Slavery

[Horn_Spanker 524]

I've been working on my genealogy for at least 20 years and have never found an ancestor to be a slave owner even though all my roots are southern, until today.

I was researching through a 1840 Baton Rouge newspaper and found the police report section stating they had picked up a black guy named Bob who said he belonged to Horn_Spanker's GGGG-grandfather, and for GGGG-grandfather to come pick him up.  There was a list of other held slaves to be picked up so it looked common for the police to do this.

The reason it struck me to post this is, GGGG-grandfather had immigrated from Germany just a few years earlier.  As far as I know, slavery was not a thing in early 1800s Germany.  What prompted him to buy slaves when his upbringing frowned on such practices?  Was he thinking back in Germany, "when I get to Louisiana, I'm gonna buy some slaves" or, when he got here he realized he needed them?  Maybe he was just an asshole?

[Deej 76972]

Everybody gives the cops a fake owners name when they get stopped. I wouldn't worry about it. 

Edited June 5, 2018 by Deej

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

17 minutes ago, Horn_Spanker said:

I've been working on my genealogy for at least 20 years and have never found an ancestor to be a slave owner even though all my roots are southern, until today.

I was researching through a 1840 Baton Rouge newspaper and found the police report section stating they had picked up a black guy named Bob who said he belonged to Horn_Spanker's GGGG-grandfather, and for GGGG-grandfather to come pick him up.  There was a list of other held slaves to be picked up so it looked common for the police to do this.

The reason it struck me to post this is, GGGG-grandfather had immigrated from Germany just a few years earlier.  As far as I know, slavery was not a thing in early 1800s Germany.  What prompted him to buy slaves when his upbringing frowned on such practices?  Was he thinking back in Germany, "when I get to Louisiana, I'm gonna buy some slaves" or, when he got here he realized he needed them?  Maybe he was just an asshole?

I call bullshit. Who names a slave Bob ?  

[msbesq 387]

Practicing for Jews?

[Guest]

I hate Louisiana Nazis. 

[Helobious 9467]

 

[ajax 2623]

When my dad was younger he owned a Members Only jacket. Sometimes you get swept up in a regrettable trend. 

[MAUFRAIS 6642]

it was like finding out your neighbor has a boat

[Doc Reeves 6434]

39 minutes ago, Horn_Spanker said:

I've been working on my genealogy for at least 20 years and have never found an ancestor to be a slave owner even though all my roots are southern, until today.

I was researching through a 1840 Baton Rouge newspaper and found the police report section stating they had picked up a black guy named Bob who said he belonged to Horn_Spanker's GGGG-grandfather, and for GGGG-grandfather to come pick him up.  There was a list of other held slaves to be picked up so it looked common for the police to do this.

The reason it struck me to post this is, GGGG-grandfather had immigrated from Germany just a few years earlier.  As far as I know, slavery was not a thing in early 1800s Germany.  What prompted him to buy slaves when his upbringing frowned on such practices?  Was he thinking back in Germany, "when I get to Louisiana, I'm gonna buy some slaves" or, when he got here he realized he needed them?  Maybe he was just an asshole?

Family is German came over in 1840’s to the Chicago/Wisconsin area with a large group of other Southern Germans and Austrians. 

While they were all Lutheran (slavery was a big no-no) some of my family did marry into families that had slave holdings

My understanding, the way it was explained to me, was that while most Germans at the time were culturally predisposed abolitionists, there were other stron  cultural influences that called for Germans in a new land to adopt the ways of the land they emigrated to. Plenty of stories of Germans in Texas participating in the institution against their ideals because it was the law of the land.

[WhatTheBuck 28811]

When in Rome...

[Lhorn 4971]

Patrice O'Neil - I'd rep you if I could.

[bschoolprof 6273]

Your GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGF from Germany probably captured slaves from eastern europe during the 8-9th century and sold them to the muslims.  If you go back far enough, no one's hands are clean.  

[Guest]

1 minute ago, bschoolprof said:

Your GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGF from Germany probably captured slaves from eastern europe during the 8-9th century and sold them to the muslims.  If you go back far enough, no one's hands are clean.  

Speak for yourself. My lineage is pristine. Slightly sullied by current fuckhead generation dipping on planes. 

[CooterBrown 18034]

When my dad was younger he owned a Members Only jacket. Sometimes you get swept up in a regrettable trend. 

