A Shameful Legacy

When studying family history, it is always tempting to look back to ancestors that you hope took part in the positive shaping of the United States, but it also means looking at those actions which it is difficult to be proud of.  For me, perhaps the most embarrassing and subsequently disastrous  one took place in 1662.  As previous blogs have documented, several of our ancestors were elected to  the Virginia House of Burgesses, one of the first democratic governing bodies in the American Colonies. The laws they enacted subsequently helped to shape the course of American history.

As has been mentioned, the first African slaves to come to the colonies arrived in Virginia in 1619.  In addition to these slaves many white colonists also came from England as indentured servants.  At the time that Virginia was colonized,  English law said that the family line followed that of the father.  Initially, the actual conditions of servitude for whites and blacks were relatively similar, but as tobacco became the chief crop and there was not enough labor to keep up with the demand, more African slaves were imported and laws were passed saying that the children of African slaves were also slaves.  Slaves became regarded as chattel, i.e., as property. 

As abhorrent as this was, the situation became even worse when a child was the result of parents of different races.  According to the English laws of the time that ruled the colonies,  the child of a black father and a white mother would have been a slave, but the child of a white father and a black mother would have been free, since the child should follow the status of the father.  The problem this created from the plantation owners’  point of view was that this would deprive them of what would have been potential labor.  To remedy this situation in 1662 the Virginia House of Burgesses passed the following statute (original spelling retained):

   Whereas some doubts have arrisen whether children got by an Englishman upon a negro woman       should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly  that all children borne in this country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.

Not only did this act completely counteract prevailing English law, but it set up the notorious condition whereby white plantation owners forced themselves upon Black female slaves not only simply for sexual gratification but with the specific purpose of producing children that, as property, could either be used for labor or sold.  This statue was quickly imitated in other slave-holding colonies and its ripple effect is a legacy still very much felt today.     It is not a legacy to be proud of.

Soloman Northen

I recently came across a note in a page labeled Northumbrea Collectanea that read the following:

Northumbria, Soloman of Northumberland Co. “Being a poore Orphant of 16 years and very small and week of body at that age”  bound to John Ingram.  17 Oct 1711.

I don’t know if Soloman Northen is a direct connection to our family, but I suspect that he must have been related since Northen is not a common last name and it is in the area where our earliest Northen ancestors settled.   If Soloman were 16 years old in 1711, he would have been born in about 1694. Though short, I find this note interesting for several reasons.  The first is that it contains some physical description, which is rare in notes this old.  The other is that it adds to some of the other posts about how indentures came about. In this case it was because  apparently both of his parents were dead and they needed to be provided for in some way.  The note also provides a counterpoint to what was going on with some of the other members of the of our family may have been faring. While some such as Edmund Northen and his son William were achieving land and position, others were struggling. It is these latter people who are less often recorded in official documents. John Ingram, for example, was wealthy and appears to have left quite a paper trail.  What became of Soloman, however, is unknown. In 1780, a will turns up for an individual named Soloman Northan in Craven, North Carolina who appeared to own several acres of land.  Perhaps this was him.

There one other aspect of Soloman Northen notes that is interesting because of a personal parallel.  My father, James Northen, also lived in Northumberland and he, too, was orphaned . When he was eleven both of his parents died. While he was able to live with his older brother John for a short while, John was married and there were too many other brothers and sisters.  Therefore, Dad was taken in by a couple who had no children.  While not indentured or apprenticed since he was allowed to attend school, he did have to work for these foster parents to help with his keep.  It was only at 18 when he graduated from high school that he was legally adopted.