Customer Reviews

Slave Ancestral Research: It's Something Else.

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Mary L. Jackson Fears, Slave Ancestral Research, It's Something Else (Bowie: Heritage Books, 1995) is a good story of one person's ten-year search in Georgia records (mainly Taylor and Crawford counties) with plenty of examples, illustrated by reproductions of original documents. Written in an appealing personal style, readers are taken through Ms. Jackson Fears' trials and triumphs in search of her slave ancestors. Along the way, we learn much about the strengths, weaknesses and even pitfalls of various types of records. Although there are numerous useful illustrations (most of them adequately legible), the quality of their reproduction is poor. This book is particularly useful to researchers in Georgia records, although there is much general applicablity to Southern records in general.

Mary Fears did a remarkable job on the research of her slave ancestors. The book was of particular interest to me because it led back to my own ancestor, Bartley McCrary, a Revolutionary War soldier. He was the slaveowner of the author's ancestor.

I found the information she presents was well-documented. In addition, she writes of her own idea from the slaves'viewpoint on their treatment by their owners, thoughts that really tug at your heart. She presents the many difficulties in researching slaves and shows how they were treated as commodities instead of human beings as well as not even giving them last names. I was very happy to have found this book as it certainly gave me a different perspective of the era of slavery in America.
Betty Meischen