My Ancestor's Slave Master Revealed

Slavery info shocks, explains, liberates
By Kelvin Wade October 13, 2010

On Monday, my brother Tony wrote about coming across some genealogical information on the Wade family. The info piqued my interest because several months ago I opened an account on Ancestry.com hoping to piece together the history of the Wades. I was stymied trying to go back further than my great-grandparents. When I received the information from Tony, I used it to do some more digging and was astonished at what I found.

Of course, I knew my ancestors were slaves but it's different when you have a name and dollar amount to attach to them. It is horrific knowing our great-great-great grandparents Ned and Anarchy Wade and their three children were slaves in San Augustine, Texas. How do you own humans as slaves? And if that isn't bad enough, how do you to that to children?

While it's sad and moving, it's cleared up a mystery for me. Our father told us that Johnny Allen Wade, who was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, was a distant cousin. When I friended his daughter, Carla, on Facebook, I couldn't exactly explain our relation. Now I know our great-grandfathers were brothers.

Also some of our family is lighter-skinned than others so obviously we have white ancestors. While it doesn't answer the question directly, our ancestor Ned is described in the census information as mulatto meaning 'one-half Negro blood.' In other documents he is described as a 'Negro man of yellow complexion.' But the information doesn't tell us if Ned's father was a white slave master who raped one of his slaves or if our interracial roots go back even more generations.

While I was fascinated by the discovery of these slave ancestors, I was also drawn to finding out more about their owners. While the report says Anarchy and her three children were in the Edward Teal estate, Ned Wade belonged to the Ruben D. Wood estate, which was probated on Oct. 27, 1836. A man named Alexander Horton purchased Ned.

Minimal digging turned up a lot of information about Horton. He was an early settler of San Augustine, Texas (then called Ayish Bayou) and fought in the Fredonian War, the Regulator-Modulator war and others. He was aide-de-camp to Gen. Sam Houston. He was both a sheriff and mayor of San Augustine and served in the Texas state legislature. He also had a friend named 'Edward Teel.' Though the spelling of the last name is different than the will, odds are it's the same person who owned Anarchy and the children.

I was shaken to find myself, with just a few mouse clicks, staring at the face of the man who owned my ancestor. Studying Alexander Horton's old, weathered face, I wondered how he treated his slaves. Was he simply just a product of his time? Was he strict? Was he cruel?

But the most fascinating thing about this man to me was that he wrote a memoir. And the best part is the end where he wrote: '...I had by honest assertions accumulated a small fortune but the civil wars of my country left me in my old age penniless poor, having given away a fortune in valuable land for Negro property which was taken away from me by the self-righteous people of the North...'

There's something about reading his lamentations over land that, in all likelihood is in my family's hands today, that I find delicious. How many African-Americans get to hear the former slave masters of their ancestors bitterly complaining about losing their land? It's liberating.

This genealogy information is life affirming. It's also humbling. When I look at the dozens of names of relatives I never knew existed throughout the last 150 years, I couldn't help but think that 150 years from now, me and my brothers' names will be on someone's genealogy list. And like Tony said, we're going to leave a wealth of information for them to find. Peace.

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ADDITIONAL NOTES: The photo accompanying this column is of Alexander Horton, the man who purchased our ancestor Ned Wade.

When Tony brought this information to my attention, I was more than interested. I'd done some research into our past but its difficult. It's especially difficult for black for obvious reasons. Birth certificates weren't always filled out, especially when we're talking about deep East Texas in my cases. So we have to look at Census records and other things to piece together our ancestry. I remember my mother showing me her birth certificate years ago (I have no idea where it is today) and it looked like an old sheet of paper. It didn't look official at all.

I was fascinated to learn about Ned and Anarchy Wade. But the information is confusing and sometimes contradictory. In one part of the info, Ned and Anarchy are both referred to as Mullatoes from Tennessee. But in another, Anarchy is said to be Indian and from Oklahoma. I do recall my mother telling me that she had relatives that were Indian.

This would have been so much easier if I'd talked more to my parents about their families. But I just wasn't interested back then. When you're a kid, you don't want to hear about the Jurassic era stories from your folks. Now that I do, they're no longer here to provide me with answers. It's a shame because our dad would have loved having this information.

When I first saw the picture of Alexander Horton I was really shaken. I didn't expect to come across such a thing. I was amazed reading his writings. The beginnings of San Augustine are fascinating. There's fighting and more fighting. When I got to Horton's lament about losing his land, I found it funny. Amusing. Liberating. But I understand his point, too. He talked about how the Northerners were hypocritical. They'd used slaves and when they no longer needed them, they often solved those slaves to their Southern neighbors. And because the North had factories and didn't need slaves, they had the luxury of supporting abolishing the slave trade. Still, it doesn't make slavery any less evil. It doesn't make Horton morally superior. But I do see his point while at the same time, I find it just desserts for a man who used slaves to build his wealth to find himself poor and his land gone.

With the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, me and Tony's writing, Scott's ministry in Canada and my brother Orvis' work on the Suisun planning commission and law enforcement, I think we will be very easy for our descendants to find. In the future, they won't have to just see names on a genealogy tree. They'll be able to see videos of us. Granted those videos are primarily going to be of us acting a fool on Christmas, but it's something.