May 8, 2019 • 34 mins
Holly was lucky enough to chat with historian Stephanie Jones-Rogers, author of “They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South,” which pieces together details that add new understanding of slavery in the U.S.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
This is one of those interviews where as soon as
the publisher's team emailed us and said that this author
(00:22):
was doing interviews, I was like, we have to have
her on. I think I typed maybe in all caps
message to Tracy to that effect. Um, I know, I
kind of jumped up and down in my seat and
kind of sent a note to the publisher to that effect. Um.
That her that we're speaking of is Stephanie Jones Roger.
She's an assistant professor at Berkeley's Department of History, and
in her dissertation when the learner Scott Prize, which is
(00:44):
given to the best doctoral dissertation in US women's history
each year. So she took that dissertation and expanded it
into the book that's the topic of today's episode. That
book is they were her property, White women as slave
owners in the American South. This uses financial and transactional
records to corroborate accounts from formerly enslaved people about their
(01:06):
experiences and the resulting work is unflinching and difficult, but
also really important and how it affects our knowledge about
the business of slavery and specifically white women's place in it.
So first up, Stephanie shared what led her to this
area of study, and then she talks a good bit
about how she conducted her research. So the first thing
(01:30):
I have to ask is what first drew you to
this particular avenue of research and writing. So UM, I
went to Workers University, and I was studying with Devil
Gray White, UM, the great Devil Gray White. And so
as I was completing my coursework UM back in Keep
Having and nine UM, I began to UM explore the
(01:52):
work that had been done on people UM in the
nineteenth century as well as that scholarship that had been
produced about white Southern women. And so you know, I
became really interested in the question of whether white Southern women, UM,
particularly married women, had an economic stake in the institution
(02:13):
of slavery, whether they invested economically in the institution. And
that question seemed to have two kind of two answers
emerged in those two sub fields of of history. So
in the histories UM written about white Southern women and
their relationships slavery the way that that relationship is characterized
primarily in all of these non economic ways. So um ideologically, UM,
(02:38):
socially UM, even you know, indirectly perhaps UM economic UM
in its basis, But largely there was this idea that
white women in the South had a very distanced relationship
to slavery, and far more often that married women had
no economic relationship to the institution of slavery, in large
(03:00):
part because of the ways that law is constrained women's
ability to own property and to to hold onto and
control property after marriage. But on the other hand, those
scholars who looked at the experiences of African Americans during
this period, and particularly enslaved people, were saying something very different. UM.
They were drawing on a different set of sources, and
(03:21):
they were UM saying that formerly in a people talked
about female owners. They talked about me and brought and
sold by women. UM. They talked about other individuals who
they knew in their communities with an own bought or
sold by women. And so I was really interested in
this disconnect UM, and became frustrated by that disconnect between
these two subfields of history. And so I was really
(03:43):
interested in and addressing that question had on addressing the
question of whether white women had an economic um a
deep and economic investment in the institution of slavery, and
also showing what those investments looked like, um from the
perspectives of those individuals who they owned and had the
most intimate and deep experience of their their control, their
(04:04):
ownership and control, and those who are forms like people work.
So that was really where it started from kind of
a frustration, a moment of frustration, and then um, it
grew from there, Um the project, whether that's the frustration,
the project grew from there. Uh, did you find it
difficult to track down information and accounts about white women's
(04:24):
role in slavery and their economic stake in it? So
I thought was really fascinating was that, Um I just
kind of briefly mentioned it just now, is that it
seemed that the reason why there was this disconnect between
or this lack of consensus around the question of whether
white women and married white women in particular had an
economic investment and stake in the institution slavery was largely
(04:48):
driven by different store faces. So the scholars of white
Southern women we're using typically using the letters and the
diaries of white Southern women to craft these accounts in
histories of white Southern women's relationships to slavery. Whereas those
individuals who focused on the experiences of African Americans, we're
using these interviews that were conducted by federal employees at
(05:11):
the behest of the federal government during the nineties and
nineteen forties, where formerly in people were asked about their
um experiences and bondage and so um. For me, it
was okay, which which of these sources I go to? First?
I went to the diaries and the letters of white
Southern women to see what they had to say about
their economic investments in the institution. And while yes, they
(05:34):
did talk about it, they didn't talk about it often,
and they didn't talk about the sale and purchase of
inslave people very often. And so I then said, okay, well,
the people who were talking about it most frequently are
those individuals who are subjected to this this control, this power,
this the sales um and the purchases and the separations
that were brought about by it by these sales um.
(05:54):
So I looked to formally inslade people's um testimonies and
their interviews and used the information that they provided in
those interviews to help me to develop a strategy for
where to go next. So by listening to what they
had to say, by reading and being very attentive to
UM what they were saying about white women's economic investments
(06:14):
in the institution, I was able to develop a kind
of course of action. So from their interviews as then
went to financial records UM and found women UM just
as they said I would in you know, in the
records UM that documented the purchase and sale of enslaved people,
they were identified as both the buyers and sellers of
enslaved people. I found them in UM court records where
(06:38):
you know, if someone had sold them UM an enslaved
person who was unwell and that person didn't disclose an
illness to them when they purchased them, they could go
into court and sue them. So I found women you
know who owned inslaved people in legal records and court records.
And during the Civil War I found them in military
correspondence between Union officers as well as you know Confederate
(07:01):
official And then of course there were slave traders, individuals
typically men who who as a as a as a
job as their professional bought and soulden state people for
a living, and I found women in their account books
and in letters that they will to their business partners.
So by by paying close attention to what formerly people
(07:21):
said about these these married women's economic relationships to the
institution of slavery, I was able to find them in
all of these other bodies of of sources and documents,
basically collaborating and legitimating what formerly inslaved people had to
say about white married women's um economic investments in the institution.
So I'm glad you touched on that because one of
(07:44):
the things I really really love about this book is
that you do destroy that tendency that has happened over
years and years and years for people to dismiss some
of these accounts from formerly enslaved people as unreliable by
backing up their stories with a ton of corroborating documentation,
like you have all the receipts um At what point
(08:07):
did you realize that you were going to be able
to piece this puzzle together in that way and finally
validate some of those voices with evidence that cannot be disputed. Well,
I thought, what was really fascinating is but but so
what I did for what I What I said to
myself first is that who better to tell us what? Uh?
