March in Minnesota is still winter. My younger sister Melanie and I were born and raised in this state and live in the Twin Cities, as have our parents. Our grandparents settled in this state before the second wave of the great migration—coming from Nebraska and Missouri.
The pandemic of 2020 was not over. We were all thinking of things to occupy ourselves. I started digging deeper into the family maternal ancestors—Lay, Price, Denney. Melanie researched the paternal ancestors, the Stone family. According to our father, Grandpa Melvin Stone (1907-1991) ran away from home at fourteen because of a fight with his stepmother. There were few family oral histories or photographs since he never returned home nor said anything about siblings.
In the afternoon of March 2020, a genealogist named Sharon Morgan sent Melanie a cryptic email asking if we were related to Melvin Stone. Melanie replied with a yes!
Then, Sharon wrote that her client wanted to contact Melanie. Her client, Edith Pacillo, had genealogical information about the Stone family.
Melanie phoned me, explaining the situation. We were both excited about the possibility of this new information.
Family Chart by Edith Pacillo
Between weekly emails and phone calls, we learned Edith Pacillo is the descendant of Thomas Stone/William Howell, ancestors who enslaved our third great-grandfather, Minor Stone. Edith Pacillo changed our lives and hers when she emailed us the family memoirs and histories written in 1933 by a great aunt linked descendant Bennie Howell Drescher (1857-1935), along with the September 25, 1839 last will and testament of the family scion, Thomas Stone.
In the memoir, we learned that Minor Stone was born enslaved in January 1833 on the Thomas Stone tobacco plantation in Bloomfield, Kentucky. Minor could never write his own family history, but through the white gaze of Bennie Howell Drescher wrote,
“Uncle Minor said Marse Williams (slave owner William Howell) more than once refused three thousand dollars in gold for him. Minor was six feet tall, weighed two hundred pounds and learned the blacksmith trade.”
This is the only physical description my family will ever have of Minor Stone.
My ninety-four-year-old father could not fill in the blanks in the Stone family: the blanks his father never shared with him. Or maybe he didn’t know.
I began to imagine the life of Minor Stone. We learned that after the death of Thomas Stone in 1838, Minor at seven, became the property of Ellen Stone—the daughter of Thomas Stone.
His worth 300 dollars.
When Ellen married William Howell, she united young Minor with Howell’s enslaved property. No age was indicated in the memoir when Ellen married. I can only imagine thirteen-year-old enslaved Lucinda, also a member of Ellen’s inheritance, said to this bewildered child,
“Don’t cha worry none chile I’s be your mammy.”
I look at my seven-year-old great niece and think how innocent of the world she is. Something Minor never could be—innocent.
Now our ninety-four-year-old father, Melvin Stone, and his ninety-five-year-old brother, Stanley Stone, know that their great grandfather, Minor, is no longer forgotten. He has been found and remembered.
L-to-R: Myles Williams (Melanie’s youngest son), Jeffery Williams (Melanie’s eldest son), Melvin H. Stone (89th birthday), Debra Stone, Lowell Weber (Debra’s husband), Melanie Stone Williams, Geri Bogard (Melanie’s mother-in-law)
After we received the information, we decided it was important to meet Edith in-person at the Coming to the Table conference in Oakland, California. After she clarified our questions, we decided on a trip to Paris, Missouri in October 2023. In this town Melanie and I, along with Edith and her sister Nita, met to further research where William Howell and Minor Stone spent their entire lives. At the Paris Historical Society, with the help of Ken McGee, we discovered more information about the life of Minor Stone.
After emancipation, Minor Stone joined the 65th United States Colored Infantry Company E. Minor Stone’s May 25, 1923 Monroe County Appeal obituary revealed he participated in the bloody Battle of Vicksburg, where colored troops fought bravely and died on the battlefield. After the Civil War, Minor returned to work for Howell, cutting timber, keeping Howell property and remaining connected to this family until William Howell’s death. (Source: US Army Pension papers and discharge papers for Minor Stone, Ancestry.com, and Ken McGee) (Source: The Negros’s Civil War, James M. McPherson)
Paris, Monroe County Historical Society October 2023. L-to-R: Nita Pozzy, Edith Pacillo, Melanie Stone Williams, Debra Stone, Ken McGee
Our time spent together in Missouri filled-in missing parts, but not all the stories of our third great grandfather, Minor Stone. It left me wondering about this bond between Minor and Howell. What was it that held these two men together after slavery? As told in Bennie’s memoir, “four of the Black men (one of them being Minor, it was in his obituary) walked behind the casket of William Howell to the Walnut Grove Cemetery.” Did Howell’s power and wealth protect Minor and his family? Especially when lynching was at its highest in Missouri. Were they family? So far, DNA is inconclusive. This part of the narrative I don’t know and may never know.
On Minor’s headstone is the inscription, “Not dead but sleeping.” Is this Minor’s message to us to keep the remembrances of him and the bond with William Howell alive through his descendants? I don’t know. But I/we will keep searching. (Source: The National Lynching Memorial.com)
Minor Stone’s headstone. “Not Dead But Sleeping”
So, thank you Edith for the time we spent in Paris, Missouri, seeking the truth about our ancestors. Otherwise, the papers might have remained in an archive box, and we would have never discovered Minor Stone. And in this twenty-first century, hopefully we’ll all find a way to our humanity, and our joy in a developing friendship.
Author: Debra Stone is a writer of essays, poetry, and fiction. She is a Jerome Hill Arts Fellow in Literature 2023-25 and The Loft Mirrors and Windows Fellow 2023 for writing books for BIPOC children and young adults. Her work has been published in Indiana Review, Jarnal Literary Journal, Brooklyn Review, Under the Gum Tree, Random Sample Review, Green Mountains Review (GMR), About Place Journal, Saint Paul Almanac, and forthcoming in other literary journals. She’s received residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Callaloo, The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, New York Mills Arts Residency, Tofte Lake Center Arts Residency, and is a Kimbilio Fellow. Sundress Publishers nominated her essay, Grandma Essie’s Vanilla Poundcake, Best of the Net, judged by Hanif Abdurraquib in 2019 and in 2021 her short fiction, year-of- staying–in place, was Best of Net and Pushcart nominated. Debra is the former chair of the board of directors for the non-profit literary publisher Graywolf Press in Minneapolis. Debra’s forthcoming novel is published by the University of Minnesota Press available 2025. She resides in Minneapolis with her husband. https://www.debrajeannestone.com and debra2036 Instagram.
*Debra Stone’s research is supported by the Minnesota Jerome Hill Foundation Fellowship in Literature 2023-2025.
©2024, Debra Stone. All rights reserved.
Debra, thank you for this wonderful story. Glad to see a fellow Minnesotan!
Thank you Steve.