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