American History 101 |
The book is a great read, and contains documented evidence of the very strong connection of the Fords to the Washington family. I don't think you will find ANY slaveowners leaving a former slave 160 acres of land in a will without a family connection. That fact alone is proof to me of the relationship. Of course, it is easy to blame it on the ubiquitous "nephew," as happened with the Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemings case. Truth be known, there is unlikely to be a single Virginia founding-father-type, "aristocratic" slave-owning family without its black offshoot. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and these folks had total and complete power over their slaves, and nature was bound to take its course. I know of other stories such as this, and have a few in my family that will probably never be told, at least not by me. In my spouse's family, it was the ninth governor of Alabama. What a country this is! If we can ever come to tell the truth about beginnings, maybe we can commence to really move forward toward building the kind of nation that we claim we are.