You know, how deeply invested white women were in the
(08:29):
economist slavery then those individuals who they owned, you know,
until by starting from that position, by starting from the
position that no one could tell us the story of
life slave, only women's economic investince in the institution more clearly,
more cogently, and more powerfully than formally enslaved people, took
(08:50):
them seriously. I took them at their word. And then
I started to realize, like it wasn't hard to make
these connections and to corroberate the evidence, because, for example,
there were individuals who identified their former female owners by first,
last name, even by their maiden names. So there were
all these ways in which they gave me the data
(09:13):
that I would need and or the information that I
would need to be able to go to other sources
like the census, for example, so I could read what
one formerly slave person said about an owner. Say, Okay,
they gave me the first, middle and last name of
this person, the approximate area where they grew up, so
the where the person lives, and I would go to
the census and there there's a woman you know that
(09:34):
they talked about. So, you know, just by taking them
very seriously and using their sources in the way that
we use other sources, you know, like Washington, you know,
George Washington, you know letters or his you know, diary
or whatever, you know, I was able to go to
these other sources and find the women exactly where they
(09:54):
said they would be. UM and and the way that
they characterized them I was able to find for and
information that was basically it suggested that they were quite
accurate in um, their their characterizations of the institution, but
also the ways in which they implicated white Southern women
and white married women in particular in the economy of
(10:15):
American slavery and and continued sub ocation. So the evidence
has all been there for a long time. Why do
you think it took so long for someone like you
to go, you know, we can put this stuff together.
So on the one hand, UM, so I should say that,
there are, of course, um many scholars who have looked
to these sources and have produced these really extraordinary studies
(10:38):
of um, you know, kind of the complexities of slavery. UM.
And they have also implicated you know, white women in
the story of slavery, UM. But the economic dimension, particularly
when it comes to married women, I think is on
the one hand, UM issue related to the laws at
the time, UM, And I'll just mentioned briefly, so there
(11:00):
was there was a legal doctrine called curvature, which essentially
mandated that if a woman who was either single or
widowed owned any property before marriage, once she became married.
Once she married, all of the wealth that she brought
into the marriage would automatically become her husband. So unless
(11:21):
women um figured out ways around this law, around these
property laws UM that constrained and limited their ability to
own and control property and enslaved people, this is what
would happen. And so for a very long time, many
scholars of slavery and many scholars of Southern women really
just I think embraced this idea that this was a
(11:45):
very all encompassing kind of legal system, a legal doctrine
that really did foreclosed the possibility that married women could
in fact own and control enslaved people in the ways
that I've show in the book. But what I did
again is go to what formally insread people had to say,
And so they were saying things like, oh my, my,
missions only by law and not her husband. So I'm like, well,
(12:07):
what do they mean by law? How could this be?
And so what I found in the legal records is
that women, these white other women who owned inslaved people,
particularly those who were married, were very explicit about how
they came to own in flave people. They would give
they would provide documents and provide proof to the court
that and in that proof, what they would demonstrate was
that there was this chain of ownership that they would establish,
(12:30):
the ways by which the means by which they came
to acquire inflave people as their own. And so what
those documents also show is that women found ways. Married
women found ways around these legal constraints. And so by
listening to what formally inslaved people had to say, I
was able to then even kind of kind of conceive
(12:50):
of the idea that this was possible. And by thinking
about this as a possibility, I then had to show
how it was possible. And so the legal records show, um,
the ways in which women were very savvy in navigating,
you know, um, using loopholes and navigating around them of
these constraints imposed upon them. So I think in large
part it was because of UM. This this the way
(13:13):
that we thought about these laws and the kind of
constraints impose upon women in this period because of a
mad women in this cio, because of the law. I mean.
The other thing I think is because you know, women's
history UM was born in a moment in which the
woman's movement was was powerful, that it was gaining momentum,
and so the histories that were produced in those in
(13:35):
those in that moment, they were also part of that project,
part of a feminist project. And this is a very
and I say it all the time, this is a
very ugly feminist history, you know. I mean from one angle,
you know, these women are able to secure a kind
of freedom and autonomy in their lives UM in a
way that we would not imagine, that would be fathomable
(13:58):
for these fom in this periods. But they're able to
do that by owning and engraved people, by owning and
oppressing other people. That's that's an ugly that's an ugly
dimension of his very feminist story. So I think in
some ways it's a story that doesn't mesh well. It
didn't mesh well with the feminist project of the sixties
and the seventies. You know, so I think those those
(14:19):
are two primary reasons why I think, you know, although
the sources had been there, and people had mold over
the sources and produced extraordinary studies using these same sources. UM,
those things, I think UM kind of four closed the
possibility that this particular story would be told in the
way that I did. Coming up, Stephanie and I talked
about how she coped with facing research that was often
(14:39):
really upsetting and really waited on her. But first we're
going to take a little break in here from one
of our sponsors. One of the things about this book
is that there are a lot of accounts in it
that you um shared that were relayed by formally enslaved people,
(15:03):
and they are stories that are so important, but they
are also really difficult to read in some cases. UM.
It's a lot of very heavy, ugly information. Did research
in writing on this subject ever get a little bit
overwhelming for you? Did you ever have to just be
like not anymore today? I that was a very very frequent,
a very frequent experience to me. I mean, I you know,
(15:25):
admittedly some of your some of your listeners may not know, UM,
but I am um an African American woman. I am
a descendant of Sara Crapper, I am a descendant of Southerners.
I am a descendant of formally inslaved people. And so
from that position, it was very difficult from a personal
position for me to write this book because I'm too
learning about what my ancestors endured. But also at the
(15:49):
same time, as a historian, it was very difficult for
me to grapple with the atrocities that were perpetrated against
formally inslaved people and that they survived. But what I
Austin reminded myself of when I would take a minute,
you know, sometimes I would have to take a day
or two off because it was just so emotionally impactful
for me. And what I would often remind myself of
(16:12):
is that these formal inslaved people, these African Americans, were
giving these interviews in a time of lynching and a
time of severe racial hostility and racial terror and racial violence,
and they did that in spite of the risks and
the danger. And so they and that underscores to me
how important they thought it was for us as a
(16:34):
nation to know their stories, to know what they had
un endured, and to grapple with that as part of
our national history. So for me, it was it was
it was a duty in any respects for me to
return to these accounts, to return to the writing in
order to do justice to the formally enslaved people who
(16:56):
sat down and risked their lives and their respects to
tell all their stories. So for me, although it was difficult,
and I know for readers it's very hard um to
read many of the accounts that I put that I
that I put forth in this book, but I all
always want to bring it back to the fact that
these were individuals who thought it was so important for
(17:16):
us to know what happened to them and to know
what they survived, and to know that this was part
of our national story, you know. So that's that's the
thing that brings me back to the work every single time.
