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Dear Great Grandfather Jordan,
I write to you with some trepidation, not knowing what, if any, characteristics or values accompany a soul as it traverses from the mortal to the immortal plane. You lived from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th, and like most men of that time, I'm told that you held to the belief that children were to be seen and not heard. Uncle Bill told me that among your daughter Mattie's children, you shared your slavery-time stories almost exclusively with him, since he was the oldest living, and a boy besides. Then again, cousin Mel heard a tale or two from you, perhaps from when you stayed at Melvina's house (his grandmother, your daughter). But you have haunted me since I learned about you back in 1977, and now I have a picture of you, and there are things I must know.
I first learned of you while watching "Roots", the landmark miniseries about one family's journey from Africa, through the Middle Passage, to slavery and the epic struggle for freedom. I think it was during the scene where Kunta Kinte's foot gets chopped off for running away that my Dad quietly said, "My grandfather used to talk about that." I stared at my father. Your grandfather? Yes, he was a slave. You KNEW him? Yes, he lived with us. WHAT?
I peppered him with questions and soon learned that you were born in Devereux, Georgia, in Hancock County, about 100 years before me, and you almost lived long enough to be there for my birth. You and your family were owned by John Mitchell. Your wife, Martha Holsey Mitchell, had also been a slave. She died when my father was a toddler. You were strong and able for most of your life until someone decided that you should see Georgia again before you died, and after that, you were all mixed up about past and present, places and people.
Returning to campus that Sunday, I went straight to the microfilm room in Firestone Library at Princeton and pulled the reels for the 1860 Census. The were the free rolls and the slave rolls, organized by county. From the free rolls, I found two John Mitchells. One had six slaves, but John WH Mitchell, owned 34. This was probably the man, I reasoned, since my father had referred to a plantation. The man who owned my family.
That took me to the slave rolls, where I learned that you and your family weren't recorded as people, but catalogued like livestock. In the left column was the owners name, and each slave was listed individually according to characteristics related to property value: male or female, black or mulatto, approximate age, and special notations for runaways, those who had been manumitted, and those who were "Deaf, blind, insane or idiotic." Here is the beginning of the inventory under John WH's name:
I stared at that microfilm for what seemed like a long time, my eyes flooding with water. It was real. You were real. You were a little boy. Somewhere in there, there were brothers sisters, parents. It happened. It happened to my own flesh and blood. And no one thought you were important enough to record your name. I had to use family lore to find you. And here I was at Princeton, being trained to trust official sources and records. I staggered from the microfilm room with the printout in my hand, showing it to anyone I knew. I never felt the loss of Grandmom Mattie more keenly than at that moment. She had died just before Thanksgiving, freshman year. I needed to talk to her; I needed to see you.
A few years later, with the help of a photographer friend, I got some additional details about your life from Cousin Claudia. Her grandmother was your sister, whom they called Aunt Duck. You were close in age. Aunt Duck said you all had to get your food from a big trough, like what they use to feed horses. She also remembered beatings, but there were some times of singing and dancing as well, especially the shouts of "We are free!" when news came that slavery had ended.
Of course, I wondered what the war had been like for you and yours. My son, your great-great grandson, wondered, too -- so much so that during his middle-school years, he played
