Slaves in Our Family

Just as a rosy, bucolic picture of David and Polly Steele takes shape for me—complete with my hard-working, rustic-living ancestors nestled cozily by a creek in the backwoods of the Valley—I discovered letters and several legal documents that threaten to forever alter this idealized worldview.

I had already read David Steele’s 1803 letter to his daughter and son-in-law where David mentions that his daughter, Jenny, had promised to send them “a negro girl.” I conjectured that this request was an anomaly. I knew that slavery wasn’t a big part of the culture of the Valley. I reasoned that the request for a “negro girl” might be a desperate measure to help David’s aging and infirm wife, Polly, who according to other letters, had been physically suffering for many years. But now I know that two decades after this letter was written, David Steele owned at least ten slaves.

I know this because David entered into a legal agreement with his other son-in-law, Robert Steele, a cousin who had married David’s other daughter, Polly. In this document, David Steele gives Robert Steele six slaves. Robert was to keep these slaves during David’s lifetime, subject to certain conditions, and when David died, Robert would inherit the slaves outright.

Here are the people that David Steele gave to his son-in-law, Robert Steele: Tony, age 40 years; Barness, age 15 years; Fielder, age 9 years; Mary, age 7 years; Harriet, age 5 years; Thomas, age 4 years.

I need to add these people to the landscape of my father’s ancestral home, Steeles Tavern. But how should I picture them? Were they all within family groups or had individuals been sold away from their families? Did some of these people live with the family in David’s cabin? Did most of them live in smaller cabins built on the property? Or perhaps there was one small cabin built for all the slaves? I must now imagine these people here and there, helping to populate the place, working in the fields, and the tavern, and mill, tending to the children, cooking food in the wide hearth, washing the family’s clothes in the creek, minding the chickens and vegetable garden. The image of my self-reliant pioneer forebears has forever been altered.

How many times each week, or each day for that matter, did Tony, Barness, Fielder, Mary, Harriet, and Thomas interact with the Steeles? Did the Steeles know them well? Did they know their personalities and peculiarities? Did they like Tony more than Barness? Did they laugh together at young Fielder’s antics? Did the Steeles take interest in the younger children, Harriet or Mary? Did the slaves share the same food from the fields? Wear hand-me-down clothes from the Steeles? Drink the same cool water from the freshwater spring? Watch the same sunsets? Grow older together, sharing infirmities?

The Steeles occupied the same houses on the same property for several generations. Preserving documents and letters is easier if you never move.The Steele family papers are now held at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, thanks to Aunt Mildred who contributed them. The University copied the lot for me for a small charge. That’s how I know about these people that my family once owned.The stack of papers that the librarians at UVA sent to me has sat unread for years. The faded ink and curly, scripted letters hurt my eyes to read. Many of these documents are boring. In the past, the effort invested in deciphering the handwriting hasn’t been worth it to me.

Even so, this time around I felt I owed it to myself to try and read these papers. If not now, then when? The task was daunting. Not only was the handwriting faded and difficult to untangle, these letters and documents covered many decades and were often written to the Steeles by people I didn’t know, talking about subjects I could only partially understand. Many of the letters dealt with business transactions. Some were quite personal, full of loneliness or affection for the recipient, sometimes humor, or the sharing of a favorite book. Concerns about farming conditions and the price of beef or wheat or corn were mentioned by both women and men. I eventually read over two-hundred pages wishing all the while that I had an assistant who was a gifted expert in reading old handwriting, a historian who could explain the various political or social issues discussed, and a family member who could explain who all the people were and how and why they were connected to the family.

The meaning behind some letters and documents unfolded easily. I read that David Steele leased to his son-in-law, Robert Steele, the part of the plantation on which he resided, except for the mill and two acres of land around the house occupied by David’s only son, John Steele. I knew these family members. I was interested in all the players. I read these documents carefully, teasing out the meaning of the looping, faded script. That’s how I found out about the Steele’s slaves.