And they are so important. One of the things that
you talk about in this book is how young girls
in white families were given this identity of being slave
(17:39):
owners as part of their upbringing, which is something I
don't think we always think about children kind of being
involved from an early age. Will you talk a little
bit about that. Absolutely, So, you know, many of the
many of the histories that we do have about white
women and slavery, White women in the context of slavery
often start when they are adults, when they are married,
(18:02):
when they have already you know, kind of lived you know,
lived these childhoods and girlhoods and have you know, raised
that they were raised up in the South. But often
the story of their relationships that slavery begins when they're
adults and when they're in marriages or in widowhood. And
so for me that was really interesting because people started
the story in infancy, and you know, so they talked
(18:25):
about white girls, even white Asians, white female inciants, who
were given in plaved people as gifts, whether at birth,
for birthdays, whether as Christmas gifts many times and many
were in many cases they were given enclaved people as
wedding presents. So in Puma inflave people talked about the
(18:45):
fact that well before these were married, they were developing
identities as Southern women or Southern females that were that
was taught to identities that were tied to either actual
slave ownership or the promise of lave ownership at a
later date. Um. And so for me it was really
important to begin the story there because it helps to
(19:06):
explain a lot of stuff that happens later on. It's
helped to explain why, for example, when women were married,
when married, when slavery own and women married, that the
women in this book that I talked about in this
book weren't willing to relinquish their control over and slave
people and other forms of property to their husbands. They
have developed these identities that were tied to their ability
(19:27):
to own and control and slave people and to to
own property, so they weren't willing to just simply relinquish
that control to their husbands, you know. So it explains
that when you start the story when they're little girls,
and you see how profoundly um slavery shaped their identities
as Southerners, as as as white Southerners in particular. So
(19:48):
that's why I start the story there, because that's really
where um I think we need to begin in order
to understand what unfolds over the course of their lives,
particularly once they reach adulthood. You also talk kind of
the other end of the timeline spectrum about how white
women defended the institution of slavery, particularly as it was
becoming a parent. That it was coming to an end.
(20:10):
Will you talk a little bit about that as well.
One of the things that other historians looked at white
women's relationships in the institutions states we have shown is
that slave owing parents typically gave their daughters more slaves
than they did land. So what they had in mind
this idea that when their their children married that they
(20:30):
would have every They wanted them to have everything that
they needed to get a great start. So what they
would typically do is they would give their sons um
the land and would give their daughters more emplaced people, UM,
so that once those daughters and sons married, they would
have everything needs to get started, get a household started. UM.
And So when you think about the fact that many
(20:52):
of these the women in this book are often UM,
if not a significant slave owner in the household that
they go into when they marry, UM, there are others
that are primarily only they are the only save holders
in the household. Some of these women are the only
property owners in the household, so they are the ones
who bring both the slaves and the land and where
(21:14):
exception rare cases, UM to the household. So their husbands,
their their husband's identities are not necessarily tied to slavery
and slave ownership in the ways that their their their
wives are, And so when the Civil War emerges in
and it becomes kind of clear the writing is on
the wall that emancipation is inevitable, that the dissolution of
(21:36):
slavery is around the corner. These women, who are in
some cases more deeply invested economically invested in the institution slavery,
more profoundly tied to the institutions slavery um and slave
ownership than their husbands, they understand that the war means
that emancipation means their financial ruin. So they are fighting
(22:00):
tooth and now to preserve the institution of slavery, not
simply as indirect beneficiaries of the institution, but because they
have a direct economic stake in the institution's preservation, because
they are the primary or or significant slave owners in
their household. And so they understand that with emancipation, the
(22:22):
value of those people that they hold in captivity it's
going to be gone, it's going to be zero, and
so they will be financially destitute. So they fight throughout
the war. They fight their own battle to preserve slavery.
In large part because of these economic investments. And then
when it's over, not only are they devastated because of
the losses of the men and the boys in their
(22:43):
lives who went off to war never came back, but
they are mourning a financial and economic loss. One woman
described it, described emancipation as an unprecedented robbers. These women
saw that all this wealth, the value in free people
was being stolen from them by the federal government. So
(23:04):
they try to recreate um circumstances that um looked very
much like smacked of slavery. Um, these kind of pseudo
slavery circumstances after the war was over, and hosts that
they could hold on just for a very for a
little while longer, hold on to the kind of the
value of free labor um, meaning the labor that and
(23:26):
slaved people offered to them or provided to the most
course to offer to them um as the owners, as
their legal owners. So it's really interesting that, you know,
when you think about women as slave owners and what
individuals who could in fact have been the only slaveholders
in the household. The Civil War and white women's responses
to the war looked quite different, you know, And so
(23:48):
that's what the book shows um as well, Um, while
you were doing your research, which is so extensive and
I feel like so meticulous, did you come across any
pieces of information and that surprised you. So there were
two things that I thought were that I was just
you know, shot shot by even though I shouldn't have been, um,
(24:08):
you know, because of all the other things that formally
with people have to say about these women, I shouldn't
have been shocked to find out what I did. So
one of the things that I really try to focus
on in the book is is, you know, these economic
relationships and investments that white women had any institution. And
while it was you know, it became kind of you know,
obvious to me after a while in the research that
you know, women would engage in slave market activities in
(24:32):
the ways that they did. And by a slave market,
I mean there was really there were really brick and
mortar structures where individuals could go and essentially shocked for
and slave people. Because I think some people don't realize
that that's not a metaphor, you know, it's you know,
it's like they were real markets. And so, you know,
I didn't expect to find out that white some white
(24:52):
women were involved in the business side of buying and
selling and slave people. So there's a woman that I
talked about in the book was part of a family
business where she would front the money UM, so she
would invest the money UM so that her her nephew
could buy the slave and sell the slave, and when
he sell the slave, she and her nephew would split
(25:13):
the proceeds of those sales down the middle. UM. So
I didn't expect to find women who were involved in
the business side of of of the slave, of the
slave trade and the business UM. I also didn't expect
for formul inslaved people to talk about white women who
owned slaves and who created circumstances in which they co
(25:33):
worked them into UM having UM sex against their will.
So there were in fact slave owning women who UM
committed access sexual violence or created circumstances in which access
actual sexual violence could be perpetrated against in slave people
UM in this period. So that was another thing that
was surprising to me, although of course now I think,
(25:54):
you know, thinking back on it, it shouldn't have been surprising.
