I need to know my family lineage?

Question

The family name is Epperson and I did some research and it said that my family were slave owners and I don't know if this is true so if anyone has the answer tell me

Answer 1

I looked in the 1860 slave schedule. There is a record there for every slave. It doesn't have the slave's name, just the owner's name. Peter Epperson of Southern Division, Talladega, Alabama, for instance, owns 4 slaves, so there are 4 records there with his name on them.

There are 249 slave records in all, with that exact spelling. There are more with spelling variations. The 1860 census has a record for each free Epperson, be they white, black or mulatto. It has over 1,200 Eppersons in the USA. Again, there are more with variant spellings.

So, some Eppersons kept slaves, some didn't. There are 126 Eppersons in Illinois in 1860, for instance. They didn't have slaves because Illinois was a free state. (Sort of. If all 126 had taken the train north from Mississippi for an outing and had spent the summer of 1860 there, tended by their slaves, then gone back to their cotton plantations after the census enumerator had counted them, they might have skewed my research.)

As others have said, the only way to find out how close you are to a slave owner is to trace your family tree. I wouldn't count a 5th cousin 5 times removed as "close" for those purposes.

Answer 2

The answer is that even if your last name is the same as others.. it does not mean you are related.  So, it would not matter if "some" Eppersons did or did not own slaves (which is way in the past anyway).. it is not part of your research UNLESS you find your relatives did live in the Southern US at that time in history.

Here is how genealogy works- it is about finding YOUR ANCESTORS. Notice, I did not say your family name, since that is not the same thing.  It seems to be (in the beginning) but it really really is not.  See sentence #1.  

Finding who your relatives are, starts in the PRESENT time, and uses records to work your way back, one step at a time. No shortcuts.  Using records is the bottom line of knowing that what you find is accurate, and relevant to you.  For example.. pull out your birth certificate, and verify your parents. 99% of newbies say "how silly, of course I know my own parents".  Probably so. You still use the record. Hang out her for a while, and find out how many people get to the grandparents/ gr grandparents, and find out that dad's REAL father was hubby # 1, grandma divorced him, and hubby #2 adopted the kids.  When you get to 100 years back, and no one remembers (which of course, they won't).. all of a sudden, the light goes on, as to WHY you use records.  You don't wind up spending time searching for the wrong person, in the wrong place, and you always are CERTAIN which ones are your family.

You'll find something out immediately. Your mom is only Epperson by marriage, and of your 4 grandparents, each will have a different name by birth (one is Epperson).  Now, go to gr grandparents. If your grandparents are alive, they should be able to tell you who their parents (and maybe grandparents were), which, since Wendy explained it, you will still go to look for the record to back it up. You have 16 gr grandparents.  The light should be going on again.. your ancestry is all of these names/ people, and I repeat again.. you are proving along the way, that these are YOUR relatives.  That's the process, in a nutshell.  You will use different types of records, and the fun is figuring or learning what those records might be.

Now.. if there were Eppersons, who did own slaves, which is very possible.. you will, at some point, know your Eppersons in the early 1800s, and you will see (again.. those darn records!!) that they did or didn't own slaves.

Last tip for the night (or early morning, in fact).. researching history is scientific, even if a hobby.  History is what it is/ was, but you are what you are, today. We all find skeletons in our closets, but they have their proper place. Finding "bad" things, in fact, can make you grateful that we live in a better world.

Answer 3

How do you define "some research"?   Did you just stick your family name into Google and see what other people have wrote, or have you actually tried to research your family history properly and look at all the necessary birth, marriage and death records or census.

I guess if you're talking slave owners that means you are in the USA, probably one of the southern states.  Certainly if you can find a known ancestor alive in the 18th-19th centuries who was recorded in the census with a bunch of slaves then I'd say the evidence was pretty conclusive.  But then again, I'd imagine that most wealthy people back then in the southern states probably kept slaves to some degree or another for work on the plantations.  It was the done thing.  No-one with a certain surname was any more likely to keep slaves than the next guy.    I'd be more worried if my ancestors had a fleet of ships called Slaves R Us or something and regularly sailed between Africa and the New World with new merchandise for sale and had a more active role in the trade.  Having ancestors just owning a slave or slaves wouldn't bother me, as they'd just be one of many following the social norm of the era.