David had three children: Jenny in Kentucky who’d offered to send the “negro girl”; Polly who married her cousin, Robert, who David gave the aforementioned six slaves; and John, my ancestor, who studied law but came home to take care of the farm and inherited the bulk of his father’s estate. David chose to move live with his daughter, Polly, rather than his on, John. In one particular document, David agrees to let his son-in-law, Robert, and his daughter, Polly, occupy one room in his house, their choice, with sufficient kitchen room for Robert’s other slaves. (Note: Robert owned additional slaves.) David also gives Robert some timber for building and repairing the mill, but outlines that Robert wouldn’t be allowed to clear land or cut or waste timber except to use for firewood or to repair the fences. David was specific, clear, and exacting about his old age. He was giving a living to his son-in-law, Robert, and by proxy his daughter, Polly, but he was also spelling out how the next phase of his life would go down. Part of this legal agreement included slaves.

In exchange for the use of the six slaves and the land, Robert Steele, agreed to “support at his table” David and Polly Steele. The document spells out that Robert was to give David and Polly food and clothes—the kind they had been accustomed to—and do everything in their power to make the couple comfortable “in their old and declining years.” If David grew dissatisfied with his circumstances, Robert had to give him an annual stipend, the sum decided by David. If things went as David stipulated, Robert was to provide pasturage for two cows and hay for one horse and give David a hundred dollars every year. David withheld four slaves to be his personal servants: Hannah and Newton and their twins. If Newton should become infirm, Robert was to give Barness back to David.

No doubt there were more slaves in the Steele family’s ancestral closet. This tally doesn’t include the slaves David might’ve given his son, John Steele, my ancestor, who inherited most of his father’s property. In a document from 1833 pertaining to John Steele, other slave names are mentioned: Sam, Tomm, Wilammine. Then there’s this statement: “John Steele has the liberty of leaving his old Negro woman Jane who is to be furnished with…provisions.” What does that mean? Was John providing for his old nanny?

The document that's the most chilling for me is from 1843: “Know all men by these forthwith that Archibald McClung of Rockbridge County do bargain and sell and have bargained and sold unto John Steele Jr of said County one Negro man named George for the sum of three hundred dollars.” John bought a man for three hundred dollars.

John’s son, David, bought a different man in 1863 during the Civil War, displaying a displaced confidence that the South would win the war: “This is to certify that I have this day sold my servant Jacob to David Steele for eighteen hundred dollars cash in land…” Eighteen hundred dollars was the going price before the war for a strong, healthy man held in bondage in the South.

In addition to my direct ancestors, David, John, and David Steele, I also found that according to the Augusta County 1860 Slaveholders Census, Samuel H. Steele owned 9 slaves, Sgt. William Steele owned 9 slaves, and William Steele owned 8 slaves. Welcome to the family!

My initial reaction upon reading these documents was a peevish annoyance and a general disappointment with my ancestors, which gave way to a low-grade, disgruntled disgust. The more I read about the realities of slave life, the angrier I became but this anger was displaced, directed at the heinous institution of slavery, not toward my particular ancestors. I grew more and more troubled that slavery had ever existed in America, and confused about how white people had allowed slavery to emerge in the first place, and that southerners had continued to allow slavery to grow and thrive for so many years. I want to be upfront about my emotional reaction because frankly, I’m perplexed by it. Why wasn’t I more angry at my ancestors? Why wasn’t I filled with disdain for the Steeles? Why haven’t I given up wanting to know these people?

I’ve been thinking about my tepid response to finding slavery within the Steele family as I pour over other letters and documents from the Steeles. I think my reaction has a lot to do with how much time I’ve spent ferreting out the identity of these people. I have known about other slave-owning ancestors. My mother’s side of the family owned slaves, as did my father’s paternal forebears. I grew up knowing about the complexities of my southern past. Perhaps this knowledge muted my reaction to the Steeles. But I’ve become invested in the Steeles through the copious hours I’ve spent researching their past. I know the Steeles too well now to simply write them off as bad people. I have grown to admire their courage and fortitude, their continued family fidelity, and their curiosity about the wider world. I believe that some of my identity comes from these ancestors, and that I’m passing a portion of that inheritance along to my grandkids. How can I be grateful or proud of any aspect of any ancestor without accepting the whole person? What good would it do me to embrace a narrative that’s full of untruths? Our history is a collective story. Perhaps that’s the most perplexing aspect of genealogical research. We’re compelled to learn what it means to be kin to complicated people who are collectively both weak and strong, base and noble, full of promise and as such, sometimes deeply disappointing.