But those are two things that were really surprising that
I covered as I search for this book. In the
next segment, Holly asked Stephanie about the way women who
owned enslaved people saw themselves. But before we get into that,
we will pause for a quick sponsor break. You also
(26:19):
include some discussion towards the end of the book about
the disparity and you've talked about it already in this interview,
some between the way white women of the time wrote
about the institution of slavery and their role in it
versus the much uglier reality. And I wonder do you
think that was something of a pr move on their
(26:40):
part in characterizing themselves as generally kind and benevolent mistresses
or even innocent bystanders in some ways, or do you
think they actually believe they were those things. I think
that there were some individuals who really did believe that
they were being kind of maternal, benevolent big years in
the institution of slavery. But the other I think there
(27:04):
were also many women who knew it was a lie.
Just to call it what it is, that they knew
it was a lie. And so some of the women
that I discussed in that part of the portion of
the book pictured you're mentioning here, um, they were writing
these books and they have acknowledgements or dedications where they
make it clear they are writing these books, these accounts
(27:26):
for their descendants, for their grandchildren and their great grandchildren.
So they are very calculate, in a very calculated way,
in a very um purposeful way, constructing a whitewashed and
sanitized narrative that that positions then as these maternal, benevolent
views and positions slavery as a benevolent institution that was
(27:48):
good for black people. So they are very consciously constructing
a narrative that they know is a lie. Um. And
so of course, like you said formally and say, people
like that's a lie. You know that's a lie, and
I'll tell you why it's a lie. So you know
you do see, yes, women you know were in fact
they did in fact styled themselves as you know, kind
(28:09):
of maternalists and benevolent figures. Um. But nevertheless, um, you know,
there were others that knew it was a lie and constructed,
you know, narratives that erased the kind of darker dimensions
and more violent dimensions and the economic dimensions of their
investments in the institution. Um uh, very purposefully. What's next
(28:31):
for you? I know, I read somewhere that you're collecting
additional data about this topic. Yes, so, um, there are
kind of I have on a couple of hats. So
one is a quantitative project UM which I've been working
on since about two thousand and fourteen, which essentially tries
he is trying to put the numbers UM in the story.
(28:51):
So the book doesn't really offer statistics, and that was
intentional on my part in large part because I'm continuing
to work on the quantitative data trying to determine, you know, um,
give a sense of just how many women were involved
in the institution of slavery, who owned slaves, and so
(29:12):
I'm using census data and other smaller data sets throughout
the South to construct a database which will provide those numbers.
And just from the preliminary research UM I've I've learned
that in some cases that women constituted of the slaveholders
in certain regions of the South, and I'm imagining that
(29:34):
those members will also be replicated in the larger data sets.
Because you know, there's been work done in Britain on
slave owners um who you know, file for compensation once
Britain abolished slavery and women comes to the forty percent
of the applicants for compensation in Britain. So there are
ways in which I think there are these numbers. This
(29:55):
this forty percent figures seems pretty consistent across UM, across
slave owning UM groups during this period. So I imagine
that the additional data that I look at, UM, the
quantitative data that I compile, will bear that out as well.
So that's that's that's the immediate one of the immediate
projects that I'm working. And I'm also working on what
(30:15):
I call the legal sequel of this project, because this
one was primarily focused on, you know, the economic dimensions
of women's investments institution, but the law made their ability
to kind of manipulate the law and to work around
certain laws made those economic investments possible. So I see
this book as a kind of necessary UM, kind of
second follow up, follow up UM to the to the
(30:38):
first book. So I'm working on a kind of UM
a llegal history UM of of white women's relationships to
the institution of slavery. Do you have any idea when
you started down this path that it would consume so
many years of your life? Absolutely not every not My
deepest thanks to Stephanie for talking with me. She is
(30:58):
an absolute delight in long after the interview ended, I
aked her ear off about all manner of things. If
you would like to catch up with her online, you
can do so at Stephanie Jones Rogers dot com that's
all run together, or on Twitter where she is s E.
J R. Underscore Historian. So the book once again is
they were her property, White women as slave owners in
(31:19):
the American South, and it's available wherever books are sold.
It is a really dense, like I mentioned in the interview,
meticulously researched read. There's a lot of information in that book,
and as we discussed, not always easy to read some
of those accounts of really the horrible things humans can
do to one another. But there's it's so so good. Um,
I really really loved it. I thought though, since this
(31:41):
was kind of a heavy topic, we would do some
mostly light listener mail, so I'm doing a little bit
of postcard round up again. The first one is from
I'm not sure if the name is Janna or Jonah,
but it is a lovely postcard from Scotland, and Jonah writes,
Dear Holly and Tracy, I am about to finish my
semester abroad and Edinburgh Sky Outland. I wanted to write
in and say thank you for keeping me company over
(32:03):
the last couple of months. I am studying history and
y'all always helped to remind me why I got into
this business. Y'all are amazing. Thank you so much, and
I hope your your time abroad has been spectacular because
that sounds lovely. It's a beautiful picture of Scotland, so
thank you very much for that. Our next one, I
won't read the whole thing, but I will mention it
is from our listener Allison, who sent uh was my
(32:24):
name with a couple of exclamation points, a beautiful picture
of a silk dress that was from a seventeenth century
shipwreck found in two thousand and four off the coast
of the Dutch Barrier island of I think it has
pronounced tesel. She mentioned some other things that were also
found in that shipwreck, but it's a really cool photograph
of this dress that I bet in its heyday was
(32:46):
utterly spectacular to behold. Um it looks a little, you know,
like it has been in a shipwreck, but you can
still see these vibrant pinks and yellows and and really
pretty weaving in the silk, So it's absolutely lovely. My
last one I'm not gonna read because it includes some
fairly personal information, but I wanted to just say hi
to this listener and how much we appreciate this letter.
It's from our listener, Jennifer, who wrote us about UM
(33:09):
being on medically for some stuff and listening to our
podcasts to kind of help her feel normal. And to me,
that is a great honor that we get to in
any way help someone get through a rough time. So
thank you so much for your letter, Jennifer. We are
thinking of you, UM, and we're so thankful to have
you as a listener. If you would like to write
to us, you can do so at History Podcast at
house works dot com. You can also find us pretty
(33:30):
much anywhere on social media as Missed in History. Can
also visit our website, which is Missed in History dot com.
And if you would like to subscribe to the show,
that's something we highly encourage. You can do that on
the I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
(33:52):
is a production of I Heart Radios. How stuff works.
