Pam, it's always a treat to learn something new but once in a while I find something that saddens me. For instance I finally got to read the "last will and testament and codicile" of my 8th great-grandfather John Roberts. It is located at the South Carolina state archives. I counted eleven slaves he willed to his children. It gives their names including a young female with three children.

I don't know anything else about them. Perhaps they were content or even considered part of the family but that is an optimistic hope. To think if my wife and son were slaves, their fate being decided by someone else, how I would feel. This was my first time to really find any information on the slaves in my own family even though I knew some were owned. It really drove it home for me.