Three generations of the Steeles of Steeles Tavern practiced the bondage of people of color in order to ease their own toil and to gain personal wealth, bettering their prospects and social positioning. We know some of these enslaved people by name: Jane, Tony, Barness, Fielder, Mary, Harriet, Thomas, Hannah, Newton, Sam, Tomm, Wilammine, Jacob and George. Including the unnamed twins of Hannah and Newton, that’s makes fourteen people living in around Steeles Tavern owned by the Steeles.

How do I pass these names along to other researchers? Before emancipation, slaves appear in records only by their first names, making it incredibly difficult to locate them. The descendants of some of these people are surely looking for them, right?

The writer, Edward Ball, a scion of the wealthy, rice-growing Balls of South Carolina, wondered how he could track down the descendants of the slaves his family once owned. The Balls had lived surrounded by black families for six generations, but Edward Ball knew little about these people. “What were their names? How did they live? Who were their loved ones? When did they leave the plantations, and where had their descendants gone? Could their families be found?” Ball went hunting. He tells the story of this hunt in his 1998 book, Slaves in the Family. Can you imagine knocking on doors and introducing yourself as the great-great-grandson of someone who once owned the person’s great-great-grandmother? Can you imagine their reaction? But people warmed to him. One woman described finding out about her ancestor this way: “I felt I’d hit the past. It was not a chilling feeling. It was more a feeling of awe, a kind of presence.” What would it be like to give someone that feeling?

At the time of the 1850 census, John Steele owned 4,350 acres in and around Steeles Tavern. Slaves worked his fields. The 1850 Census records John Steele as owning three female slaves, ages 35, 16, and 7. No names are mentioned. He may have owned more. Sometimes people didn't want to pay taxes on all their slaves and withheld the correct number. According to family papers, the Steeles of Steeles Tavern owned more than ten people, but probably less than fifty. Approaching the mid-century, the total population of the states included nearly four million slaves, most of them in eastern side of Virginia and further south. The Shenandoah Valley kept relatively few slaves. On the Eve of the Civil War around 14,000 people lived in the Valley and 753 of those people were held as slaves. Recent scholars, however, have stressed the pervasiveness of slavery throughout the Shenandoah, suggesting that slavery affected everyone’s social and economic life. The Steeles would’ve been part of this slave-owning culture even if they didn’t own slaves.

It’s impossible to know exactly what my family thought about slavery. In the box full of Steele papers, I found three letters concerning the severe beating and subsequent death of Rachael, a slave woman belonging to Thomas B. Finley of Black Water Township, a community in Saline County, north of the Missouri River. John Steele’s eldest daughter, Charlotte, who had moved to Saline County with her husband, James R. Davis, penned these letters, alarmed at the beating death of the slave woman by her neighbor, Finley. She sent these letters to her family in Steeles Tavern.

The Missouri Compromise made slavery legal in Saline County. A slave threatened with a beating, as Rachael had been, had no place to hide. Rachael’s owner, Finley, threatened to beat her for swiping a piece of bread through a butter dish instead of taking a knife and cutting the butter before spreading it upon the bread. Old marks on her dead body confirmed she had been previously beaten. Finely’s anger increased because when he beat her, she didn’t cry out for mercy.

According to court records and Charlotte’s letters home to Steeles Tavern, on the day appointed for her beating, Rachael fled to Charlotte’s home where she was fed a noon meal. Rachael hid out the next day as well, but another neighbor turned her way and she eventually returned home where Finley “took her some distance from the house to a hollow” and beat her to death. He beat her so badly, that she collapsed on the way back up the hill. Finley told her that if she did not get up he would tie her with some rope and “leave her all night & let the wolves eat her.” Emily, another of Finley’s slaves, came out to help her, and Rachael returned to the house. An autopsy revealed that she died of a clot to the brain.