For more podcasts For my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or ever you listen to
your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
This is one of those interviews where as soon as
the publisher's team emailed us and said that this author
(00:22):
was doing interviews, I was like, we have to have
her on. I think I typed maybe in all caps
message to Tracy to that effect. Um, I know, I
kind of jumped up and down in my seat and
kind of sent a note to the publisher to that effect. Um.
That her that we're speaking of is Stephanie Jones Roger.
She's an assistant professor at Berkeley's Department of History, and
in her dissertation when the learner Scott Prize, which is
(00:44):
given to the best doctoral dissertation in US women's history
each year. So she took that dissertation and expanded it
into the book that's the topic of today's episode. That
book is they were her property, White women as slave
owners in the American South. This uses financial and transactional
records to corroborate accounts from formerly enslaved people about their
(01:06):
experiences and the resulting work is unflinching and difficult, but
also really important and how it affects our knowledge about
the business of slavery and specifically white women's place in it.
So first up, Stephanie shared what led her to this
area of study, and then she talks a good bit
about how she conducted her research. So the first thing
(01:30):
I have to ask is what first drew you to
this particular avenue of research and writing. So UM, I
went to Workers University, and I was studying with Devil
Gray White, UM, the great Devil Gray White. And so
as I was completing my coursework UM back in Keep
Having and nine UM, I began to UM explore the
(01:52):
work that had been done on people UM in the
nineteenth century as well as that scholarship that had been
produced about white Southern women. And so you know, I
became really interested in the question of whether white Southern women, UM,
particularly married women, had an economic stake in the institution
(02:13):
of slavery, whether they invested economically in the institution. And
that question seemed to have two kind of two answers
emerged in those two sub fields of of history. So
in the histories UM written about white Southern women and
their relationships slavery the way that that relationship is characterized
primarily in all of these non economic ways. So um ideologically, UM,
(02:38):
socially UM, even you know, indirectly perhaps UM economic UM
in its basis, But largely there was this idea that
white women in the South had a very distanced relationship
to slavery, and far more often that married women had
no economic relationship to the institution of slavery, in large
(03:00):
part because of the ways that law is constrained women's
ability to own property and to to hold onto and
control property after marriage. But on the other hand, those
scholars who looked at the experiences of African Americans during
this period, and particularly enslaved people, were saying something very different. UM.
They were drawing on a different set of sources, and
(03:21):
they were UM saying that formerly in a people talked
about female owners. They talked about me and brought and
sold by women. UM. They talked about other individuals who
they knew in their communities with an own bought or
sold by women. And so I was really interested in
this disconnect UM, and became frustrated by that disconnect between
these two subfields of history. And so I was really
(03:43):
interested in and addressing that question had on addressing the
question of whether white women had an economic um a
deep and economic investment in the institution of slavery, and
also showing what those investments looked like, um from the
perspectives of those individuals who they owned and had the
most intimate and deep experience of their their control, their
(04:04):
ownership and control, and those who are forms like people work.
So that was really where it started from kind of
a frustration, a moment of frustration, and then um, it
grew from there, Um the project, whether that's the frustration,
the project grew from there. Uh, did you find it
difficult to track down information and accounts about white women's
(04:24):
role in slavery and their economic stake in it? So
I thought was really fascinating was that, Um I just
kind of briefly mentioned it just now, is that it
seemed that the reason why there was this disconnect between
or this lack of consensus around the question of whether
white women and married white women in particular had an
economic investment and stake in the institution slavery was largely
(04:48):
driven by different store faces. So the scholars of white
Southern women we're using typically using the letters and the
diaries of white Southern women to craft these accounts in
histories of white Southern women's relationships to slavery. Whereas those
individuals who focused on the experiences of African Americans, we're
using these interviews that were conducted by federal employees at
(05:11):
the behest of the federal government during the nineties and
nineteen forties, where formerly in people were asked about their
um experiences and bondage and so um. For me, it
was okay, which which of these sources I go to? First?
I went to the diaries and the letters of white
Southern women to see what they had to say about
their economic investments in the institution. And while yes, they
(05:34):
did talk about it, they didn't talk about it often,
and they didn't talk about the sale and purchase of
inslave people very often. And so I then said, okay, well,
the people who were talking about it most frequently are
those individuals who are subjected to this this control, this power,
this the sales um and the purchases and the separations
that were brought about by it by these sales um.
(05:54):
So I looked to formally inslade people's um testimonies and
their interviews and used the information that they provided in
those interviews to help me to develop a strategy for
where to go next. So by listening to what they
had to say, by reading and being very attentive to
UM what they were saying about white women's economic investments
(06:14):
in the institution, I was able to develop a kind
of course of action. So from their interviews as then
went to financial records UM and found women UM just
as they said I would in you know, in the
records UM that documented the purchase and sale of enslaved people,
they were identified as both the buyers and sellers of
enslaved people. I found them in UM court records where
(06:38):
you know, if someone had sold them UM an enslaved
person who was unwell and that person didn't disclose an
illness to them when they purchased them, they could go
into court and sue them. So I found women you
know who owned inslaved people in legal records and court records.
And during the Civil War I found them in military
correspondence between Union officers as well as you know Confederate
(07:01):
official And then of course there were slave traders, individuals
typically men who who as a as a as a
job as their professional bought and soulden state people for
a living, and I found women in their account books
and in letters that they will to their business partners.
So by by paying close attention to what formerly people
(07:21):
said about these these married women's economic relationships to the
institution of slavery, I was able to find them in
all of these other bodies of of sources and documents,
basically collaborating and legitimating what formerly inslaved people had to
say about white married women's um economic investments in the institution.
So I'm glad you touched on that because one of
(07:44):
the things I really really love about this book is
that you do destroy that tendency that has happened over
years and years and years for people to dismiss some
of these accounts from formerly enslaved people as unreliable by
backing up their stories with a ton of corroborating documentation,
like you have all the receipts um At what point
(08:07):
did you realize that you were going to be able
to piece this puzzle together in that way and finally
validate some of those voices with evidence that cannot be disputed. Well,
I thought, what was really fascinating is but but so
what I did for what I What I said to
myself first is that who better to tell us what? Uh?
