Week 18: Where's There's a Will
I've seen a few wills in my searches for ancestors. I've even seen the wills of my immediate antecedents, and I've had one of my own (in dire need of updating) but the ones I can't forget are the ones leaving enslaved human beings to the children or grandchildren of the owner.
So, there is some murkiness about the relationship here but I am apparently descended from a man named Joseph Elgin of Charles County, Maryland whose daughter married a Prewitt. He was born in Port Tobacco, which did pretty much what you would expect from the name: they shipped tobacco from this spot on the Potomac. The river eventually silted up and the town has been stranded inland for many years now. Why do I know this? Because one of my children briefly lived a few miles from this spot, totally by accident as we had no idea at the time that we had any connection to Maryland's history. Port Tobacco in 2020 is a town of 13, the smallest incorporated town in Maryland as Google Maps helpfully tells me. This area is very rural now, and no one is growing tobacco as far as I know (though as history goes, that is a recent development).
Predictably, Joseph Elgin owned slaves, and he willed them to his children. It is hard and tragic to read this list of names and ages as they are bequeathed to this man's children along with various farm animals and parcels of land. In the copy of the will that I found, the appraiser's report is underneath, giving monetary value to the slaves.
Sometimes wills bring you face to face with things you'd rather not know.
Though I cannot for the life of me find it now, both my daughter and I remember reading a will from a different family member, emancipating her slave Lucy upon her death. I do remember telling this story to a fellow genealogy enthusiast, an African-/American woman who told me that I needed to post this (somewhere) as there were undoubtedly descendants of Lucy out there who would be glad to know more of their history. My friend runs into brick walls all of the time between her closed adoption and the Civil War, so I understand her desire to disseminate information when it is sometimes hard to find. But I did not do it and now I can't find it, so this story is doubly sad. I'll keep looking.
So, there is some murkiness about the relationship here but I am apparently descended from a man named Joseph Elgin of Charles County, Maryland whose daughter married a Prewitt. He was born in Port Tobacco, which did pretty much what you would expect from the name: they shipped tobacco from this spot on the Potomac. The river eventually silted up and the town has been stranded inland for many years now. Why do I know this? Because one of my children briefly lived a few miles from this spot, totally by accident as we had no idea at the time that we had any connection to Maryland's history. Port Tobacco in 2020 is a town of 13, the smallest incorporated town in Maryland as Google Maps helpfully tells me. This area is very rural now, and no one is growing tobacco as far as I know (though as history goes, that is a recent development).
Predictably, Joseph Elgin owned slaves, and he willed them to his children. It is hard and tragic to read this list of names and ages as they are bequeathed to this man's children along with various farm animals and parcels of land. In the copy of the will that I found, the appraiser's report is underneath, giving monetary value to the slaves.
Sometimes wills bring you face to face with things you'd rather not know.
Though I cannot for the life of me find it now, both my daughter and I remember reading a will from a different family member, emancipating her slave Lucy upon her death. I do remember telling this story to a fellow genealogy enthusiast, an African-/American woman who told me that I needed to post this (somewhere) as there were undoubtedly descendants of Lucy out there who would be glad to know more of their history. My friend runs into brick walls all of the time between her closed adoption and the Civil War, so I understand her desire to disseminate information when it is sometimes hard to find. But I did not do it and now I can't find it, so this story is doubly sad. I'll keep looking.
Comments
Post a Comment