The manner of Rachael’s death caused a response among white officials, and if Charlotte’s letter is any indication, at least some of neighbors disapproved of his actions. Finely was charged with second-degree murder or manslaughter, but sadly there’s no record to indicate he was ever brought to justice.

Rachael died alone after a terrible beating with no one to champion her. Could she image that she would be remembered? Harriet Frazier recorded her story in Slavery and Crime in Missouri, 1773-1865. After reading Charlotte’s letters I found Frazier’s work online. Might we stand for a moment and observe Rachael as these terrible events unfold, so that she’s not truly alone on that horrible night? Finely continues to thrash her but she does not cry out. Who was this stoic woman? What gave her the strength to take such a beating in silence?

I wouldn’t want to be a descendant of Thomas B. Finley. How do you wash off such a stench? You might tell yourself that his actions have nothing to do with you, but the legacy could linger. You might question what darkness coursed through your veins. But perhaps I have latched onto Charlotte Steele Davis’s letters to vindicate my ancestors. After all, she wouldn’t have sent those letters home if she didn’t think her family would agree that Finley’s actions were deplorable. Having discovered these letters, I can tell myself that although the Steele’s owned slaves, they weren’t like that terrible man, Finley.

Southern guilt can be a form of self-indulgence. Southern guilt prevents white people from easy interactions with people of color. George F. Will, a white conservative columnist, believed white guilt to be a form of self-congratulation, where whites introduce policies of compassion toward people of color to showcase their innocence of racist inclinations. Shelby Steele, a black conservative columnist also criticizes this guilt-ridden predilection of some white people towards the past. He has a point. Guilt doesn’t automatically lend itself toward empathy. (Shelby Steele could connected to the Steeles! Should I show up at his door?) Southern guilt can continue to create barriers between white people and people of color. The annoyance that keeps bubbling up within me as I read about the treatment of black people in the Valley comes from my own awareness that I still notice when people are darker than me. Because of our history, noticing black-skinned people sets myself apart from them. How do you stop noticing skin tone?

I spend a lot of time these days hanging out with my grandkids. My daughter, Laura, brought home a baby boy named Moses a few weeks ago and I’ve been helping out with the two older children, Annabelle, almost three, and John Nathaniel who just turned five-years-old. We’ve been playing the children’s game “Guess Who” where players try to guess the identity of the person represented on the card that their opponent holds. Guess Who remains extremely popular among my grandchildren. We have been known to play this game a dozen times a day. “Does your person wear glasses? Does your person have a blue hat? Is your person a boy?” The questions are riveting, the suspense immense, and the thrill of guessing correctly never grows old.

Some of the players are black. I have noticed that my three-year-old granddaughter, Annabelle, can’t for the life of her figure this out. Blond and brown hair remain clear categories, but the variation between a tan caucasian person represented on the cards and the various darker skin tones of the black and brown people make no sense to her. We’ve all agreed to stop asking, “Is your person white? Does your person have black skin?” She just can’t answer that inappropriate question.

My hope—and wouldn’t this be amazing—is that Annabelle remains unsure about racial categories. What if the history of our racially divided past could move us all toward freedom from racial constraints? When Annabelle plays a retro-Guess Who with her grandchildren, having two categories in which to place people might make no sense to anyone. Even so, I expect that we will have other ridiculous categories to assign people. My southern heritage leaves me with the conviction that people are complicated and that no one can escape from that pervasive truth. Southern guilt might be inappropriate and even unhelpful, but southern humility could be a wonderful resource for future generations. Keep the wisdom; toss the guilt. Maybe that could be the legacy that I pass on to my grandkids.

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"Slaves in the Family." by Edward Ball

"The War Before The War: Fugitive Slaves And The Struggle For America's Soul From The Revolution To The Civil War,” by Andrew Delbanco.

Interview on NPR, March 21, 2019: “Delbanco Writes About Americans' Complicity With Slavery In His Latest Book.”