Others were freed from slavery with FreeJoe's money, and still others remained slaves until the Civil War. Tenn. He also owned a stagecoach line and a stagecoach stop, and was the first black man to marry legally in Shelby County. It was family, Lacey wrote in his second book, that best described Joe. When Joseph Harris received his freedom in 1832, he could have gone to the free state of Pennsylvania or north of the border to Canada, but he elected to stay with his family and travel deep into the bowels of slavery. Joseph Harris believed in the oldest human institution.
Families make up the basis of every society.
The family is the means for producing children and continuing the human race. The family provides protection and early training of infants and the family sets up a division of labor so that each contributes something. Lacey first heard of his ancestor about 15 years ago , on a summer trip to Memphis from Chicago, where he was living at the time. When I arrived, one of my relatives chastised me for not attending the Harris family reunion. He later heard about FreeJoe, and decided to find his grave site in the cemetery at Gray's Creek Baptist Church, which Joseph had started.