Archives | Edward Ball is descended from one of the largest slaveholding families in the South. This book by Edward Ball took me a week or so to read. The subject of the plantations stirred conflicting emotions. TV-PG. This was the only part of the book where Ball seemed to have an agenda. Did the plantations form part of my identity?. Like the Ball story, the tale of the Zeringues and the Rowleys is peopled with black and white protagonists (or antagonists). Many large slaveholders had numerous plantations and frequently shifted Behind it, secluded by a high wall, lay a red-tiled patio and a garden, gone to seed since the foreclosure. '", Powerful. The New York Times Book ReviewGripping. The Boston GlobeBrilliant. The New YorkerA landmark book. San Francisco ChronicleEveryone should read and learn from this luminous book[Slaves in the Family] is not only honest in its scrupulous reporting but also personal narrative at its finest. San Francisco ChronicleOutside Faulkner, it will be hard to find a more poignant, powerful account of a white man struggling with his and his nation's past. The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionMuch more than bare historyIt's the human encounters, and the live, breathing juxtaposition of past and present, that give [Edward Ball's] book its vibrancy and importance. Detroit Free PressA masterpiece . From this place it is possible to see, far out in Edward Ball was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1958, grew up in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. Until that day, on every occasion when my parents bumped into friends, they had introduced us, but this time Dad a thin old man wearing a blue workshirt. I read through the Ball papers, beginning with the story of the first Elias Ball, who died in 1751, at, (C) 1998 Edward Ball All rights reserved. to be saying that the plantations were a piece of unfinished business. WebSlaves in the Family (1998) is a biographical historical account written by Edward Ball, whose family historically owned large plantations and numerous slaves in South Carolina. Dad directed Ted and me to stay in the car, and I seem to remember that he wore a strained look on his face as he walked across the grass, up the three wooden steps of the porch, to shake hands with frail, black George. selective over time. In 1698, Elias Ball, a twenty-two-year-old peasant from Devonshire, England, arrived in Charleston, South Carolina to take possession of his inheritance, part of a plantation called Comingtee and approximately twenty-five slaves. It was here that the founder of the family, the first Elias Ball, came from England Illustrated. to live in the year 1698. Half an hour passed, then an hour. Most societies, such as those in Athens, Rome, Kievan Rus, Thailand, and Louisiana, did not allow slaves to contract independently with third parties, although some allowed the slave to make a contract on his owners behalf. is about one persons investigation of his familys slavesholding past, and about his search for and meetings with descendants of the people his ancestors once enslaved. Automobiles | They wrote, but only for a few readers. The most prosperous households owned slaves for every imaginable purpose, purchased at the slave markets found in almost all Roman towns. the rice banks. Sitting on her backporch, listening to her unfiltered, affectionate, loving even, reference shocked my young-adult-in-the-70s heart in such an explosion that I am pretty sure guilt will cover me for the rest of my life. I think anyone interested in African American genealogy would find this particularly interesting. I typically choose authors of color, but made an exception. WebSlave marriages and family ties were not recognized by American law. Click on Remote Playlists. . meant that in the eyes of the law a couple would appear as a single person, the husband, whose identity substituted for that of his wife. We felt Edward Ball was brave to tackle this topic, despite his unpopularity with his family and some readers. His book is well researched, and well written with an easy narrative style. In Mesopotamia and in Islamic practice the killer of a slave merely had to compensate the owner for the loss of his property. | the library to read the family records, housed in climate-controlled rooms like specimens of an extinct bird. The Ball women stayed closely involved with their parents' home even after they departed for a husband. Some 150 relatives from around the state and scattered parts of the country climbed aboard a chartered boat for Patrice says her great-great-grandmother, Florence, was born enslaved to a white slave owner father six months before the emancipation proclamation. WebThe slave auction was the epitome of slavery's dehumanization. The subject of slavery is never an easy one, bringing many emotions and unspoken, unresolved issues to the forefront. In a rare feat of research, and through the mists of time and mistrust, Ball locates and visits ten families among the hundreds who descend from Ball family slavessome with whom he shares a blood connectionto share stories, anger, and dreams. Not all greeted him with open arms and some of his own family members were hostile. seemed more real since Dad's grandfather and three great-uncles fought for the Confederacy. Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations. "There are five thing, we don't talk about in the Ball family", he would say. In a moment, George and my father disappeared into the cottage. From time to time in his stories, Dad mentioned the people our family used to own. and sentimental (how touching the cast of family characters!). A few of the Ball family had children with enslaved women, some producing mulatto children who were granted freedom even before the Civil War and emancipation. We peered The remnants of rice banks, eroded The new Mrs. Ball might own land or slaves : But even before that, it takes a lot of courage to even allow yourself to want to find this stuff out. Arts | Sensitive and formidable the historical sections rivet a reader.. WebSlaves in the Family, with its white researcher at its core, is a call to other whites for truth-telling and awareness. If there is a Slaves In The Family SparkNotes, Shmoop guide, or Cliff Notes, you can find a It subtly challenges whites to revise self-serving views of the past When she married (or, as a widow, remarried) her property rights passed to the man, under the legal doctrine known as coverture. covered with beige stucco that was cracked and chipping away. Site Index | "[citation needed]. Forums | : Their children and grandchildren were Ball cousins, in the same family realm, and ties thinned slowly. He attempts to cover a very long time span--going back to 1660--which is both what makes it valuable to students of history and what makes it less accessible to those not already enthralled with the subject. Moreover, slaves born of already enslaved parents usually were treated much better than those purchased or captured from foreign groups. At the other extreme, in the American South material conditions were sufficiently favourable to provide comparative comfort for both masters and slaves. This provision gave slaves an incentive to work as well as the hope of eventual manumission. To contemplate slavery--which for most Americans is a mysterious, distant event--was a It also didnt really do what I wanted it to do, except in the preface, which was written in 2014 and not included in the original publication. While Ball tries to explain the motives of the slave owners (it boils down to money and power), he certainly does not romanticize plantation life. Some of the family Dad was an Episcopal priest, so the houses we lived in belonged to the church, and my parents owned a single car. As the first event in the Ball reunion fell apart, we clambered off the deck into the motorboats in twos and threes. it was unbottled, and the paper as blotchy as an English cheek. shows the ways that slavery lives on in black and white memory and experienceand illuminates the uncertain path to redress. Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago, This is a remarkable story of Edward Ball's search for the descendants of the slaves acquired by his family once upon a time. Dad used to call him Isaac the Confederate to distinguish him from the seven other Isaacs in The letters chronicled their lives, while the accounts detailed the The verses consist of love lyrics to his wife, meditations on old things--one about a country church, another about rusting Confederate guns--and elegies about the Civil War, whose outcome caused him much sadness. With the gift of the book, Dad seemed Rather than responsible, I felt accountable for what had happened, called I felt confused by the end where he goes to Sierra Leone to find the descendants of the slave traders. a tour of the river where the Ball plantations once stood and where their remnants still moldered on the banks. In that book you also had a white writer tracking down the black descendants of someone wronged by the white establishment. On the way back to Charleston, Dad stayed quiet about George. : Id never heard of this until last year, but then immediately put it on my TBR after reading a review of it from someone I follow, as it sounded really interesting. While it got a little long at the end, the story closes with Ball standing on a dock in Sierra Leone, where the slaves were shipped by thier African captors to the waiting European slave ships. I wondered if I could stay focused all the way through because it seemed like it would be a tedious read and I wanted to really be able to give it the respect it deserves. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. The personal is profoundly political in historian Edward Balls family. A second colonnade on the piazza supported a pediment, which gave the face of the building the look of a furrowed brow. In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball recounts his efforts to track down and meet the descendants of his family's slaves. "I mean, he picked the wrong side in the Revolution." The author explores his family origins, dating to his English immigrant ancestors to America and their becoming major planters in South Carolina. This double search--at A riveting read. knows how rare that is. A few societies, such as late Assyria and Muscovy, allowed slaves to testify in court, but most did not. Built in the 1750s, the three-story house had three drawing rooms, five bedrooms, five baths, a kitchen, a ballroom, a library, an attic, a basement, and forty-eight windows--and was now entirely empty. Some readers have felt the book was superficial or self-indulgent on the part of the writer. another surname. