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Slaves in the Family, by Edward Ball
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Former "Village Voice" columnist Edward Ball takes readers on an unprecedented journey into his family's slave-owning past, telling the story of black and white families who lived side by side for five generations--and a tale of everyday Americans confronting their vexed inheritance together. Photos 7-city author tour. National publicity.
- Sales Rank: #448486 in Books
- Published on: 1998-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.75" h x 6.50" w x 2.00" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 504 pages
- White and black hardcover with gilt design, jacket with picture of slave owners and slave.
- 6x12 inches, 504 pages
Amazon.com Review
Writer Edward Ball opens Slaves in the Family with an anecdote: "My father had a little joke that made light of our legacy as a family that had once owned slaves. 'There are five things we don't talk about in the Ball family,' he would say. 'Religion, sex, death, money and the Negroes.'" Ball himself seemed happy enough to avoid these touchy issues until an invitation to a family reunion in South Carolina piqued his interest in his family's extensive plantation and slave-holding past. He realized that he had a very clear idea of who his white ancestors were--their names, who their children and children's children were, even portraits and photographs--but he had only a murky vision of the black people who supported their livelihood and were such an intimate part of their daily lives; he knew neither their names nor what happened to them and their descendents after they were freed following the Civil War. So he embarked on a journey to uncover the history of the Balls and the black families with whom their lives were inextricably intertwined, as well as the less tangible resonance of slavery in both sets of families. From plantation records, interviews with descendents of both the Balls and their slaves, and travels to Africa and the American South, Ball has constructed a story of the riches and squalor, violence and insurrection--the pride and shame--that make up the history and legacy of slavery in America.
From School Library Journal
YA-A compelling saga, Ball's biographical history of his family stands as a microcosm of the evolution of American racial relations. Meticulously researched, and aided by the fact that the South Carolina Ball families were compulsive record keepers, the story begins with the first Ball to arrive in Charleston in 1698. The family eventually owned more than 20 rice plantations along the Cooper River, businesses made profitable by the work of slaves. In the course of his research, the author learned that his ancestors were not only slave owners, but also that there was a highly successful slave trader company in his background. He was able to trace the offspring of slave women and Ball men (between 75,000 and 100,000 currently living) and locate a number of his own African-American distant cousins. Although records indicate that the author's forebearers were not by any means cruel or vicious owners, his remorse for these facets of his family history is clear. In the course of his research, he visited Bunce Island, off the coast of Sierra Leone, to see the fortress from which his ancestors loaded terrorized men, women, and children onto slave ships. Their story represents that of many African Americans. This book helps readers to visualize, if not understand, the slave legacy still enmeshed in this country today. Despite its length, this is an important, well-written slice of history that will be of interest to young adults.
Carol DeAngelo, Garcia Consulting Inc., EPA Headquarters, Washington, DC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this National Book Award-winning saga, Ball traces his family back to their first arrival on American shores and also traces the lineage of the slaves his ancestors once owned. He follows their stories through the decades as the families branched out. The Balls grew to be among the most prominent of South Carolina plantation owners; the black people suffered both slavery and the wrenching disruption of emancipation. In between his genealogical and historical explorations, the author interviews living descendants from both groups. Somehow he avoids a liberal angst in favor of a directly honest, matter-of-fact approach to both the subject and the people. The living Ball descendants are generally cautious as they approach the subject; the black families show almost no bitterness, and their stories are varied and intense. As a reader, Ball is subdued and rarely shows emotion; the narrative itself is what gives this presentation its punch. A mandatory acquisition for all audiobook collections.ADon Wismer, Cary Memorial Lib., Wayne, ME
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating detective story
By Dave Schwinghammer
Edward Ball is a descendant of rice plantation owners. Ball, son of a minister and former Village Voice columnist, set out to discover his connections to a slave-owning past. What he found was six generations of Balls who owned twenty plantations along the Cooper River near Charleston, South Carolina, masters over more than 4,000 African-Americans.
