From: ph111-bx@violet.berkeley.edu (;;;;7202)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Review: _We Were Always Free_
Date: 4 Sep 1992 06:29:34 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu

Sorry for being so late posting this.

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[NEWSWEEK: AUGUST 17, 1992]
THE ARTS
Between Two Worlds
From an attic trunk, one black family's story

For  most African-Americans, family history stretches back only  to  a 
dim place in the last century:  the emergence from plantation slavery, 
or maybe an ancestor's arrival in the sweltering hold of a slave ship.  
But  T.  O.  Madden Jr., an 89-year-old  Virginia  farmer,  found  his 
family's story intact one day when he opened a hidebound trunk in  the 
attic  of the Madden farmhouse.  In it were letters,  receipts,  bills 
and official certificates dating back to the 1750s.  With these,  plus 
extensive  research  in  archives and the help  of  historian  Ann  L. 
Miller, Madden constructed _We Were Always Free_ (218 pages.   Norton. 
$19.95),  a rich, unusually well-documented narrative of  an  American 
black family.

The  Maddens  of Culpeper County were exceptional not only  for  their 
scrupulous record-keeping.  As the title suggests, they weren't slaves 
but "free persons of color."  The family's founder was indigent  Irish 
immigrant,  Mary  Madden, who gave birth in 1758 to a daughter  by  an 
unknown  black man--possibly a slave.  Under Colonial law,  the  legal 
status  of the mother was conferred upon her children.  The  daughter, 
Sarah,  was free.  But like her destitude mother, fined for bearing  a 
mulatto child, she became an indentured servant.

Sarah's  term of service lasted until she was 31 years old.   Most  of 
her  indenture was spent at Montpelier, the home of  future  president 
James  Madison.   When  her term was over, she set  herself  up  as  a 
seamstress and laundress.  The book offers a vivid picture of  hauling 
water  and  washing outdoors in all seasons and stitching  clothes  by 
hand:  in one year, for just one family, Sarah scrubbed 430 items  and 
sewed  dozens  of shirts, breeches, coats and sheets.   Sarah  had  11 
children to support; if she had not been able to, they would have been 
placed as indentured servants.

T.  O.  Madden's great-grandfather, Willis, seems  to  have  inherited 
Sarah's  fortitude.   Working as a blacksmith, teamster  and  sometime 
whisky  distiller, Willis saved enough to buy a farm and  establish  a 
popular  tavern  and  general  store.  He lost all  but  the  land  to 
predatory troops--mainly Union--in the Civil War.

Later  generations became teachers, ministers and storekeepers.   Like 
other  free  blacks,  the  Maddens  endured  a  subtle   psychological 
hardship.  They lived between two worlds, black and white.  Blacks who 
had been slaves envied and mistrusted the Maddens for their  education 
and their ownership of land.  Although the book describes instances of 
sympathetic whites helping the family through legal problems, to  most 
whites  free blacks were an irritant.  Madden quotes petitions to  the 
Virginia  Legislature  demanding  that free blacks  be  excluded  from 
trades--carpentry,  blacksmithing, masonry--where they  competed  with 
whites, or that free blacks be expelled from the state entirely.   Now 
a  sizable  landowner, he writes of being refused service at  a  lunch 
counter until desegration was enforced by law.

As  Madden  tells his own story, the almost courtly prose he  uses  to 
narrate  the  family's earlier history gives way to  a  more  relaxed, 
sitting-on-the-front-porch  style.  He is oldfashioned in  some  ways, 
using  the  word  "negro"  rather than "black," a  term  he  says  his 
ancesters  would  have  considered  a  slur.   Madden's  agenda  isn't 
political.    Instead   it  is  a  deeply  personal  account   of   an 
extraordinary American family.
Gregory Cerio
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american