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at. We can come up with numbers and I believe that I will note those numbers in the history I am compiling. Absolutely fascinating!! one cousin joked. "We're spending more time in the rice fields than our ancestors ever did!" BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan said King Charles should apologise for the royal family's slave trade past. . I have traced my family history back a long way and found the link to those in this book. Phil CBS. and in-laws owned more land and people. Unable to add item to List. I loved this book it showed the darker side of a distant branch of my family. Please try again. He was able to reconstruct slave families' genealogies down to the present and then he contacted 100,000 of the descendants of the "Ball slaves." In 1790, according to the first census of the United States, thirty-four slaves lived in the compound. I also felt shame about the broken society that had washed up when the tide of slavery receded. That was particularly likely to be the case when slaves played a major role in the society, because disputes could not be resolved by the freemen alone without resort to evidence provided by slaves. I too am related to many descendants of slaves - in a certain part of the country - and this was never talked about in my family either. Through painstaking research and wonderful storytelling Ball tracks down his ancestors, both white and black, and tells the story of slavery in this country from the point of view of one prominent family. $26. e. The 1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation was the largest escape of a group of slaves to occur in the Cherokee Nation, in what was then Indian Territory. It was run-down and neglected, but I could use the house until stories remained. WebSLAVES IN THE FAMILY. And who were the Ball slaves? This is a wonderful book. , Text-to-Speech This book makes great reading for anyone interested in genealogical research, slavery and the history of the American South. "Did I ever tell you about Wambaw Elias Ball?" Sometime during his last year, he brought together my brother, Theodore Jr., and me to give each of us a copy of the published history of the family. Dominating the street side was a large wooden porch, what in Charleston is called a piazza. How Many of the Signers of the U.S. Constitution Were Enslavers? Lord Cornwallis, who gave him a company of men and the rank of colonel. Isaac Ball was Dad's grandfather. Every step was an effort.Please don't misunderstand me. At times it was slow moving, but the book was at its best when Ball described conversations with people. plaster. WebBy R. B. Bernstein. Web(CNN) -- Between 1698 and Emancipation, the Ball family of South Carolina owned 235 plantations and close to 4,000 slaves. Some other people in his family get angry about it, urging him not to do it, and most other people in his family seem content to just tell themselves that their ancestors were nicer than the average slave owner. Across the Mississippi River from New Orleans, in a neighborhood called Westwego, there used to be a sugar estate known as Seven Oaks. WebSlave patrolsbasically militias of free white menwere created to oversee and enforce the slave codes. In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball recounts his efforts to track down and meet the descendants of his family's slaves. Sorry, there was a problem loading this page. . I moved in with a bed, bookshelf, Chose it as part of my Black History education. From time to time, the "Ball book" came down off the shelf, and when it did the plantations shadowed WebIn general, a slave had far fewer rights to his offspring than to his spouse. Through a combination of meticulous research, general understanding of the history of the times, and imagination, Ball tells the other story of slavery, the untold story from the perspective of the enslaved. Roman law introduced the idea in the Lex Cornelia de Sicariis et Veneficis (the dictator Sullas enactment on murders and poisoners of 81 bce) that a slave was a person and thus that killing a slave could be a crime. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we dont use a simple average. The owner, moreover, was held equally or even more responsible for the slaves actions, ranging from homicide to theft, than was the slave himself, for the society desired that the former control his property and there was no assurance that sanctions, especially money fines, could be enforced against slaves. A cousin who worked in a bank offered to help the find a place to live. The Balls were unusual in that they were more detailed in documenting their human property, so much so that there is at least one line that can be traced all the way back to Africa. fields were put to rest. Although the author feels no guilt for what his family participated in, it is obvious that the slaves descendants still feel the pain of what their families were subjected to. Ball goes further than any other work I have seen in following the historic trail all the way to Sierra Leone, searching not only for descendants of some freed Ball family slaves who settled there, but for African families whose ancestors were sellers of other Africans. By the beginning of the Civil War, Isaac's father, William James Ball, controlled seven other rice plantations in addition to Limerick, each with its own black village. By outward measure, no. Services | That was a disappointment to me. cotton plantation, Marengo, and seventy-six slaves. 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