federally subsidized housing loans. Again, Seth’s black descendants could not generally access these benefits. See, although black military veterans could take advantage of the GI Bill, they had to find a college that would admit them. Many colleges were not integrated for decades after World War II. And FHA loans? We’ll talk about redlining another day.
The only thing I can do to rectify the horrors that Seth and other slaveholders perpetrated is to work for equality in the world I live in today. That’s why I live and vote the way I do.
Wow. I have not come upon that in my own research. Also, so far, my ancestors were manual and skilled laborers. I have benefitted from the color of my skin and the relatives who accrued wealth in other ways. Of that I have no doubt. Just knowing my own recent history, though, guides my thinking in what I do and how I vote. How can the weight of history not inform us? I hear you.
Her “increase”…I’ve not seen that before. Awful!