Now THAT's Love

Ain't that loving you?

Two of my biggest loves are history and family so I've combined them and started doing some genealogical research. For the balance of Black (read American) History Month I'll be sharing some of my family's story which is just one small thread woven into our nations colorful tapestry.

Last Sunday was Valentine’s Day, and as I thought of the ultimate expression of love, my maternal 9th great-grandmother Elizabeth Banks came to mind. She was an indentured servant of Scottish ancestry who was sentenced to and received "39 lashes on her bare back well laid" in 1683 for having a mulatto (bi-racial) child by a negro slave. Their child was my 8th Great grandmother Mary Banks.

  

Now THAT’s love as apparently she had a second mulatto child Ann two years later.

As a child in school I learned about indentured servants, and that they often exchanged up to seven years of service for passage to America.  We also learned a little about slavery, but what they didn’t tell us then was that indentured servants and slaves on the same plantation endured very similar living and working conditions and sometimes intermingled - at least early in our countries history.

This story is chronicled in the article below which I guess also means that Wanda Sykes is a distant relative.