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Danny Boling ☮️

the "value" of the slaves one of my relatives "owned" back in 1857 and now I'm sick to my stomach. 😭

(I was looking over some of my family's ancestry docs. It's one thing to know your family tree includes slave owners, which I already did. It's quite another to discover some of the nuance of what that actually meant.)

@IAmDannyBoling That’s hard to handle because it’s so “fact” not just a general description of your ancestor’s past life.

I read all here. And wondering why Frank is “only” $50. Looks like strong young men were valuable.

@cobalt

Here's what's different:

Before, I just knew I had relatives that owned slaves.

Today, I learned the names of those slaves. And what a white man thought they were "worth" in dollars and cents.

@IAmDannyBoling @cobalt

To adjust for inflation, I reckon that those numbers should be multiplied by a factor somewhere around 250 times.

So, those people were valued from what today would be about $300,000 down to $12,500.

It's clear that many people today aren't valued that highly.