Slaves in My Past: A Family Story
Several years
ago, I received an odd query through Facebook, asking whether I was a
descendent of the Weisiger family that had migrated to Victoria, Texas, by way
of Virginia. I knew nothing about Texas, I replied, but my ancestors had headed
westward by way of Virginia and Kentucky, and I understood that all the
Weisigers were related. The correspondent then remarked that his family had once
had a “business relationship” with my family. I soon came to realize that this African American man, Chip Williams, meant that his ancestors had been slaves in my
family. My family tree intertwined with his. Their oldest-known “node” was Margaret Ellis, Chip's great great grandmother and the slave of Dr. Joseph Weisiger, my great-great great grandfather. Margaret
gave birth to William Ellis, who became an important trader in the U.S.-Mexico
borderlands. As far as the descendants could tell, William’s father was Margaret’s overseer,
Hazekiah Ellis, a man about whom little is yet known, except that he had
worked for the Weisigers in Kentucky. As I learned of this family story, I
recalled that my own family’s genealogist had
uncovered scraps of memorabilia about the family
plantation in Kentucky. It seemed like it was time to look at those scraps once again.
Slavery, of course, has been of abiding interest to professional historians. It is the paradox of American democracy, and perhaps no other issue has so engrossed the profession over the last half-century. Seldom, however, has the enslavement of African Americans in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands received the attention of scholars. One exception is Karl Jacoby, a noted historian and friend, who is writing a biography of William Ellis, a light-skinned, Spanish-speaking mulatto who reinvented himself as a border-crossing Cuban and become a figure of historical importance.
As I discussed the Ellis family history with his descendants, it became clear that the questions that intrigue historians are not necessarily so very different from those that families care about. That interest matters, because it is through family history that most Americans connect with the past. In Slaves in My Past: A Family Story, I will investigate the life of Margaret Ellis while illuminating the different approaches that professional historians and family genealogists use to study the past, including the questions they ask, the methodologies they employ, and the stories they tell. On one level, I will piece together the fragmentary history of a slave woman and two entwined family narratives. I will set that story within its broader context, to explicate the interrelationships between gender and race, and enhance our picture of slavery’s expansion into the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. On another level, I will reflect on the differences between the ways that family historians and professional historians think about the past, the significance of history, and our connections to it.
Slavery, of course, has been of abiding interest to professional historians. It is the paradox of American democracy, and perhaps no other issue has so engrossed the profession over the last half-century. Seldom, however, has the enslavement of African Americans in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands received the attention of scholars. One exception is Karl Jacoby, a noted historian and friend, who is writing a biography of William Ellis, a light-skinned, Spanish-speaking mulatto who reinvented himself as a border-crossing Cuban and become a figure of historical importance.
As I discussed the Ellis family history with his descendants, it became clear that the questions that intrigue historians are not necessarily so very different from those that families care about. That interest matters, because it is through family history that most Americans connect with the past. In Slaves in My Past: A Family Story, I will investigate the life of Margaret Ellis while illuminating the different approaches that professional historians and family genealogists use to study the past, including the questions they ask, the methodologies they employ, and the stories they tell. On one level, I will piece together the fragmentary history of a slave woman and two entwined family narratives. I will set that story within its broader context, to explicate the interrelationships between gender and race, and enhance our picture of slavery’s expansion into the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. On another level, I will reflect on the differences between the ways that family historians and professional historians think about the past, the significance of history, and our connections to it.