You know, how deeply invested white women were in the
(08:29):
economist slavery then those individuals who they owned, you know,
until by starting from that position, by starting from the
position that no one could tell us the story of
life slave, only women's economic investince in the institution more clearly,
more cogently, and more powerfully than formally enslaved people, took
(08:50):
them seriously. I took them at their word. And then
I started to realize, like it wasn't hard to make
these connections and to corroberate the evidence, because, for example,
there were individuals who identified their former female owners by first,
last name, even by their maiden names. So there were
all these ways in which they gave me the data
(09:13):
that I would need and or the information that I
would need to be able to go to other sources
like the census, for example, so I could read what
one formerly slave person said about an owner. Say, Okay,
they gave me the first, middle and last name of
this person, the approximate area where they grew up, so
the where the person lives, and I would go to
the census and there there's a woman you know that
(09:34):
they talked about. So, you know, just by taking them
very seriously and using their sources in the way that
we use other sources, you know, like Washington, you know,
George Washington, you know letters or his you know, diary
or whatever, you know, I was able to go to
these other sources and find the women exactly where they
(09:54):
said they would be. UM and and the way that
they characterized them I was able to find for and
information that was basically it suggested that they were quite
accurate in um, their their characterizations of the institution, but
also the ways in which they implicated white Southern women
and white married women in particular in the economy of
(10:15):
American slavery and and continued sub ocation. So the evidence
has all been there for a long time. Why do
you think it took so long for someone like you
to go, you know, we can put this stuff together.
So on the one hand, UM, so I should say that,
there are, of course, um many scholars who have looked
to these sources and have produced these really extraordinary studies
(10:38):
of um, you know, kind of the complexities of slavery. UM.
And they have also implicated you know, white women in
the story of slavery, UM. But the economic dimension, particularly
when it comes to married women, I think is on
the one hand, UM issue related to the laws at
the time, UM, And I'll just mentioned briefly, so there
(11:00):
was there was a legal doctrine called curvature, which essentially
mandated that if a woman who was either single or
widowed owned any property before marriage, once she became married.
Once she married, all of the wealth that she brought
into the marriage would automatically become her husband. So unless
(11:21):
women um figured out ways around this law, around these
property laws UM that constrained and limited their ability to
own and control property and enslaved people, this is what
would happen. And so for a very long time, many
scholars of slavery and many scholars of Southern women really
just I think embraced this idea that this was a
(11:45):
very all encompassing kind of legal system, a legal doctrine
that really did foreclosed the possibility that married women could
in fact own and control enslaved people in the ways
that I've show in the book. But what I did
again is go to what formally insread people had to say,
And so they were saying things like, oh my, my,
missions only by law and not her husband. So I'm like, well,
(12:07):
what do they mean by law? How could this be?
And so what I found in the legal records is
that women, these white other women who owned inslaved people,
particularly those who were married, were very explicit about how
they came to own in flave people. They would give
they would provide documents and provide proof to the court
that and in that proof, what they would demonstrate was
that there was this chain of ownership that they would establish,
(12:30):
the ways by which the means by which they came
to acquire inflave people as their own. And so what
those documents also show is that women found ways. Married
women found ways around these legal constraints. And so by
listening to what formally inslaved people had to say, I
was able to then even kind of kind of conceive
(12:50):
of the idea that this was possible. And by thinking
about this as a possibility, I then had to show
how it was possible. And so the legal records show, um,
the ways in which women were very savvy in navigating,
you know, um, using loopholes and navigating around them of
these constraints imposed upon them. So I think in large
part it was because of UM. This this the way
(13:13):
that we thought about these laws and the kind of
constraints impose upon women in this period because of a
mad women in this cio, because of the law. I mean.
The other thing I think is because you know, women's
history UM was born in a moment in which the
woman's movement was was powerful, that it was gaining momentum,
and so the histories that were produced in those in
(13:35):
those in that moment, they were also part of that project,
part of a feminist project. And this is a very
and I say it all the time, this is a
very ugly feminist history, you know. I mean from one angle,
you know, these women are able to secure a kind
of freedom and autonomy in their lives UM in a
way that we would not imagine, that would be fathomable
(13:58):
for these fom in this periods. But they're able to
do that by owning and engraved people, by owning and
oppressing other people. That's that's an ugly that's an ugly
dimension of his very feminist story. So I think in
some ways it's a story that doesn't mesh well. It
didn't mesh well with the feminist project of the sixties
and the seventies. You know, so I think those those
(14:19):
are two primary reasons why I think, you know, although
the sources had been there, and people had mold over
the sources and produced extraordinary studies using these same sources. UM,
those things, I think UM kind of four closed the
possibility that this particular story would be told in the
way that I did. Coming up, Stephanie and I talked
about how she coped with facing research that was often
(14:39):
really upsetting and really waited on her. But first we're
going to take a little break in here from one
of our sponsors. One of the things about this book
is that there are a lot of accounts in it
that you um shared that were relayed by formally enslaved people,
(15:03):
and they are stories that are so important, but they
are also really difficult to read in some cases. UM.
It's a lot of very heavy, ugly information. Did research
in writing on this subject ever get a little bit
overwhelming for you? Did you ever have to just be
like not anymore today? I that was a very very frequent,
a very frequent experience to me. I mean, I you know,
(15:25):
admittedly some of your some of your listeners may not know, UM,
but I am um an African American woman. I am
a descendant of Sara Crapper, I am a descendant of Southerners.
I am a descendant of formally inslaved people. And so
from that position, it was very difficult from a personal
position for me to write this book because I'm too
learning about what my ancestors endured. But also at the
(15:49):
same time, as a historian, it was very difficult for
me to grapple with the atrocities that were perpetrated against
formally inslaved people and that they survived. But what I
Austin reminded myself of when I would take a minute,
you know, sometimes I would have to take a day
or two off because it was just so emotionally impactful
for me. And what I would often remind myself of
(16:12):
is that these formal inslaved people, these African Americans, were
giving these interviews in a time of lynching and a
time of severe racial hostility and racial terror and racial violence,
and they did that in spite of the risks and
the danger. And so they and that underscores to me
how important they thought it was for us as a
(16:34):
nation to know their stories, to know what they had
un endured, and to grapple with that as part of
our national history. So for me, it was it was
it was a duty in any respects for me to
return to these accounts, to return to the writing in
order to do justice to the formally enslaved people who
(16:56):
sat down and risked their lives and their respects to
tell all their stories. So for me, although it was difficult,
and I know for readers it's very hard um to
read many of the accounts that I put that I
that I put forth in this book, but I all
always want to bring it back to the fact that
these were individuals who thought it was so important for
(17:16):
us to know what happened to them and to know
what they survived, and to know that this was part
of our national story, you know. So that's that's the
thing that brings me back to the work every single time.
