By
Ron Allen
NBC News
NBC News
The
Martin family knows something about themselves that few if any families will
ever learn about their past. They're able to trace their ancestry back hundreds
of years to a little girl. Her name was Priscilla. She was 10 years old.
Priscilla was kidnapped in Sierra Leone west Africa in 1756, and shipped
to Charleston, South Carolina, where she lived her entire life as a slave.
Priscilla's
spirit is alive and well in her modern day relatives, the Martins, who live not
far from where Priscilla toiled on a plantation. They are believed to be the
only African Americans with such a detailed link to the past. And what's even
more remarkable is that this centuries old family tree, spreading over at least
7 generations, is documented on paper. For most African American families there
is no record of where their ancestors came from, and almost no chance of
finding one.
The
Martins have never shared their story on national television. It's actually the
story of how two American families were brought together by a 10-year-old
girl.
NBC
News first discovered the story in Sierra Leone, while doing a series of
pieces for NBC Nightly News, about Americans trying
to make a difference in that desperately poor nation, still struggling
with the aftermath of a long brutal civil war.
Our
journey took us to a place called Bunce Island. That's where we visited
the ruins of one of the most notorious slave trading fortresses the world has
ever know, a transit point for tens of thousands of slaves sent to America.
An
American history professor named Joe Opala had launched a project to try to
save this incredible piece of history. It's been neglected for decades,
completely uninhabited since the slave trade ended. It is a place so remote, so
forgotten, few people ever travel there. Opala believes African Americans have
more ancestral ties to that part of Africa than any other place in the world.
That's
where we first heard about Priscilla. We followed the route she took aboard a
slave ship to the port of Charleston, South Carolina. And that's where we met
Edward Ball, a descendant of the family that owned Priscilla and some 4,000
other men, women, and children, on more than 20 plantations, for nearly 200
years.
NBC News
It
was all chronicled in ten thousand pages of "property records,"
handed down by the Ball family through the years, probably the most intact and
detailed collection of documents from that era. Most of the records of slave
owners were burned or destroyed as the South was losing the Civil War. They
list the names, births, deaths, and marriages of the people the Balls owned.
Looking deep in that treasure trove of records, scribbled on parchment paper
with a quill and ink, many wrapped and bound in pigskin, Ball was able to
piece together Priscilla's family tree. She lived to age 61 and had ten
children. And they had children, who had children. It was all there.
Eventually,
the trail led to a woman named Thomalind Martin Polite, her husband Antwan and
their two children. They're a very unassuming couple who both work in the
public school system. Thomalind is Priscilla's great-great-great-great seventh
generation grand-daughter. And to this day, Thomalind is still trying to
comprehend the magnitude of that.
For
Edward Ball, finding Priscilla and then finding the Martin's was a journey for
redemption. He's extremely uncomfortable, even tortured by what he's learned
about how his family made its massive fortune, exploiting so many innocent
human beings. But such was the practice of the day.
The
Martins are a very private family. Thomalind has only made a handful of public
appearances to discuss her incredible family story, and share what it means to
her, and families everywhere that would love to know who they are and where
they come from. From Bunce Island to Charleston, South Carolina, from the
1700's to the present, it is a family's journey to discover a distant but ever
present ancestor, Priscilla.
No comments:
Post a Comment