Slave Names

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Doing genealogy for black American families always has one huge roadblock.  Before they were
emancipated in 1865, most black people didn't have last-names.  There were a few exceptions,
"free persons of color:" but slaves were only known by their first names.

In censuses, a primary genealogical tool, slaves didn't even have that.  They were enumerated
on "Slave Schedules" only by sex and approximate age, under their owner's name.  They were only
counted at all because of the "three-fifths compromise;"  by which the U.S. Constitution allowed
slave-holding states to count that fraction of their slaves toward the state's population-total, on
which Congressional seats were apportioned.

Even in the documents of those who knew them best, their owners, slaves seldom had more than
a first name, with an occasional descriptor.  A loving mother's will might leave "my house-servant
Suky" to a favorite daughter: a debtor might bemoan in a letter having to sell "Tom, my blacksmith."
But slaves' first identity was always as their owner's property.

One rule of thumb that's often helpful in doing genealogy for black Americans is that when they
were freed, most slaves took the last name of their former owner.  If an ancestral family shows up
on the 1870 census as Mose and Annie "Blankenship," it's a good idea to see if there are any
(relatively-prosperous) white people named "Blankenship" in the same area.

With any luck, the 1860 Census Slave Schedules may show that one of the white Blankenships had
owned a male and a female slave about the ages of Mose and Annie.  Occasionally the pre-war
legal docments or family-papers of the white Blankenships may contain a reference to their slave
Mose, or "servant" Annie.

For slave-owners liked to maintain the fiction that their slaves were "servants."  They also liked to
portray themselves as the paterfamilias of "my people."  Pretense and self-delusion were probably
necessary for them to soften the reality; that although they lived with and provided for a number
of dependents, their relationship to them was mercenary rather than (in most cases) familial.

Undoubtedly some slave-owners were kinder to their "servants" than others.  Probably the circum-
stance of daily living together in a detached "society," comprised almost entirely of the white owners
and their black slaves, made for personal relationships between them of every kind from murderous
hatred to genuine affection.

But the slaves would not have been fooled by the familial rhetoric of their owners.  It's doubtful the
owners were themselves  The idea of racial superiority on which the slave-system existed drew a line
they all knew was uncrossable.

And despite whatever benign posturings their owners made of it, slaves knew the reality of that
system was being forced to do what "master" said to do...even against their own will, choice, and
best interests.  Slaves...masters too...all understood that that their lives and their labor benefitted
him alone.

All alike recognized slavery as a monstrous wrong.  Even the great slave-owner who was perhaps
most instrumental in the founding of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, later wrote of slavery,
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

So it's hard to understand why, when ex-slaves were first free to establish their identity as persons
rather than property, they so often took the name of their former owners.

There even seems to have been a perverse pride among some ex-slaves, that taking the name of
a prominent slave-owner (their own or not) conferred greater dignity on them.  (That seems the
reason more ex-slaves took the last name "Washington" than had ever been owned by the few
whites of that name: and "Washington" is still a common surname in America's black population.)

Something similar has happened in American Christianity, and it's hard to understand why so many
of those set free by Christ take the name of their mercenary former owners: for what else is it when
Christ's freedmen call themselves "conservative Christians" ?  Weren't "conservatives" the predators
who used an evil system to make Christians serve them, to their own benefit alone ?

Don't Christians identifying themselves with their "conservative" masters show a perverse pride in
doing so ?  It's hard to miss that those who call themselves "conservative Christians" imply by that
slave-name that they are the "real Christians."

Is a slave made more-truly, and more-proudly, free by taking the name of the one who enslaved him ?
Is Christ's freedom enhanced when it is linked into the world's evil system ?