And they are so important. One of the things that
you talk about in this book is how young girls
in white families were given this identity of being slave
(17:39):
owners as part of their upbringing, which is something I
don't think we always think about children kind of being
involved from an early age. Will you talk a little
bit about that. Absolutely, So, you know, many of the
many of the histories that we do have about white
women and slavery, White women in the context of slavery
often start when they are adults, when they are married,
(18:02):
when they have already you know, kind of lived you know,
lived these childhoods and girlhoods and have you know, raised
that they were raised up in the South. But often
the story of their relationships that slavery begins when they're
adults and when they're in marriages or in widowhood. And
so for me that was really interesting because people started
the story in infancy, and you know, so they talked
(18:25):
about white girls, even white Asians, white female inciants, who
were given in plaved people as gifts, whether at birth,
for birthdays, whether as Christmas gifts many times and many
were in many cases they were given enclaved people as
wedding presents. So in Puma inflave people talked about the
(18:45):
fact that well before these were married, they were developing
identities as Southern women or Southern females that were that
was taught to identities that were tied to either actual
slave ownership or the promise of lave ownership at a
later date. Um. And so for me it was really
important to begin the story there because it helps to
(19:06):
explain a lot of stuff that happens later on. It's
helped to explain why, for example, when women were married,
when married, when slavery own and women married, that the
women in this book that I talked about in this
book weren't willing to relinquish their control over and slave
people and other forms of property to their husbands. They
have developed these identities that were tied to their ability
(19:27):
to own and control and slave people and to to
own property, so they weren't willing to just simply relinquish
that control to their husbands, you know. So it explains
that when you start the story when they're little girls,
and you see how profoundly um slavery shaped their identities
as Southerners, as as as white Southerners in particular. So
(19:48):
that's why I start the story there, because that's really
where um I think we need to begin in order
to understand what unfolds over the course of their lives,
particularly once they reach adulthood. You also talk kind of
the other end of the timeline spectrum about how white
women defended the institution of slavery, particularly as it was
becoming a parent. That it was coming to an end.
(20:10):
Will you talk a little bit about that as well.
One of the things that other historians looked at white
women's relationships in the institutions states we have shown is
that slave owing parents typically gave their daughters more slaves
than they did land. So what they had in mind
this idea that when their their children married that they
(20:30):
would have every They wanted them to have everything that
they needed to get a great start. So what they
would typically do is they would give their sons um
the land and would give their daughters more emplaced people, UM,
so that once those daughters and sons married, they would
have everything needs to get started, get a household started. UM.
And So when you think about the fact that many
(20:52):
of these the women in this book are often UM,
if not a significant slave owner in the household that
they go into when they marry, UM, there are others
that are primarily only they are the only save holders
in the household. Some of these women are the only
property owners in the household, so they are the ones
who bring both the slaves and the land and where
(21:14):
exception rare cases, UM to the household. So their husbands,
their their husband's identities are not necessarily tied to slavery
and slave ownership in the ways that their their their
wives are, And so when the Civil War emerges in
and it becomes kind of clear the writing is on
the wall that emancipation is inevitable, that the dissolution of
(21:36):
slavery is around the corner. These women, who are in
some cases more deeply invested economically invested in the institution slavery,
more profoundly tied to the institutions slavery um and slave
ownership than their husbands, they understand that the war means
that emancipation means their financial ruin. So they are fighting
(22:00):
tooth and now to preserve the institution of slavery, not
simply as indirect beneficiaries of the institution, but because they
have a direct economic stake in the institution's preservation, because
they are the primary or or significant slave owners in
their household. And so they understand that with emancipation, the
(22:22):
value of those people that they hold in captivity it's
going to be gone, it's going to be zero, and
so they will be financially destitute. So they fight throughout
the war. They fight their own battle to preserve slavery.
In large part because of these economic investments. And then
when it's over, not only are they devastated because of
the losses of the men and the boys in their
(22:43):
lives who went off to war never came back, but
they are mourning a financial and economic loss. One woman
described it, described emancipation as an unprecedented robbers. These women
saw that all this wealth, the value in free people
was being stolen from them by the federal government. So
(23:04):
they try to recreate um circumstances that um looked very
much like smacked of slavery. Um, these kind of pseudo
slavery circumstances after the war was over, and hosts that
they could hold on just for a very for a
little while longer, hold on to the kind of the
value of free labor um, meaning the labor that and
(23:26):
slaved people offered to them or provided to the most
course to offer to them um as the owners, as
their legal owners. So it's really interesting that, you know,
when you think about women as slave owners and what
individuals who could in fact have been the only slaveholders
in the household. The Civil War and white women's responses
to the war looked quite different, you know, And so
(23:48):
that's what the book shows um as well, Um, while
you were doing your research, which is so extensive and
I feel like so meticulous, did you come across any
pieces of information and that surprised you. So there were
two things that I thought were that I was just
you know, shot shot by even though I shouldn't have been, um,
(24:08):
you know, because of all the other things that formally
with people have to say about these women, I shouldn't
have been shocked to find out what I did. So
one of the things that I really try to focus
on in the book is is, you know, these economic
relationships and investments that white women had any institution. And
while it was you know, it became kind of you know,
obvious to me after a while in the research that
you know, women would engage in slave market activities in
(24:32):
the ways that they did. And by a slave market,
I mean there was really there were really brick and
mortar structures where individuals could go and essentially shocked for
and slave people. Because I think some people don't realize
that that's not a metaphor, you know, it's you know,
it's like they were real markets. And so, you know,
I didn't expect to find out that white some white
(24:52):
women were involved in the business side of buying and
selling and slave people. So there's a woman that I
talked about in the book was part of a family
business where she would front the money UM, so she
would invest the money UM so that her her nephew
could buy the slave and sell the slave, and when
he sell the slave, she and her nephew would split
(25:13):
the proceeds of those sales down the middle. UM. So
I didn't expect to find women who were involved in
the business side of of of the slave, of the
slave trade and the business UM. I also didn't expect
for formul inslaved people to talk about white women who
owned slaves and who created circumstances in which they co
(25:33):
worked them into UM having UM sex against their will.
So there were in fact slave owning women who UM
committed access sexual violence or created circumstances in which access
actual sexual violence could be perpetrated against in slave people
UM in this period. So that was another thing that
was surprising to me, although of course now I think,
(25:54):
you know, thinking back on it, it shouldn't have been surprising.
