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Date: | Sat, 10 Mar 2007 19:30:25 -0500 |
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There is no denying that oral history, even when not quite accurate, can
provide us with valuable clues for research. But we should not confuse oral
history with reality unless we can find some historical evidence for it.
Martha Hodes quotes David Thelen's "Memory and American History," People
construct memories in response to different circumstances, and therefore "the
important question is not how accurately a recollection fitted some piece of
past reality, but why historical actors constructed memories in a particular
way at a particular time."
My research of Virginia and Maryland court records indicates there were as
many as 1,000 mixed-race African American children born to white servant
women during the colonial period in Virginia and Maryland. I know of about
three or four instances in which this information survived to the present
generation.
Paul
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