Slaves in My Family

My family is a mix of Southerners and Yankees. My Dad was from Wisconsin and his family fought for the Union in the Civil War. My Mom is from Georgia and at least one of that side of the family fought for the confederacy.

My maternal granmothers maiden name was Goodloe. This is her family picture. She is on the far left.

One of my distant relations did a whole Genealogy of the Goodloe family tracing it back to England. He published a book of the genealogy in the 1970's. In the book their was a picture of the plantation house that my ancestors owned in Spotsylvania County Virginia in the early 1800s.

So about 5 years ago when I was on vacation in Virginia with my mother and sister, we decided to try to find the Goodloe plantation house.

We met Arthur Lee Beasley at his general store and he was able to take us to the Goodloe plantation house.

Much to our surprize the house has been totally restored to the orginal 1804 appearance. The new owners are not related to us but they graciously gave us a tour of the house.

The saddest part of the tour was when we reached the basement. There we found the original slave jail. This is where slaves were kept after they tried to run away or did something else wrong in their master's (my ancestor's) eyes. They would most likely have been whipped before they were put in the jail.

Some of my other ancestors related to the Goodloes were named the Wallers. John Waller was my first ancestor to come to America in 1635. The Wallers also made their way to Spottsylvania, Virginia. Some of my ancestors in a collateral line, were the Wallers that owned Kunte Kinte who was made famous in Roots. In the book the owner is called Massa Waller but in the movie they changed the name to protect the guilty.

We all have things in our family's past that we are not proud of.