Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing by Morgan James Read Free Book Online

Sorleys, raised Reba as their daughter?”
    “Yes, that’s the way I read it. Seems like they didn’t have children of their own so they took in a Connell cousin from over in Seneca, South Carolina. Little Reba.”
    “Does that make us related?”
    “Lordy, I guess it would make us distant relatives, though I’m not smart enough to figure just how. Course, you know what they say,” she said with a mischievous smile, “you start climbing back down that family tree and a whole lot of us are related that wouldn’t necessarily want to be.”
    The name Aiken Beauchamp came to mind. “True. From what Margaret Connell says, Reba’s father was less than one generation away from slavery, and that’s why Nola came south to have the baby. Apparently, she wanted to hide Reba’s heritage by raising her with South Carolina relatives.”
    “Well, I suspect that’s been done a lot of times over the last three hundred years.”
    “I’m sure you are right. I’ve read enough about slavery and American history to know that. Still, finding a relative who was a slave is a shock. Here I am, as fair and Caucasian looking as they come, andI have African genes swimming around in my pool. Of course we don’t know what percentage non-white Aiken Beauchamp was. His father could have been white, or perhaps another slave from Baltimore. The letter refers to his mother as mulatto. So, she would have been mixed race also. There were many Spanish, and French in the West Indies. Who knows? I wish we had pictures of them.
    “The letter only says Beauchamp was considered ‘a person of color’ in 1882, alluding to the fact that he would experience the same discriminations as any other black man, no matter his percentage of non-white genes. By his skin color, it sounds as though he could have moved easily into white society, had he been able to manufacture different birth records. Many people probably did that, or maybe moved to states that were more relaxed about proving family history. Can you believe society was ever like that?”
    Mrs. Allen attached a wayward strand of salt-and-pepper hair into the single braid reaching down her back, and answered. “Yes ma’am, I can believe it. I sure can. That’s just the way it was back then and for a long time afterwards. And I’ll tell you what. It wasn’t just freed Negro slaves who were treated that away. Chinese folks, American Indians, and my kin as well. Most couldn’t vote or own property.”
    She must have registered my puzzled look because she took a deep swallow of her tea and explained. “I believe I done told you I was a Mullins from East Tennessee. Guess you don’t know what that means.” I shook my head no. “All the Mullins, and Goins, and Breedloves from over there are Melungeon people.Sorleys were, too. Except, early on they moved over here where the wilderness treated everybody the same, and all you needed to buy up the land was cash money. They blended in with the white locals, and afore you knew it, nobody remembered, or cared.
    “Now when I was little, over in East Tennessee, they still cared. We Melungeon kept to ourselves. Had to. Lots of locals who hadn’t been in East Tennessee half as long as us treated us like dirt, or worse. Some’d move to the other side of the street if they saw us coming. Some wouldn’t even sell our women a piece of cloth from the general store.
    “And I can tell you this, when one of the Sorleys introduced me to Mr. Allen, my daddy didn’t like it one little bit. He thought Mr. Allen would treat me like hired help, or worse, on account of us being who we were. And because of the age difference, I reckon. By then Mr. Allen’s boys was mostly grown, and I wasn’t but a year or two older than them. But you see, it worked out fine all the days till he died, bless his soul. He was as good a man as there ever was. I didn’t want no children back then, just wanted to work my herb gardens and dream my dreams. That was all right by him. He