I am a committed amateur genealogist, like many of you. I maintain and research my various trees daily. It's a huge pleasure and a way to focus my mind. I also find it to be a creative process.
Some times I find amazing things, relationships to historical figures for example. Today I found something disturbing and had to make a decision. I was investigating the family of the American adventurer Merriweather Lewis (1774-1809), who is my 4th cousin, 6 times removed. I am interested in that Lewis family because it was prolific and accomplished. I also would like to find a family relationship, if there is one, to a Lewis woman who married a famous frontiersman. I'm thinking she doesn't really belong in THIS Lewis family, because this Lewis family was "hoity toity" and she was not. Anyway, I was looking around with time and abandon, as only a retired person can do.
I discovered that Merriwether Lewis had two cousins (both 1st cousins, one generation removed) who were infamous murderers of an enslaved person named George. Isham Lewis (d. 1815) and Lilburne Lewis (d. 1812) were actually nephews of Thomas Jefferson, their mother Lucy Jefferson Lewis being Jefferson's sister.
I was horrified to be even distantly related to these monsters, so I deleted them from my tree. Then I thought about it, really hard. Why should they not be marked forever as racists and murderers? So I put the truth back in. Now if anyone clicks on them it says: Isham Lewis , murderer of Slave George, and the same description for Lilburne Lewis.
The truth can be horrifying, but it should never be ignored.
My sister was the genealogist in our family, She pushed our lines back pretty far, one into the 900s. She had I don't know how many folders of family trees and copies of documents. She died suddenly a year and a half ago and one of her daughters came and got all that stuff thinking her sone might be interested in it one day and continue the research. We had a relative involved in the famous Hatfield/McCoy feud, also slave owners but the daughter set them free on her death. One guy built a church in Tennessee using wood plugs instead of nails. Another died after being kicked in the head by a horse. Another might have been a Danish princess. Fun little details.
ReplyDeleteEndlessly fun!
Delete"The truth can be horrifying, but it should never be ignored."
ReplyDeleteTurns out that I am distantly related to Donald Trump, not by blood, but by marriage. Genealogy is fascinating. I continue to spend time looking for answers to family tree mysteries. What happened to those fathers a few generations ago who disappeared, leaving their children without fathers?
It is all so interesting. For instance I have an ancestor who was hanged after he was caught having a sexual relationship with another man's wife. And imagine my surprise to discover that several of my ancestors were followers of Joseph Smith and were members of the Mormon travels to Utah.
ReplyDeleteI hate to say it, but I suspect many people in those days were responsible for the deaths of slaves in one way or another. (At least if they were slaveholders.) There must have been something about Isham and Lilburne's crime to make it stand out enough to have been recorded and to make them "infamous."
ReplyDeleteIt was a particularly brutal murder. Google "Slave George"
DeleteI agree, the truth about the two Lewises should be there for all to see. It's not as if you're implicated in the murder!
ReplyDeleteI think it is dangerous to try to erase history (good and bad) like our present administration is doing. Kudos to you for facing it and pushing through. "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" or something like that.
ReplyDeleteI have never tried to go back through my family tree after learning that a paternal ancestor was accused of treason and adultery with Anne Boleyn, leading to her beheading. Nope. Don't want to know any more of that : )
To be honest, I'm surprised that the two men were charged with the murder of George. I thought the murder of slaves was generally ignored. I am thankful that both men ended up dead though, paying eventually for their brutal crime.
ReplyDeleteYes, these two Lewises should remain.
ReplyDeleteWhen we, or rather my husband, started to research and build the family tree for both of our families, we found horrific and heroic people - nazis in my family only one/two generations ago, soldiers and rebels on both sides of the Irish civil war of the 1920s, corageous and abhorrent politicians, mediocre and celebrated writers, actors and poets, miserable priests and devoted nuns and so on. And that's only the surface we could scratch. Humanity is full of terror and beauty.
I'm glad you are including them along with their crime. This administration is trying to erase a lot of history and we all know how awful that is.
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ReplyDeleteKudos to you for keeping them in. If you're doing the work, documenting the history, document it all.
ReplyDeleteThanks, MG - I appreciate your encouragement.
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