the sins of our fathers...

[katster]

jillcaligirl, my sister, has been doing a lot of geneological research as of late.

First, she confirmed that yes, our family did at one point own slaves. (This is something I strongly suspected for a while -- the combination of a young enthusiastic baseball fandom and a appitite towards reading anything I could get my hands on led me to confront the phrase "Freed slaves (after the Civil War) often took on their former owner's surname." and having a baseball card of Cardinal/Padre shortstop Gerry Templeton...but that's a long story.)

Now, Jill tells me that my great-grandfather, my mother's mother's father, worked at the Japanese internment camp at Tule Lake, up on the California/Oregon border before coming back to Redding to work on the dam.

It's odd, knowing your family has had such contact with the inglorious moments of American history. And in some ways, to both know there's some guilt and shame there, and yet to not feel some of it...it's a complicated thing. As I suppose a person's relationship with history should be.

Comments

[lirazel.livejournal.com]

My relatives got here too late for the worst stuff... and besides, being Jewish immigrants, we get to pour guilt all over everyone for being anti-Semitic!

But my grandfather's family had a furniture store that sold furniture to Negros (as folks were then known) on credit at hideously high rates of interest. So they were in there trying...

[bmbeaver.livejournal.com]

If you want to explore more about the slavery connection and how it played out in another family, you should read 'Slaves in the Family' by Edward Ball. Very insightful.

[valliegirl.livejournal.com]

A good portion of my relations were immigrants that came in sometime after the civil war. Except for one part on my Mother's side that's French/Canadian and goes back to the first family to settle in Canada. Those relatives had a big family and broke off between New York/Conneticut and Michigan. My direct relatives were from the Conneticut progeny, but I grew up in Michigan and was related to about half of my town in that very removed sort of a way. It was funny the day I found out that my neighbors were also part of that same family. We still refer to each other as cousins.