Slaves in the Family

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and revealing historical journey
Review: This book educated me more about the history of slavery in the USA than any other thing. The author's investigation about his family's history of owning slaves spares no facts, however disturbing they are. It traces the history of the slave trade and focuses on the slave business of Charleston, SC where his family settled and started several plantations where many slaves lived and worked. He finishes his exploration by describing his presence at the family reunion of his family's slaves' ancestors. This book explains the plights of slaves and slaveowners without any slant caused by some political agenda. It is a straightforward presentation of slavery and its consequences. The evils of slavery become apparent by the mere description of history.

Ball meanders at some times in ways that may not be interesting to some readers; however, I appreciated some of the details about the history of South Carolina and its environment.

I think this book accomplishes a healing and educational purpose that trancends Ball's family and reaches to all Americans, as we have all been affected negatively by the heritage of slavery in this country.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful history needs good editor
Review: I learned a lot from reading this book. Ball gets five stars for his fluid history of South Carolina from colonial times through emancipation. His history was made even more readable through knowing that the research was more than an academic pursuit, that it was personal. But then, it became too personal. Interspersed with the history were accounts of his present day search for the African-American families whose ancestors had once been Ball slaves. For this section of the book he gets one star: I felt he was patting himself on the back a little too hard. Although he does deserve a lot of praise for undertaking this project, his self congratulatory tone and his attempts to blame too many living individuals for the evils of slavery made reading these sections difficult. But I waded through this book and am glad that I did (although the last chapter stung when he ended his West African trip by blaming the living relatives of the slave dealers for the sins of slavery.) This book left me feeling preached to way too often. Ball could have given us his family's story, the stories of the African American families that he met through the project and left the reader to draw the conclusions that he, instead, shoved our faces into. I think most readers could have been lead to the same place that Ball pushes us into (resentingly). Perhaps the sheer exercise of writing the book was therapeutic for Ball, but a good editor was needed before this book went to print. The flaw with this book is not content, it's delivery.

Rating:
Summary: Coming to grips with the past...
Review: National Book Award-winner, Slaves in the Family, is one of the best nonfiction books I have read in the past ten years. Edward Ball comes from a very prominent family of plantation owners in the Charleston Low Country. The patriarch, Elias Ball, immigrates to the colonies in the late 1600's. Being very prolific when it came to progeny, he soon had children and grandchildren owning over two dozen plantations along the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. After the Civil War, the Ball plantations were sold or lost, one by one. Yet today, the Balls are still very prominent in Charleston Society. Their family tree is well documented, and instead of being plantation owners, they now count lawyers, judges, doctors and priests among their ranks.

In Edward Ball's first effort, he sets out to find the descendants of the thousands of Ball family slaves. This was no easy task. Many slaves had no last names. Others moved to distant states. Some descendants had no wish to speak with him. Ball also encountered reticence from his own family. The extended family did not like to talk about slavery. On the few occasions when the subject was raised, they all espoused the party line: 1. Balls never mistreated their slaves 2. Balls never separated slave families and 3. Ball masters never slept with female slaves.

Using surviving Ball journals, diaries, ledgers and inventories, Edward was able to contact a good many slave descendants. I found the most moving parts of the book are when Edward's research validates the oral history of many slave ancestors, and in some cases, helped them to fill in the missing pieces of their genealogical puzzle. Edward's research also helps him to discover more about his own ancestors. Contrary to Ball oral history, not all Ball plantation owners treated their slaves admirably. Also, slave families were sometimes separated-although mostly due to economic necessity (i.e. when slaves were sold to settle an estate). But what really shocked the author was when he discovered that he had ancestors of color! But save that topic for another book.

The only part of Slaves in the Family that bothered me was Edward Ball's insistence on being an apologist for slavery. Although slavery was a horrible institution, Ball was in no way responsible for what his ancestors did hundreds of years ago. Still, this is just a minor distraction in an otherwise fabulous book. In addition to reading Slaves in the Family, I also listened to it on tape and enjoyed it just as much the second time around. Edward Ball truly gives us a remarkable effort in his first at bat.

