Monday February 6, 2023
Reflection on having slaveholding ancestors
karen Horton
I always thought of my American ancestors as good people, like my doting grandparents. All of my grandparents were raised on farms, and three descended from early colonial settlers. My paternal grandfather’s ancestors were Dutch immigrants who arrived in the mid-Hudson Valley, New York, in the 1600’s. At about the time of the Revolutionary War some of their many descendants settled in a township bordering Connecticut, on what became a prosperous farm. The farm was handed down through generations until my grandfather was born there in 1900. I knew that Native Americans had been previously displaced from that farmland because my grandfather had a collection of arrowheads he had found. Our seventh grade New York state history classes and media of the day helped us all gloss over the horror the indigenous people experienced at the hands of European settlers, and only as an adult did that truth become more real to me. However, I don’t remember slavery in the colony being addressed in that class, even though Sojourner Truth was born in the Hudson Valley. Recently I read an article published online by the regional historical society exploring slavery in the area. It includes a portion of a will of one of my ancestors who died in 1805 who owned this farm where my grandfather was born. His will bequeaths to several individuals the following, and I quote, a “negro girl Sepora,” a “negro man named Harry,” a “negro woman named Ann,” and a “negro boy named Jake.” His will gives freedom to a “Negro man Peter and his wife Marie.” In New York enslaved people could only be freed if they could be shown to be self-sufficient. His will also stipulates that the freed man Peter is to receive, “a horse, equally as good as the one which he now calls and is known by his horse.” Reading that I descend from slaveholders was very disorienting. My confusion increased when I realized that at the time this will was written, my grandmother’s abolitionist Quaker ancestors and my grandfather’s slaveholding ancestors were surely acquainted, since they farmed in the same township. I wonder how they interacted. By the time my grandparents were born, each family had long been Presbyterian, so both families’ spiritual perspectives had changed in the century that included the Civil War. All this has caused me to ponder how the work of the enslaved people named in the will, and perhaps others, eventually resulted in the comfortable upbringing enjoyed by people I knew and loved. How to respond? For the time being I have settled on supporting non-profits in the Hudson Valley that help fill the gaps in our self-knowledge: an organization that preserves and develops programming around a local African burying ground; a museum that hosts Black History Conferences. In my musical pursuits I feel drawn to learn more of the vocal repertoire of African American composers, including arrangements of spirituals. I hope this new understanding of my own ancestry offers me directions for spiritual growth that I otherwise never would have imagined.