Trina Robinson - Cast In Bronze

 

One day, I get a call from my mom. She tells me about this old photo album that all of a sudden turned up in the attic at the house next door to the home that she grew up in. Apparently, about 50 or 60 years ago, there was a flood in her family’s basement and a bunch of things were moved next door, and this is one of the things that was left behind. It was really old and starting to fall apart. There were about one hundred or so photographs. They were those old-fashioned kind with those decorative deckle-cut edges. It was wonderful. My favorite was a photo of my great grandmother. 

 

In it, she had a jar of something she had just canned in one hand. Her other hand was firmly planted on her hip, and she looked really tough and proud. It was awesome, because I never knew her and I got to see her personality there. In the album, there are also a bunch of old newspaper articles and they were largely from the 1930s. And in it, it just talked about jobs they had and such and it talked about my family’s migration to Chicago in 1866. It said we had come from Kentucky. 

 

Now, that was the weird part, because my family, this part was actually from Boston, so I just attribute it to reporting error. But it was just so cool to have all these things. I didn’t think it was possible to go back this far in my family. So, I just got addicted. I went down the genealogy rabbit hole. I got an account on ancestry.com. I’m doing all those census record searches. I see my great, great grandfather David, the streets he lived on in 1880 and 1900, or his stepmother, actually, Martha. I saw the street that she lived on in 1870 in Chicago. It was incredible. 

 

But the one thing when I was doing this research that kept coming up was Kentucky. The town of Mount Sterling is what actually kept coming up. Mount Sterling is about 40 minutes from Lexington. So, I was like, “Okay, there’s obviously something about this that I need to actually look into.” So, I went back to ancestry.com, I took all the names associated with Mount Sterling. I found the message board associated with that community, and I posted them all to see what was going to happen. A couple days later, I actually got a ping. It was from the Erlanger Historical Society in Kentucky. They were trying to find out actually what had happened to these slaves.

 

Now, I know my descendants. I’m a descendant of slaves. I mean, that’s obvious. It’s just when you see that word next to your family members’ names. That was really intense. Included in the attachment or in the message was an attachment of an estate inventory for a Kentucky congressman who had died in 1854. It listed everything he owned. There was a piano, silver, china, white bull, cows. The last category was titled Negroes. David, $300. Martha, $1,000. In addition to my great, great grandfather David and his stepmother, Martha, were the names of 14 other men, women and children. My family. 

 

I couldn’t believe that I actually was able to find this. Like I said, it didn’t make sense initially, because we’re from Kentucky. But no. We’re from Boston. That’s what I always thought. But this was saying, “No, you are from Kentucky.” I needed to know who these people were. I wanted to see where they had lived. So, I decided to go. My boyfriend and I went down there. When we’re on our way to Mount Sterling, I noticed we’re getting all these really hard looks. 

 

First, we’re trying to figure it out and then it became clear it’s because my boyfriend was white. I guess in these rural communities, this isn’t something that they’re used to. We had lived in New York at the time, and so that was not an issue. So, we realized, okay, this is something we need to think about, take note, as we’re going about our business. So, we’re on this trip. I remember planning this trip beforehand, we were told by the historical society of the town in Mount Sterling, they were telling us that we shouldn’t come alone, because this is very rural and we should actually probably have a guide. 

 

We met our guides, Joanna and Scott Davidson, on the outskirts of Mount Sterling. They had just finished their Sunday morning church service, and we were at a mini mall where they were having brunch. We’re chatting them up, and they were a really sweet elderly couple and they said, “Okay, just get in your car and follow our truck and we’ll get into town.” Great. We get in our car and we pull up behind their pickup. All I see is a flash of red, there’s blue, the stars and bars of the Confederate flag on their truck.

 

The only thing I associate with that flag is violence. My family had left this community because of the violence associated with that flag. And here I am following that flag into this community they left and just blocked out of our family narrative. Not smart. So, we’re actually sitting there freaking out, like, “What are we going to do?” But then, it was just like, “Okay, pull yourselves together, okay? They’re elderly. I mean, what are they going to actually do?” [audience laughter] 

 

So, my boyfriend, he steadied himself and like, “Okay.” He hit the gas, and we’re off. We’re following them down the interstate, and we pull off into this really quiet road and the entire landscape changed, it was as if we completely went back in time. Everything was really still and quiet. The homes were largely these brick structures with these little decorative edges, and they were largely perched up on hilltops. One of them actually had, what is it, an antique hitching post with carriage steps in the front. My face was just glued to the window, just taking this all in. 