But those are two things that were really surprising that
I covered as I search for this book. In the
next segment, Holly asked Stephanie about the way women who
owned enslaved people saw themselves. But before we get into that,
we will pause for a quick sponsor break. You also
(26:19):
include some discussion towards the end of the book about
the disparity and you've talked about it already in this interview,
some between the way white women of the time wrote
about the institution of slavery and their role in it
versus the much uglier reality. And I wonder do you
think that was something of a pr move on their
(26:40):
part in characterizing themselves as generally kind and benevolent mistresses
or even innocent bystanders in some ways, or do you
think they actually believe they were those things. I think
that there were some individuals who really did believe that
they were being kind of maternal, benevolent big years in
the institution of slavery. But the other I think there
(27:04):
were also many women who knew it was a lie.
Just to call it what it is, that they knew
it was a lie. And so some of the women
that I discussed in that part of the portion of
the book pictured you're mentioning here, um, they were writing
these books and they have acknowledgements or dedications where they
make it clear they are writing these books, these accounts
(27:26):
for their descendants, for their grandchildren and their great grandchildren.
So they are very calculate, in a very calculated way,
in a very um purposeful way, constructing a whitewashed and
sanitized narrative that that positions then as these maternal, benevolent
views and positions slavery as a benevolent institution that was
(27:48):
good for black people. So they are very consciously constructing
a narrative that they know is a lie. Um. And
so of course, like you said formally and say, people
like that's a lie. You know that's a lie, and
I'll tell you why it's a lie. So you know
you do see, yes, women you know were in fact
they did in fact styled themselves as you know, kind
(28:09):
of maternalists and benevolent figures. Um. But nevertheless, um, you know,
there were others that knew it was a lie and constructed,
you know, narratives that erased the kind of darker dimensions
and more violent dimensions and the economic dimensions of their
investments in the institution. Um uh, very purposefully. What's next
(28:31):
for you? I know, I read somewhere that you're collecting
additional data about this topic. Yes, so, um, there are
kind of I have on a couple of hats. So
one is a quantitative project UM which I've been working
on since about two thousand and fourteen, which essentially tries
he is trying to put the numbers UM in the story.
(28:51):
So the book doesn't really offer statistics, and that was
intentional on my part in large part because I'm continuing
to work on the quantitative data trying to determine, you know, um,
give a sense of just how many women were involved
in the institution of slavery, who owned slaves, and so
(29:12):
I'm using census data and other smaller data sets throughout
the South to construct a database which will provide those numbers.
And just from the preliminary research UM I've I've learned
that in some cases that women constituted of the slaveholders
in certain regions of the South, and I'm imagining that
(29:34):
those members will also be replicated in the larger data sets.
Because you know, there's been work done in Britain on
slave owners um who you know, file for compensation once
Britain abolished slavery and women comes to the forty percent
of the applicants for compensation in Britain. So there are
ways in which I think there are these numbers. This
(29:55):
this forty percent figures seems pretty consistent across UM, across
slave owning UM groups during this period. So I imagine
that the additional data that I look at, UM, the
quantitative data that I compile, will bear that out as well.
So that's that's that's the immediate one of the immediate
projects that I'm working. And I'm also working on what
(30:15):
I call the legal sequel of this project, because this
one was primarily focused on, you know, the economic dimensions
of women's investments institution, but the law made their ability
to kind of manipulate the law and to work around
certain laws made those economic investments possible. So I see
this book as a kind of necessary UM, kind of
second follow up, follow up UM to the to the
(30:38):
first book. So I'm working on a kind of UM
a llegal history UM of of white women's relationships to
the institution of slavery. Do you have any idea when
you started down this path that it would consume so
many years of your life? Absolutely not every not My
deepest thanks to Stephanie for talking with me. She is
(30:58):
an absolute delight in long after the interview ended, I
aked her ear off about all manner of things. If
you would like to catch up with her online, you
can do so at Stephanie Jones Rogers dot com that's
all run together, or on Twitter where she is s E.
J R. Underscore Historian. So the book once again is
they were her property, White women as slave owners in
(31:19):
the American South, and it's available wherever books are sold.
It is a really dense, like I mentioned in the interview,
meticulously researched read. There's a lot of information in that book,
and as we discussed, not always easy to read some
of those accounts of really the horrible things humans can
do to one another. But there's it's so so good. Um,
I really really loved it. I thought though, since this
(31:41):
was kind of a heavy topic, we would do some
mostly light listener mail, so I'm doing a little bit
of postcard round up again. The first one is from
I'm not sure if the name is Janna or Jonah,
but it is a lovely postcard from Scotland, and Jonah writes,
Dear Holly and Tracy, I am about to finish my
semester abroad and Edinburgh Sky Outland. I wanted to write
in and say thank you for keeping me company over
(32:03):
the last couple of months. I am studying history and
y'all always helped to remind me why I got into
this business. Y'all are amazing. Thank you so much, and
I hope your your time abroad has been spectacular because
that sounds lovely. It's a beautiful picture of Scotland, so
thank you very much for that. Our next one, I
won't read the whole thing, but I will mention it
is from our listener Allison, who sent uh was my
(32:24):
name with a couple of exclamation points, a beautiful picture
of a silk dress that was from a seventeenth century
shipwreck found in two thousand and four off the coast
of the Dutch Barrier island of I think it has
pronounced tesel. She mentioned some other things that were also
found in that shipwreck, but it's a really cool photograph
of this dress that I bet in its heyday was
(32:46):
utterly spectacular to behold. Um it looks a little, you know,
like it has been in a shipwreck, but you can
still see these vibrant pinks and yellows and and really
pretty weaving in the silk, So it's absolutely lovely. My
last one I'm not gonna read because it includes some
fairly personal information, but I wanted to just say hi
to this listener and how much we appreciate this letter.
It's from our listener, Jennifer, who wrote us about UM
(33:09):
being on medically for some stuff and listening to our
podcasts to kind of help her feel normal. And to me,
that is a great honor that we get to in
any way help someone get through a rough time. So
thank you so much for your letter, Jennifer. We are
thinking of you, UM, and we're so thankful to have
you as a listener. If you would like to write
to us, you can do so at History Podcast at
house works dot com. You can also find us pretty
(33:30):
much anywhere on social media as Missed in History. Can
also visit our website, which is Missed in History dot com.
And if you would like to subscribe to the show,
that's something we highly encourage. You can do that on
the I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
(33:52):
is a production of I Heart Radios. How stuff works.
For more podcasts For my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or ever you listen to
your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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