Whereabouts (1865)

[miss_warina]

Comments

[ejia_arath03]

I read that as "small dove" and wondered how it was possible for birds to place advertisements. They sure seemed smarter back then!

[luke_russell]

I did too! And again on re-reading. How strange!

[memnet]

I read it the same way. *headdesk*

[luke_russell]

I surmise that the brain is tricking us because of the word "dove". If it was "Stevenson" I think we wouldn't read it as "small"

[luke_russell]

I take it that Samuel Dove was a freeman in Utica NY, once a slave owned by George Dove along with the rest of the family and when emancipated in 1865 were all scattered about? It's somewhat hard to decipher the story from the advert.

[percysowner]

I think they were all owned by George Dove in Va. They were all sold off in Richmond VA. to various owners in the south. SamL and Edmond where sold to Joe Mick in Nashville Tenn. and eventually were separated. SamL's mother Areno was left in Richmond bought(?) by a tavern owner or possibly abandoned there. Mariah, Nezia and Peggy were sold to unknown owners. This is so tragic and there is probably no way to find out if he ever was able to trace them.

[misstia]

i wish we could know if they ever were reunited......

[tanwen]

http://uticaphoenix.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/dove-slave-no-1-rp.pdf

[frou_frou]

I was happily reading that until that awful word. Owned. I still find it shocking that anyone has ever - much less as recently as in the 1860s - considered it acceptable to "own" another human and therefore they are your slave. I'm so glad to have been born now, and where I am, rather than there. Those poor people.

[misstia]

it does really jolt you doesn't it?

[suzycat]

Yeah, it took me a couple of reads to understand what on earth the ad was on about, and then... God, how awful.

[fledgist]

People were owned in the western hemisphere more recently than that. Slavery was not abolished in Brazil until 1888 and in Cuba until 1889. Esteban Montejo, a cimarrón, a slave who escaped slavery in Cuba and lived as a runaway in the 1880s was still alive at 103 in the 1960s when his biography Biografía de un cimarrón (translated as Autobiography of a Runaway Slave) was published in 1966.

[tanwen]

Holy crap I actually found out something!

http://uticaphoenix.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/dove-slave-no-1-rp.pdf

[misstia]

that's just amazing you found that---as i say above...

what an incredible life he had....despite his being a slave, eventually becoming free, having to buy his son, etc....he seemed to not be bitter or angry and just got on with doing what he had to do.....what an incredible man....and there were thousands and thousands of others just like him, whom we don't know their name, but their stories would be similar.....