Genealogy and Family History of Enslavement

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ah

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i’m coward at my desk in school

the topic is slavery i’m the only black

in my class and i’m so embarrassed

i can’t look up from my textbook my

parents taught me to do triple a work

to get an a so i’m an excellent student

does the teacher not

notice this girl who always has her hand

up

raises no hand during this topic

in the late 60s when james brown sang

say it loud i’m black and i’m proud

he was singing to the choir

but even then being proud of being black

did not mean i was proud of my enslaved

ancestors

that pride journey was inspired by

documents i

found about my great great grandfather

franklin dale

the process of finding those documents

and what those documents

taught me about franklin dale and about

slavery

changed me when i casually volunteered

to

help my uncle walt do genealogy research

for our family

little did i know how challenging

genealogy research could be

but i enjoyed the challenges

and i got excited about learning where i

came from

i started by searching for our dale

family roots

we knew my grandmother’s grandparents

were franklin and rachel dale

and they lived in carlisle nicholas

county kentucky

when i found the dales on census records

back to 1840

but not 1830 i concluded the dales were

enslaved in 1830.

now in genealogy a challenge that seems

impossible to break through

is called a brick wall well i had just

hit

a brick fortress slavery

but i pressed on i contacted

the nicholas county historical society

and

asked for information on anyone named

franklin dale

a genealogy angel sent me a copy of a

will

for a franklin dale using information on

that

will i found another will online

that turned out to be the key document

in finding

our dale roots where there’s a will

there’s a genealogist that 1813 will

for an enslaver named matthew dale

doles out his possessions household

furniture

a cow a horse named dick some negroes

my eyes froze at that line i bequeath

to my son isaac two negro

boys named elijah and frank

could this be our franklin dale

this frank matthew dale’s descendants

added a note to a copy of the will

indicating that isaac dale would

later give deeds of emancipation

to his enslaved people one of them which

would be

frank in nicholas county kentucky

before he moved to missouri what if i

could find

the deed of emancipation for this frank

i had already organized the group of us

wright dales

for a possible research trip to nicholas

county

now a car load of us

descended upon tiny downtown carlisle

the hunt

was on we divided our time between

the courthouse and the library

and the historical society

and garrett’s country cooking restaurant

crammed into a tiny room in the

courthouse

we turned page after page in huge books

of court records

looking for any name that might have

meaning to us

we were ecstatic when we found the

document we came for

matthew dale’s son isaac

gave a deed of emancipation to a negro

man owned by him named frank

it was painful to read that word owned

but we kept reading

according to this deed this frank

was about 23 years old in 1833

that matched the 1810 birth year

on all the census records for our

franklin dale

franklin dale we found you

this frank had to be our franklin dale

the document described him as stout

and heavy made about five feet six or

seven

inches high

no particular mark but the document also

described him

as yellow or mulatto complexion

that word mulatto

indicating a mixed parentage made a

shudder

at the probability of a rape of one of

franklin’s female ancestors

we calculated franklin was only

three years old when passed from

father to son on that 1813

will records showed the father matthew

dale

fought in the revolutionary war so

franklin undoubtedly heard

lofty stories of the fight for freedom

in america

the only country franklin knew

how franklin must have longed for that

freedom for

himself during the 20-plus years

he was enslaved by an american patriot

and his family

according to isaac’s online history in

the year he granted the deed of

emancipation to franklin

he sold all he had and moved to missouri

i realized all he had

was built with the help of franklin’s

labor

stolen from him since he was a child

turning more pages in that same

courthouse we discovered

the document that would most impact

my pride journey franklin

purchased his own family and released

them from slavery with a deed of

emancipation

by this time he was using his full name

franklin

and the last name of his enslavers dale

family names from his ancestors or his

homeland

by now were lost forever

when my cousin deborah shouted you guys

gotta see

this we huddled around her as she read

i franklin dale a free man of color

holding by purchase and then

she read a list of people franklin paid

who held part ownership in his family

the last two people owned one-sixth of

one twenty-fourth part each

let’s do some fifth grade math

one-sixth times one twenty-fourth

equals one one hundred forty-fourth

someone owned one 144th

part of someone else

really this dissection

of human beings into fractional parts

underscored for me racism requires

dehumanization

if you dehumanize me you can own and

sell

one 144th part of me

if you dehumanize me you can define me

as three-fifths of a person

if you dehumanize me you can use the

tiniest fraction of black blood

to construct a racial caste for me

the document contained descriptions

of rachel and the two children

mary jane and elijah we fell in love

with a chubby little toddler when we

read

elijah two years old

inclining to be low and heavy built

it was not lost on us that franklin

named his son

elijah two negro boys

named elijah and franklin on that 1813

will

were brothers in bondage if not

biological brothers

we never found another record

about the elijah from that will

we lamented that elijah probably

died before tasting freedom

we choked back tears at the next part

i do hereby emancipate

set free and forever release

the said rachel and the said mary jane

and their future increase

and the said elijah from slavery and

involuntary servitude

surprisingly the document contained

these words

colored people can enjoy

and exercise freedom

this was 26 years

before the emancipation proclamation of

1863 so my cousins like to say

freed by franklin not by lincoln

unable to write franklin made an x

for his signature and the document was

dated

september 18 1837.

just four years after receiving his own

deed of emancipation

franklin executed this deed of

emancipation

for his family and his descendants

records show franklin wheeling and

dealing around nicholas county

to earn the money to buy his family

he must have feared they would be sold

before he had enough in the 1830s

kentucky was selling

2 000 enslaved people per year

to states further south

what was the total franklin paid this

list of part owners

even after multiple trips to nicholas

county through the years

we still have not found all the records

for

all the payments but we found

the record for the final payment

which was seven hundred fifty dollars

that alone equates to over twenty

thousand dollars in today’s money

twenty thousand dollars in generational

wealth

lost on a corrupt transaction

human beings are not for sale

our family was so proud of franklin

we established our own holiday

at our 2015 wrightdale reunion

in germantown ohio with over 200 in

attendance

i read from our document

about franklin dale

we proclaim

september 18th dale

emancipation day

six decades after cowering

at my desk i can now say it loud

my enslaved ancestors

built my strong black

american family in spite of slavery

and i’m proud

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you