 

We finally get to the homestead where my family were slaves, and we get out of the car, and everything is largely overgrown with wildflowers and tall grass. And Scott, he starts pointing everything out to me, like, where the main house used to be, the native grass and plants and trees, and just so I can get an idea of what my family would have seen. There were these beautiful ancient oak trees and cherry trees and goldenrod. It was fall, so things were starting to fade. But when they were hit by the sun, they were just so beautiful. I hated it, because how could beauty live here? 

 

We finally get to the main destination. It was this private family cemetery. It was about 20 or 30 graves, large marble graves. Some of them had these loving sentiments carved into them, and a lot of them were actually broken just because of neglect. And Scott, though, he’s trying to get my attention to this pile of rocks and he said, “No, these are not a pile of rocks. If you look, they’re actually embedded in the dirt. These are fieldstones used as grave markers for the slave graves. My family.” 

 

I look hard, and I take a look to the side at these big, beautiful pieces of white marble. One of them was actually eight feet tall, and it was for the man whose name was on that estate inventory, Richard French. It’s completely shadowing the slave part of the cemetery, that pile of rocks that were basically invisible. We noticed it was starting to get dark and we did not want to be there at dark. [chuckles] So, we just said our goodbyes and thank you. We got back in our car. As we’re driving down the main road, I just couldn’t help think about my great, great, great grandfather, Martin, when he went down this road for the last time. 

 

You see, he was freed in a will in 1856. The will actually said that he was to go out free. When he was freed, he actually didn’t go too far. He worked for several years really hard and saved enough money to go back, and he bought his wife, Martha, and several of his children and they ended up migrating to Chicago in 1866. So, all of this new information, I was wondering what else could be out there. I was going to courthouses, university archives. I was doing tons of internet searches. 

 

One of my internet searches turned up a personal check written by that man, Richard French, whose name was on that estate inventory. It was from the 1840s. It was on this online auction site. I called them and I said, “I wanted this check, because I just wanted something connected to my family.” It was no longer available, but he gave me the name of the guy who was actually putting it up, because it never sold.

 

I contacted him. And not only did he have that personal check, he had about 40 other documents related to that family, including three slave documents, two tax records, and one was a bill of sale for a woman named Anna, sold from one brother to another. I freaked when I saw that, just because Anna is name, that kept popping up when I was doing my research. Her name was always beside my known relative. So, I knew she must be an aunt or a cousin or something, like she was related. So, I said, “I will take those. Thank you,, those three documents.” “No, actually, you actually have to buy the whole lot. I didn’t want to buy these documents. They were part of a larger lot and I had to buy these and I want to make my money back. So, that’ll be $4,000.” [audience laughter] 

 

“I did not have $4,000,” I said. I said, “I will just take the three.” And no, didn’t budge. So, then, we just started haggling, going back and forth. He finally came down, reduced the price of the slave documents and sold me everything for $3,600. He arranged a payment arrangement, so I could pay installments. But I didn’t care, because I knew I would never get this opportunity again. To get original slave documents is next to impossible. But documents related to your actual family, that’s unheard of. So, I said, “Yes.” 

 

So, I’m home. I am planning where I’m going to put this. I picked the perfect wall. I was going to get a professionally framed, using museum quality glass. They finally arrived. I take the bill of sale for Anna out of its plastic packaging and I hold it in my hands. I’m looking at the handwriting and it’s starting to fade and I start getting nauseous. I’m holding the souls of my ancestors in my hands, and it burned. The violence of slavery is not just in those gestures, like a whip against bare skin. It is putting a dollar sign next to somebody’s name. It is passing somebody’s soul from one brother to another. 

 

I took the document, I put it back in its plastic sleeve, I went to the closet, I pulled out this large metal lockbox, put the documents inside, put them back in the closet and I’ve rarely taken them out since. I just can’t look at them every day. Not now. But the thing is, is that they’re home. They’re with me, and I’m going to take care of them and they’re going to be remembered. 

 

I am actually currently working with that historical society that took me to that cemetery. We are working to put together a plaque listing all the names of the slaves in that cemetery. One of them actually recently said to me, “You know, why are we doing this? Because no one’s going to know about this, except for us.” And I said, “Oh, no, we are doing this. I want their names recorded, cast in bronze and said out loud, David, Martha, Martin and Anna. These mothers, daughters, sons and fathers are loved.” Thank you.