Slaves in (my) Family

Chicago is celebrating St. Patrick's Day today, even though the famous South Side parade was canceled this year.  Since I'm a Northsider, have no Irish blood, and descend instead from the English oppressors, I'm avoiding the whole subject (though I already had to dodge a bunch of drunken people in green on my morning run).  Instead I thought I would write about something much less controversial: slavery.

I just caught up on last night's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? featuring football (and dancing) great Emmitt Smith discovering that, while he is of overwhelmingly African ancestry, he likely also descends from a white slaveowner.  The episode reminded me of the finest ancestral-search memoir I've read, Edward Ball's Slaves in the Family.  Ball is a descendant of the once wealthy and powerful South Carolina clan of the same surname.  He explores his family's slave-owning heritage on their massive plantation, then tracks down his present-day black cousins, many of whom welcome him into the fold.    

When I was growing up, my family talked in whispers about our slave-owning ancestors--the Phelps family of Richmond, Kentucky, who had a plantation called Dreaming Creek Heights.  (The house and property have long since vanished.)  We have a Phelps will from the early 1800s in which a handful of slaves are named, but in this book excerpt, Samuel Phelps's estate is listed as 2,000 acres with 100 slaves.  I cannot explain how my direct ancestors--people who were Christian, highly-educated and charitable--could believe this to be right. 

While the memoir I'm working on is meant to be humorous and light in tone, the challenge will be to write about the ugly discoveries as well as the funny ones.  As many more talented voices than mine have pointed out, a thin line separates comedy from tragedy--whether one is speaking of the complexities of Irish nationality or of our country's (and my family's) not-too-distant past.