Every guy that participated in your mom’s record breaking gang bang thought the same thing.

[Doc Reeves 6434]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

When in Rome...

Fuck a Roman...

[phdhorn 6224]

37 minutes ago, bschoolprof said:

Your GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGF from Germany probably captured slaves from eastern europe during the 8-9th century and sold them to the muslims.  If you go back far enough, no one's hands are clean.  

Knowing my luck, I'm sure my GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG's were all butt-sex slaves.

[pearlandhorn 3274]

#GermanGGGGG-fatherslivesmatter. 

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

Jesus, none o' y'all gonna admit to having slaveholding ancestors? Were they Yankees or just poors? 

There is no personal shame for us in what our ancestors did. Guilt, but no shame. 

[Macanudo 13018]

We had serfs.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

6 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Jesus, none o' y'all gonna admit to having slaveholding ancestors? Were they Yankees or just poors? 

There is no personal shame for us in what our ancestors did. Guilt, but no shame. 

I know at least back to the early 1800's my ancestors couldn't afford slaves.

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

2 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

We had serfs.

Charlie don't serfs.

[El Diablo 4232]

17 hours ago, bschoolprof said:

If you go back far enough, no one's hands are clean.  

Some need go no further than the shart thread.

[next2naus 439]

19 hours ago, Doc Reeves said:

Family is German came over in 1840’s to the Chicago/Wisconsin area with a large group of other Southern Germans and Austrians. 

 

Doc...did they come down the St. Lawrence waterway? 

[Cheeseweasel 26438]

2 minutes ago, next2naus said:

Doc...did they come down the St. Lawrence waterway? 

Via Poland/Czechoslovakia. 

[woohorn 1131]

Jesus, none o' y'all gonna admit to having slaveholding ancestors?

Not me. I voted for Gary Johnson.

[deadshank 24653]

Bad Teammate and David Dennison need to weigh in and come up with a fitting punishment for OP’s sins.  

[atomheartbevo 89846]

8 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Jesus, none o' y'all gonna admit to having slaveholding ancestors? Were they Yankees or just poors? 

There is no personal shame for us in what our ancestors did. Guilt, but no shame. 

This. 

If we are generous and say each generation is around 30 years, most of us have 500-1000 direct ancestors (3rd or 4th great-parents and beyond) who would have been alive during peak slavery years. Now many of us had ancestors who came later on from other countries or who came from religious backgrounds that condemned slavery (we let shitloads of bog jumpers in for instance), but even if they came after the Civil War, they could have easily married somebody who had slave-owning ancestors. 

And slave ownership was much higher than many white Southern Pride types would like to admit.  Arkansas had the lowest at around 20% - it had been a part of Indian Territory and many Indians and whites who intermarried lost their slaves when they were sent on the Trail of Tears.

But South Carolina and Mississippi were rocking over 45% slave ownership. 

The 1860 census showed over 30% of white families in the South had at least one slave. 

[atomheartbevo 89846]

You all are in for a treat if you ever do any DNA tests and you find yourself related to, and contacted by, African-American descendants of slave-owning ancestors. 

And even better, if you had ancestors who were slaves. 

It’s not as awkward as it seems, unless there is evidence that your common ancestor was a slave-owner who may have raped his slaves. Even then, it’s not that awkward for most. 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

Who cares anyway ?  Your ancestors ain't you, or our modern culture.

[Uncle Nate 2097]

8 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Jesus, none o' y'all gonna admit to having slaveholding ancestors? Were they Yankees or just poors? 

There is no personal shame for us in what our ancestors did. Guilt, but no shame. 

Poor.  Very, very poor.

My German ancestors who came over in the 19th century were too poor to own slaves and I guess too ugly to marry any rich plantation owner's daughter.  So they married fellow poor and ugly and procreated to create their own legal slaves, aka children.  That's what poor farmers did back then...create an enslaved workforce through procreation.

[Kilgorehorn 308]

Why should I feel guilty because my ancestors owned slaves?

[po elvis 2082]

8 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Jesus, none o' y'all gonna admit to having slaveholding ancestors? Were they Yankees or just poors? 

There is no personal shame for us in what our ancestors did. Guilt, but no shame. 

Most of my lines came to Texas in the mid 1800's. They came from Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and they lived in Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia before that. I guess they kept going west because there was more available cheap land. Seems like if these people had land back East, and afforded slaves to work it , that they would have just stayed there? I do have one 4th g-grandfather who owned 30 slaves (1860 slave schedule) just southeast of the Austin airport. He came straight here from South Carolina. 

