#TIL 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.)
#Ancestry #Genealogy #Slaves #Slave #Race #Black #BlackAndWhite #LastWillAndTestament #CivilWar #Valuation #Value #Property #Freedom
@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.
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.
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.