I posted this on my other blog, Student of the Civil War.
Elly DeWolfe Hale has confronted her family's tragic past. She is a descendant of the infamous DeWolfe family, which made a fortune in the slave trade. A recent article reported:
"Here in Seattle, Elly DeWolfe Hale was far removed from her early American ancestors, a wealthy, illustrious family whose legacy still colors life in Bristol, R.I."
"Then came a letter that unmasked a shameful secret:"
"Hale's storied forebears, the DeWolfs, weren't just distillers and merchants, they were human traffickers who built their fortune on the slave trade. In fact, as Hale and other relatives were to discover, the DeWolfs were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history."
" Over three generations -- even after the trade was outlawed in 1808 -- the DeWolfs shipped 10,000 Africans to the Americas to sell as slaves or conscript as labor for their sugar plantations in Cuba. About a half-million of the slaves' descendants are alive today."
"Suddenly, Hale, who had grown up in Reno, Nev., and thought of herself as a modern, progressive child of the West, felt the national stain of slavery lapping at her heels."
""We are connected to the past and the future in ways we don't realize," she mused last week, still visibly moved by her struggle to reconcile the consequences of her family history."
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