Loretta,
Beautifully stated. I read a statement by Augustine Washington Senior 
(George Washingtons' father), in which it was stated that Sue was his most 
prized possession. That would be the closest someone of that era could come 
to declaring love or affection. There was not a lot of love and affection, 
even between wife and husband. Many of the marriages were of convenience, 
where one or the other was marrying up. As you stated it was a frontier, and 
a totally different time.

One of my ancestors, Patty Bowden, was an Indenture Servant to Elizabeth 
Washington-Spotswood. When Pattys' indenture ended, she was given a glowing 
recommendation from Elizabeth, through her husband Alexander Spotswood. 
Patty eventually set up her own business as a seamstress in Fredericksburg. 
Patty had a different experience then her mother, Mary Bowden, who was born 
free. There were varying experiences according to who the person was, and 
the mores of the community.

Anita


>From: Loretta Kelldorf <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history         
>      <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Loving the slaves
>Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 11:04:23 -0500
>
>List Readers:
>
>I find it very interesting that people today are having difficulty 
>believing that it was possible  for some slave owners to love their slaves 
>as fellow human beings!  They weren't pets. The love I have read about was 
>nothing like loving one's pet.  The capacity to love is very different in 
>every individual.  Some people have a much greater capacity for loving than 
>do others.   When you read about mean slave owners mistreating their 
>slaves, you have no context for that slave-owner's relationship to other 
>people...black or white. You might consider that.  The man that is mean  is 
>likely to be mean to everyone. He/she may practice it a little differently 
>depending on how they view the intelligence and reprisal capacity of the 
>other person; but, they will spread their meanness around to everyone in 
>one way or another.   Kind people spread their kindness the same way.
>
>Life was hard; it was rugged in earlier times.  Many people hardened their 
>feelings and sensitivities in order to make life bearable because they 
>anticipated many losses and hurts in a lifetime.  Whatever level of 
>insensitivity they cultivated, it touched all of their relationships, not 
>just the relationships with their  slaves.
>
>I have in my file the will of a lady in Sumner Co. TN who stated in the 
>will that she was old; her sons were grown and already gifted with land 
>when they married. Therefore she was willing that her total  considerable 
>assets, both real and personal, be sold and the money used to relocate all 
>her black family to Illinois or Ohio where they could be free. The money 
>was to be used to buy them land and farm animals to furnish them a home and 
>a means of livelihood.
>
>When I visited (within the past six years)  the family home of this lady, 
>which was built in 1808,  and talked to the present owner, he told me of 
>several carloads of black people who arrived one day the summer before my 
>visit.  He said they told him they had come to visit and pay respects to 
>the estate of the  lady  who had been responsible for re-locating their 
>families to free states and gifting them with land and  a means of 
>establishing and maintaining themselves.   Respect, love and appreciation 
>was part of the heritage of these black people who continued to think of 
>the white family as their kinsmen.
>
>Kinsmen.  While many of you are reading wills of demeaning  relationships, 
>I have found numerous wills where the deceased has called his slaves his 
>"black family".   That is evidence of a kind relationship to one's fellow 
>man.
>
>There is another story in TN, of a soldier kin to the lady who left her 
>estate to re-locate the black families,  that went to fight in the Civil 
>War as a Confederate.  Every day that he was gone, his black "Mammy" sat on 
>the front porch watching for him to return.  She kept the vigil every day 
>until he finally did return.  She died soon after he came home.  This is 
>genuine love of one human  for another human, not as pets, but as equal and 
>worthy human beings.
>
>There is in the Bedford County TN Heritage History book published within 
>the last five years a story of a black man who followed his white slave 
>owner into war. The soldier was a Confederate.  When he was wounded his 
>black servant cared for him until he could travel and took him home to 
>recuperate.  The black servant then went to fight in the Civil War for the 
>Union! Fought with the Union Army for two years.  When the war was over, 
>the black soldier then had a pension.  The white family for whom he had 
>been a slave was left landless and penniless by the war. The BLACK MAN TOOK 
>THE WHITE FAMILY IN AND CARED FOR THEM AND PROVIDED FOR THEM.   Love is in 
>the heart; not in the law.  Sensitivity is a form of love.
>
>In my own family, my great grandmother's brother and his wife in TN   had 
>in their probate files lists of the expenses  encountered during their 
>illness.  We are talking now about 1880.  When I read the lists of expenses 
>hoping to get a clue to their last illness I was impressed by how many 
>entries there were for items for "the black family".  While no specific 
>names were given, how much better name can you have than to be called 
>FAMILY?  There were no other names in the list, white or black.  The 
>mention of the black family was to differentiate the expenses from their 
>own personal expenses for whatever reason they may have needed to do that. 
>I was touched that they gave equal concern and equal provision to their 
>black family.
>
>To be sure, the world is full of meanness. But it is also full of kindness. 
>Where do you intend to put your focus?  If you want to change the way the 
>world thinks, then inspect your own thinking. So many of you are full of 
>anger over things past; you cannot do anything today to change what was.  
>Your inspection of meanness and speculation about how people may have felt 
>a hundred or two hundred years ago is neither  productive nor constructive. 
>  It is a given that Slavery is wrong in any time and in any place.  No 
>thinking and feeling person  argues the rightness of slavery in this 
>enlightened time in which we live today. What people thought then is gone.  
>You need to deal with today.  Focus on positive education, positive 
>instruction, positive goals.  That is what changes things in positive ways. 
>   Of course black people have struggled.  Many minorities of all colors 
>have struggled. Pioneers struggled.  Struggle is a  part of existence.   
>History is important and getting history correct is important.  But, be 
>careful where you place your emphasis.  Who is to say you have the right 
>call on what is exactly right in history or the exactly right way to record 
>it?  You are a filter the same as any other person.  Check your filters.  
>Concern yourselves with those things about which you can do something 
>constructive.   Intellectual conversation can be constructive but it 
>shouldn't beat the same dead horse to death again and again. What are you 
>trying to prove?  Some discussions can be concluded.
>
>Frankly, I am very tired of reading about your soapbox on slavery. It is 
>not the only wrong thing that took place  in history!   Thinking of the 
>affection of one white human being for a black human being  as being 
>comparable to the way we feel about our pets is the last offense for me.   
>You are trying to intellectualize emotions in the most cruelly unemotional 
>way.  Where is your personal sensitivity? Let the real psychologist ponder 
>the emotions of affection between  people.  Are there no  other subjects to 
>intellectually inspect and enlarge upon  than slavery?
>
>Loretta Kelldorf
>NOT a Historian but a fair genealogist
>Education : Speech and Hearing Pathology
>                  Psychology
>                  Special Education w/ emotionally disturbed, mentally 
>retarded, language-learning
>                  disabled.
>Lifetime pet owner  of many wonderful companions.

_________________________________________________________________
Get a preview of Live Earth, the hottest event this summer - only on MSN 
http://liveearth.msn.com?source=msntaglineliveearthhm