While in semi-quarantine, I was looking for diversions. As a European American, one such time killer is the genetic lost and found bin of Ancestry.com. I have found generations of people unknown to me- mostly sturdy New Englanders of English and Scottish stock, Germans from where my surname comes, the random Swede or Irish woman- pretty common for a white guy in America.
I found with some happiness, the scanned last will and testament of Captain Joseph Israel, veteran of the revolutionary war and my 6th great grandfather. It was fascinating to try and decipher the old script of the will, imagining the people it mentioned and the life it was wrapping up neatly, and then I saw it: a passage dealing with the dispersal of his slaves. Full stop. Long pause. Uncomfortable vague sadness. Joseph Israel’s wife was to select three enslaved people of her choosing and SELL the rest. The passage stopped me in my tracks. Not only was he a slave holder, he had multiple slaves, they were a reasonably large percentage of his estate. I didn’t want to read anymore. I had never entertained the idea that any of my ancestors could have been part of the crime of holding humans as property. This revelation came just days before the George Floyd protests took Covid19 off the headlines. This genetic indictment was a secret, or felt like it.
Joseph Israel, hero of the revolutionary war, was the son of Midrach ( Later ‘Michael’) Israel. Michael Israel (my 7th great grandfather) was the owner of “The Blue Lion” tavern in Philadelphia. He was born a Jew, and so had to purchase naturalized citizenship in the British Empire, a country he was born in, because he was not a Christian. Michael converted to Christianity upon his marriage to an English woman, but retained his identity to some degree, a Hebrew bible being his prized possession in his probate inventory, also provided by Ancestry.com. Michael, being a Jew, it would seem is my only genetic connection to being the “other” in a homogeneous society. Y ou would think that his son Joseph might have seen parallels in the plight of the African, but I suppose that expecting someone to be woke in the 18th century just because it would make you more comfortable is possibly too much to ask. What had the fortune he left to his wife contributed to my life? His son, Issac Israel, who’s imposing and handsome portrait hung over our piano in my childhood home- surely his life was vastly improved by the sale of those humans and the echo effect was felt generations later by my father’s family, and my own. The realization shamed me.
I found examples in my wife’s family as well, albeit, very different for one reason. Her family, who are descendent from Dutch colonists of the East Indies- Indonesia, it would seem owned native Indonesians. The big difference is that 90% of the Dutch subjects in Indonesia by the time they left in 1946 were also part Indonesian, and had been for generations- the oppressed had become genetically infused into the oppressor. I think that is a very different from the American experience.
As the Black Lives Matter protests swelled in Seattle and around the country , I felt the shame and pull of regret from inside my privileged ivory tower. I am not my ancestor but I recognize his long term effect on my life, and that of my country.
Black Lives Matter and we must change the narritive.
