Our Afro-American Cousins

Sometime back, with the help of our cousin Jennifer Niles, I ventured into the genealogical history of the deep, pre-emancipation, south. This has been an eye opening experience to this "good ol' northern white boy". I am finding that, not withstanding slavery on the economic level, real integration was taking place to a large degree on the personal level. The vast majority of black slaves merely adopted the surnames of their owners, but there was also a significant number that came by the surname a different way. In our family alone, ( and the Reas were very minor slave holders), I know of two examples where caucasian Reas had children by their black slaves. Back then the children were called Mulatto, a word no longer used in these "politically correct" times. These unions took two forms. One form is where a white man actually married a black woman. The other relationship was one in which the woman was classified as his "consort". It is not at all uncommon when visiting a cemetery in the deep south of that period to find a white man burried with his white wife on one side and his black consort on the other. Jennifer related to me a charming story that has been passed down in her line concerning Etta Rea. Her father Charles Edwin Rea apperantly doted on her. When Etta got married, her father gave her a milking cow as a wedding gift. I am also finding how record keeping as it pertained to blacks in the south both before & after the war is abysimal to say the least. I suspect that this was no accident. White cemeteries are well inventoried while most black cemeteries are barely known of. Usually way back in the woods in the middle of nowhere. I intend to keep researching this subject with the goal being to eventually welcome our own black descent cousins fully into the Rea family.