The Slaves Have Names: Ancestors of My Home

They lived with professors and waited on former presidents. They were masons and nurses school teachers and field hands 246 people owned by a man who struggled with the institution of slavery. Yet almost no one knows their names. When a white woman begins to study the history of the plantations these people built the plantations where she was raised she discovers that the silence around these peoples lives speaks of a silence in her countrys history . . . and in her own life. A creative nonfiction history book about American slavery and its legacy in the United States.In the late afternoons sometimes I walk up and talk to the folks who are buried in the undulating earth most of their graves are unmarked by any stone except perhaps two pieces of slate stuck vertically in the ground one at head and one at foot and long worn down or washed clean of names. But three stones bear words gifts cut into rock - Ben Creasy the carpenter Jesse Nicholas the stonemason and Primus the foreman. Ben and Jesses stones are clear - with their names and dates marked deeply in the sandstone. I can find them in the records - know for sure who they are. Primuss stone is harder to know. The tradition here on the farm is that Primus the foreman at Upper Bremo is buried here but I cannot be sure. The stone reads Prams - 12 and Im not sure that it refers to this Primus. It may be his grandson also Primus or some person I dont know yet. Its the 12 that throws me - the Primus I know lived to be an old man long past 1812 - his death date is noted - 1849. That date seems right according to the records but then the records are so sparse; its hard to know. I dont know how to solidify - to give storied flesh - to these rough marks hewn deep into stone.