I agree with Craig, and I would boil down my thinking on this subject to
"all history is local."  Eventually everything comes down to families and
places.  (Then comes a war!)  When I was researching my book on George
Washington and slavery I encountered Anita Wills's genealogical work on
the internet.  She had traced her family back to mixed-race indentured
servants who had belonged to the Washingtons in Westmoreland County.
Anita was kind enough to share her research and invite me to her Bowden
Family reunion at the GW Birthplace.  Her work illuminates a facet of
quasi-slavery (indentured servitude imposed by law on mixed-race people) I
had never known about before, which I described in a chapter focussing on
her family and their connection to the Washingtons.  The Bowden experience
shows how 18th-century white Virginians were able to manipulate legal
categories of race to prevent mixed-race people (what one historian called
"New People") from breaking slavery apart.  Only a dedicated family
historian like Anita (and others like her) could have the patience to
pursue these obscure lines of inquiry that lead us to important large
truths.

Henry Wiencek

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