The Bottom Line: Whether your interest is genealogy, history, or simply a well-crafted story, this book will intrigue any reader interested in the history of the South.
sarahgutch's Full Review: Edward Ball - Slaves in the Family
From the very first page it is apparent that Edward Ball is a gifted writer. His background as a journalist for The Village Voice is perhaps not typical for the writer of a genealogical and historical tome. Having read my share of family genealogies (lists and lists of names--yawn!) and literally fallen asleep reading histories by academics, I found I could not put Slaves in the Family down.
The story begins with the first gift, given to Edward Ball by his father shortly before his death, a musty book entitled Recollections of the Ball Family of South Carolina and the Comingtee Plantation. During a family reunion in near Charleston, SC Edward's interest in his family's history became apparent to other relatives and he was awarded eventually with virtually all of the records of the Ball family, including genealogies, photos and property (land, provisional and human) going back to the mid-1600's. He continued his research into public land records, the decennial census records that start in 1790 and personal interviews with family as well as descendants of the slaves who were owned by Balls. The writer sifts through hundreds of years of meticulous records, matches names and creates a wonderfully readable family history for the Ball Family as well as for descendants of people owned by his ancestors, and in doing so, makes a discovery that some of these descendants are actually his relatives.
All though it makes for an interesting book title, Slaves in the Family turns out to be just a small part of the story. It was a bit more surprising to me that marrying a first cousin was the rule rather than the exception in the South (to ensure property stayed within the family). Recently I received a family tree from a fourth cousin twice removed in which he had put "MARRIED 1ST COUSIN!!!!!" (he was compelled to put all five of those exclamation points there) in several of our common ancestors' records. The book is full of facts told without emotion, but Edward Ball's gift of the storyteller solidifies all the names and dates into three dimensions and evokes the senses. We feel the moist heat of the Carolinas, see the newspapered walls of the mud-and-stick sharecroppers' homes, hear the crack of gunfire at Battery Wagner.
It is a history of the South, which is interesting even though the reader may not have a personal connection to the Ball family. The author moved from New York to Charleston to research this book, and traveled all over the country to interview descendants of the Ball family as well as the descendants of slaves who had been enslaved by the Balls. It is a story of contrasts. In one chapter the author is visiting a property that used to be a Ball Plantation. With him is a gentleman, whose grandmother (a former slave) was born there. They find a little boat and row to the middle of a lily-covered pond. In another chapter, Edward Ball dons a formal antebellum costume at the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals, and belts out in imitation-Gullah:
Well, well, well
So I kin die easy,
Well, well, well
Lawd, lemme die easy,
Well, well, well
Wan' tuh die easy,
Jedus gwine mek up my dyin' bed
Striking contrasts, all tied together. The author visited Emily Frayer, the granddaughter of a slave at one of the Ball plantations, who carefully recounted the events following the arrival of Sherman's army and the freeing of the slaves. A cap was thrown into the air. The grandmother had dropped to one knee, and the Union soldier said "You're free as a bird in the air!" Then, the author reads to us a journal of Mary Ball, a mistress at the plantation, and it is nearly the same account as Mrs. Frayer's "only reversed as in a mirror." The effect is chilling, not only to bring the scene alive for the reader, but to highlight the value and accuracy of oral history.
The Epilogue left me with an uneasy feeling, perhaps because it's a part of the slave trade that no one really talks about. Ball journeys to Sierra Leone, a country Ball slaves were shipped from, and questions the Africans about their responsibility in the Slave trade. A woman answers, "What can I do now? What you do with the present is what really matters." True, but we can try to acknowledge all that happened and where we have come from. Then we can move on.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.