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

10 minutes ago, po elvis said:

 I do have one 4th g-grandfather who owned 30 slaves (1860 slave schedule) just southeast of the Austin airport. He came straight here from South Carolina. 

You racist bastard !!

[atomheartbevo 89846]

16 minutes ago, Kilgorehorn said:

Why should I feel guilty because my ancestors owned slaves?

Unless they went on to found the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, you shouldn’t feel any guilt about them. 

[Sawbonz 27633]

41 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

You all are in for a treat if you ever do any DNA tests and you find yourself related to, and contacted by, African-American descendants of slave-owning ancestors. 

And even better, if you had ancestors who were slaves. 

It’s not as awkward as it seems, unless there is evidence that your common ancestor was a slave-owner who may have raped his slaves. Even then, it’s not that awkward for most. 

I have at least one direct ancestor who was a slave. Maybe I can get a half acre and a couple of chickens when reparations finally happen 

[FORTY NINE TO ZERO 2652]

Grew up with my grandma telling stories of the Slave uprising in one of their family plantations in Louisiana.  It actually is an Interesting story where some of the slaves faught to protect the women and children from the uprisers (the men were away in the city)  

 

Funny thing is that in the end, the confederacy came and burnt down the plantation as well as their French bibles due to them being Creole French Catholics.   My family treated the civil war as an Anglo affair since Apparently their type wasn’t much liked by the Baptist southerners. 

 

 

[Newdoc 3453]

Trying to come up with post that assuages my potential guilt and/or shame or potentially alleviates my involvement due to poor ancestors.  Until then, I will leave this stock image as a placeholder...

 

[El Diablo 4232]

1 hour ago, Uncle Nate said:

Poor.  Very, very poor.

My German ancestors who came over in the 19th century were too poor to own slaves and I guess too ugly to marry any rich plantation owner's daughter.  So they married fellow poor and ugly and procreated to create their own legal slaves, aka children.  That's what poor farmers did back then...create an enslaved workforce through procreation.

Yep. Grandpa Diablo was a sharecropper and a shitty farmer at that. He had 11 indentured servants who could not WAIT to get the fuck off the farm. Sometimes when their own crops had failed he'd loan 'em out to somebody else and get paid in food for their labor.

[phdhorn 6224]

22 minutes ago, Xian said:

Funny thing is that in the end, the confederacy came and burnt down the plantation as well as their French bibles due to them being Creole French Catholics.   

In the French Bible God surrenders to the Philistines.

[El Diablo 4232]

6 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

In the French Bible God surrenders to the Philistines.

French is an interesting language.

hat?  chapeau

street? boulevard

smite? nope, nothing

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

7 hours ago, po elvis said:

Most of my lines came to Texas in the mid 1800's. They came from Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and they lived in Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia before that. I guess they kept going west because there was more available cheap land. Seems like if these people had land back East, and afforded slaves to work it , that they would have just stayed there? I do have one 4th g-grandfather who owned 30 slaves (1860 slave schedule) just southeast of the Austin airport. He came straight here from South Carolina. 

I took two classes on slavery and the Old South at UH. One of them was all reasearch, no classroom time. The prof was trying to assign names to every slave who ever lived in Texas and trace them from slavery days through to emancipation, when they got their last names. 

Anyway, one of my assignments in the research section was to pull out all the names from a document an Austin woman had put together for her family album. It was about 1920, I think, and she was trying to track down all the slaves from her old family's plantation and she did a pretty good job of it. And there were about 30 of them, and as I recall, that plantation stood about where you your family's was.  

I do remember that the slave "driver" -- meaning the boss slave, as opposed to the "overseer," the white boss of the slaves, was a man named Uncle Junius Washington, and he was either the father or grandfather of Uncle Seymour Washington, who can be seen here with Townes Van Zandt. 

 

[Kennythetiger 9483]

22 hours ago, Uncle Nate said:

Poor.  Very, very poor.

My German ancestors who came over in the 19th century were too poor to own slaves and I guess too ugly to marry any rich plantation owner's daughter.  So they married fellow poor and ugly and procreated to create their own legal slaves, aka children.  That's what poor farmers did back then...create an enslaved workforce through procreation.

So you're saying your mom's ugly then...?