Rating:
Summary: Great Subject
Review: Mr. Ed Ball does a good job traveling the U.S. to find relatives in his family from the slave years. While details are almost non-exsitant, he was able to form his family tree though family documentation and oral history.
My lack of starts comes from my feeling this book didn't get deep enough into how the relatives today truely feel about their past relative's situation. While he did a great job setting up his family's history and relating to it, he missed on the compassion needed for the slave side of his family. He must have had it since he was accepted into so many families and told their stories.
In one of the end chapters he went to Sierra Leon to trace the African side of the slave trade. Again he falls short of writing with feeling.
This book is worth the read because it gives you a documented slice into a family's life as slave holders in South Carolina. I do think it helps reveal some of the issues of slaves during the founding of the United States-something that isn't taught well enough in America's school system. I only wish the book were more personal instead of factual. But I guess that's why there are other books.

Rating:
Summary: Worth your time to read
Review: Edward Ball's "Slaves In The Family" is a very interesting book that alternates between family history in one chapter and his search for that history in the next. As interesting as the history is it's the search that is compelling. His meetings with his new found cousins often are touching and at times tense. This could actually be two books and each would be enjoyable.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed
Review: I can't say this book is awesome nor give it 5 stars. It is a story into family history that I had not read before and was fasicinated by. Readers will learn a lot about life for slaves and their descendents. His story is grandest when it gives hope to those who had holes in their family history. And comes clean with the injustice his family caused for so many.

Where I believe Ball goes astray (other than some long boring rabbit trails here and there and descriptions of shades of color in people he meets) is when he goes to Africa and antagonizes the descendents of people who sold other Africians. It is one thing for Ball who benefited from the wealth of his ansestors to try to make things right by his self-journey but what right does he have to judge these Africian leaders who benefited from their ancestors? Is it his role to make them admit guilt of their fathers? Ball comes across to me as an ugly self-righteous American. I would have preferred he stop at his own discovery and attempt to right wrongs done.

Rating:
Summary: I just finished reading it...
Review: I can't say enough good things about this book. It gives an important and well-documented look into crucial aspects of American history. It attempts to recreate the existence of thousands of people whose names have been lost.

Moreover, it transcends American slavery and becomes a study of what people will do for greed and power.

The book is deeply personal. It is also fascinatingly written with just the right tone of authenticity. You are involved with the author as he unblinkingly confronts his own family's history of guilt and evil. The research is amazing: Similar events are recounted both from written records (memoirs, ledgers) and from oral history, and you can see how the accounts match up.

Just when you think the book can't get any more interesting, there is always something else to make you ponder. In the final chapter, Ball goes to Africa to talk with his counterparts who are descendant of Blacks who profited from slavery.

Rating:
Summary: Too dry to keep on reading...
Review: I confess, I could not finish this book. Fresh from finishing the altogether wonderful Seabiscuit, I expected this book to be both entertaining and educatational. Instead what I found was author Ball droning on and on about how this one married that one and how many kids they had and so forth. Hello, editor?!Ball does not weave together a compelling story... it's just facts, facts and more facts (or if things really got going, it had to be after I called it quits).

Rating:
Summary: An Incredible, Astounding Odyssey
Review: After reading "The Death of the Party of Lincoln" at school, I got this book, then "The Sweet Hell Inside" and then "The Hairstons." Also "Soul by Soul" as well as a book on Madame C.J. Brown.
For me, this wasn't history. It was NEWS. I absolutely NEVER KNEW. And couldn't have imagined.
We have a lot of work to do in this country. This book, and the others I mention, have opened my eyes to that unassailable fact.
Thank you for your efforts, Edward Ball. And, thank you to all his relatives who shared with him their stories. Edwina Harleston Whitlock is my favorite. She needs to have her own TV show.

Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting!
Review: Recently I have been studying about life on the plantation. One of my goals is to read at least 50 books about slavery. I'm not quite there yet. But I read Mr. Ball's book with interest, because it is about a white man who travels all over the country looking for his ancestors who owned a large plantation in South Carolina as well as the slaves who lived there. He finds hundreds, and tells stories about their pasts which are his past, and makes me wonder about my past. Among the fictional books I have recently read and find very educational are: The Journal of Darien Dexter Duff, an Emancipated Slave, The Diary of a Slave Girl, Ruby Jo, and The Journal of Leroy Jeremiah Jones, a Fugitive Slave. Those 3 books all have photos with explanations and information about slavery. You will never get bored studying this part of history.