He finds Elias "Red Cap" Ball who inherited half of a 740-acre Comingtee Plantation and twenty black and Indian slaves in 1698. Elias had five white children and possibly two by his black housekeeper, Dolly. One of his children tells his heirs in his will to lend money at interest or buy young slaves. Henry Laurens, married to Red Cap's daughter Eleanor, owned the largest slave-trading firm in the colonies. They brought 7,800 Africans to America between 1751 and 1761, earning a hundred and fifty-six thousand pounds in commissions, making him and his wife one of the richest families in America. John Ball, Red Cap's grandson, leaves $227,191 to his heirs as a result of selling his belongings at auction, which included 367 people.
James Poyas, great-grandson of Red Cap, never married but seems to have had a relationship with a field hand named Diana, with whom he had a son, Frederick. Edward Ball finds Frederick's descendants, living in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Ball also tracks a young slave girl from Sierra Leone to Charleston, where Second Elias Ball bought her, and traces her lineage to Thomas P. Martin, retired assistant school principal and a seventh-generation descendant of Priscilla.
Edward Ball visits Sierra Leone, looking for descendants of slave traders there. Peter Karefa-Smart, a descendant of Gumbo Smart, a middleman for the British, doesn't seem to bothered by what his ancestor did. He says, "If there were no buyers, there would be no sellers, but you could turn it around and say, if there were no sellers, there would have been no buyers."
There are a couple of incidents that caught my interest. One was the story of Boston King, who escaped from Tranquil Hill, one of the Ball plantations. In 1792, Boston King and Twelve hundred other escaped slaves boarded ships bound for Sierra Leone, thus coming full circle. Another is the amazing resemblance between the author, Edmund Ball and his William James Ball, the patriarch of the Ball family during the Civil War. Give William James a haircut and a shave and they could be twins.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
a courageous and engaging book. highly recommended
By English teacher
I found this book fascinating and admirable. Mr. Ball's research is impressive in its thoroughness and breadth. For example, how did he discover that many "loyalist slaves" who fought with the British in the Revolution and ended up in England had written memoirs of their lives? Ball gives the full sweep of his own white family history, but can only give partial histories of black families. When he only knows a fragment of someone's life, he gives that fragment, without apology, as testimony to the large, tragic gaps in Black History. This book is courageous, honest and moving. Highly recommended.
55 of 58 people found the following review helpful.
Coming to grips with the past...
By Cynthia K. Robertson
National Book Award-winner, Slaves in the Family, is one of the best nonfiction books I have read in the past ten years. Edward Ball comes from a very prominent family of plantation owners in the Charleston Low Country. The patriarch, Elias Ball, immigrates to the colonies in the late 1600's. Being very prolific when it came to progeny, he soon had children and grandchildren owning over two dozen plantations along the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. After the Civil War, the Ball plantations were sold or lost, one by one. Yet today, the Balls are still very prominent in Charleston Society. Their family tree is well documented, and instead of being plantation owners, they now count lawyers, judges, doctors and priests among their ranks.
In Edward Ball's first effort, he sets out to find the descendants of the thousands of Ball family slaves. This was no easy task. Many slaves had no last names. Others moved to distant states. Some descendants had no wish to speak with him. Ball also encountered reticence from his own family. The extended family did not like to talk about slavery. On the few occasions when the subject was raised, they all espoused the party line: 1. Balls never mistreated their slaves 2. Balls never separated slave families and 3. Ball masters never slept with female slaves.
Using surviving Ball journals, diaries, ledgers and inventories, Edward was able to contact a good many slave descendants. I found the most moving parts of the book are when Edward's research validates the oral history of many slave ancestors, and in some cases, helped them to fill in the missing pieces of their genealogical puzzle. Edward's research also helps him to discover more about his own ancestors. Contrary to Ball oral history, not all Ball plantation owners treated their slaves admirably. Also, slave families were sometimes separated-although mostly due to economic necessity (i.e. when slaves were sold to settle an estate). But what really shocked the author was when he discovered that he had ancestors of color! But save that topic for another book.
The only part of Slaves in the Family that bothered me was Edward Ball's insistence on being an apologist for slavery. Although slavery was a horrible institution, Ball was in no way responsible for what his ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Still, this is just a minor distraction in an otherwise fabulous book. In addition to reading Slaves in the Family, I also listened to it on tape and enjoyed it just as much the second time around. Edward Ball truly gives us a remarkable effort in his first at bat.
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