Plausible Deniability

— By Lee Guion

I stood looking at an old postcard of a rectangular two-story brick building with a chimney and peaked roof. Faded lettering identifies it as the first building of Mars Hill College in Madison County, N.C., founded in 1857 (now Mars Hill University). In the corner there’s a cameo photograph of a man with a stern expression and long white goatee: E. Carter 1814-1905. I turn the postcard over and see a note in my mother’s handwriting that says Edward Carter is my 2nd great grandfather, founder and original trustee of the school.

There were other family documents in the envelope my sister handed me in 2018 while we stood at our mother Mary Carter’s gravesite in New Bern, NC. One was an historical society publication tracing our maternal ancestors back to the 1700s. They settled and prospered during colonial times in western North Carolina and the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Men who headed the Carter and Sams clans were described in glowing terms, as accomplished pillars of their rural community. I know there is always more that is unstated, and perhaps hidden, in public accounts. I felt detached from the information. They certainly did not feel like family.

My mother’s mother moved with her husband from her home in Mars Hill to New Bern, in eastern North Carolina, over 300 miles away. During my childhood, the mountains were rarely mentioned. Coastal Carolina was the family home as far as I was concerned. My family were city people – lawyers and local merchants – far removed from the Missionary Baptist ministers and farmers of Madison County. So it was here, in New Bern, that my brother, sister, and I visited our mother’s gravesite in Cedar Grove Cemetery with its high humidity, sandy soil, and Spanish moss swaying from aging conifers. I thought I would feel nostalgic or sad, but instead I felt complete. Done. I would be flying back to San Francisco in a few days. 

My only trip to Mars Hill was when I took my mother to visit Ruth Anderson, her first cousin. The low ceilings and small parlor gave the farmhouse an intimate feel. Tall windows allowed fall light to wash over the rooms while unadorned eaves kept out the glare. Although the house felt a bit solemn and age worn, the octogenarian cousins brightened it with animated chatter as they shared stories of our Madison County family. I listened in as I wandered around the house admiring quilts, salt-glazed pottery, and shelves of pickled vegetables and fruits. 

I learned that, yes, my ancestors included Missionary Baptist ministers, but also attorneys, merchants, teachers, and farmers, many farmers. No matter what other work they pursued, they owned and worked farmland. But the mountains, hollows, and valleys of western North Carolina did not lend themselves to growing large cash crops – cotton, tobacco, rice – or the infrastructure to move them easily to market. I figured, no plantations, therefore no enslaved workers, and no enslavers. I did not think to inquire who helped work our family’s farmland. I now realize I had the privilege of denial and willful ignorance.

Three years ago Joseph McGill, founder of the Slave Dwelling Project (SDP), cracked open the door that led me back to the mountains of North Carolina, Mars Hill University (MHU), and my founding ancestor Edward Carter. In 2019 McGill led a sleepover at the preserved slave quarters at the Zebulon Vance birthplace, near Mars Hill. He learned that during construction of the first building that would become MHU, the founding families ran out of money. Joe Anderson, a master brickmaker enslaved by one of the founders, was jailed as collateral by the construction company. If the families could not secure funds within five days, Joe Anderson would be sold away from his family to pay the debt.

Reading this story made me stop and examine the possibility that my direct ancestors had also enslaved people. For the first time the possibility seemed less remote than likely. Instead of fearful, I felt purposeful. I thought of my mother and the family documents passed along to me by my sister at her gravesite. I discovered that census records and property transfers, once collecting dust in the county courthouse, had been digitized. An archivist at Mars Hill University retrieved them quickly. Madison County Slave Schedules from 1860 listed Edward Carter, depicted on the postcard, as enslaving three people. County bills of sale noted they were purchased in 1853 for $1260 from the estate of William Keith. With this document I had their names: 23-year-old Jane, her 3-year-old-son Ben, and Harriet Jane, Jane’s one-week-old daughter. Bills of sale from 1857 documented Edward Carter purchasing children from John Ray, family of Edward’s wife Clarissa (Ray): Robert ($400), Emma ($1050), and Wilson ($500). There is no record of their mother’s name, but “slave for life” was written after each child’s name.  Other familiar ancestors also appeared on the  1860 Madison County Slave Schedules, including Anderson, the enslaver of brickmaker Joe Anderson.

I held the evidence I had avoided in my hands. My heart hurt. My chest constricted. The cold, calculated inhumanity of enslavement was right here. It had existed all along. As the reality sank in, my numbness turned to frustration, anger, and chagrin. My families’ wealth, standing in the community, opportunities, and physical comfort were made possible, in large part, through enslaving human beings. Mars Hill College educated my great grandfather, grandmother, and great aunts, uncles, and cousins, and sent them out into the world to be successful professionals, homeowners, and family to me. My mother and sister carry the Carter name on their birth certificates. My family carries the legacy of enslavement. Mars Hill University carries it too. 

In 2021 I joined a campus committee and pushed for MHU to join the consortium Universities Studying Slavery (USS). This spring five African American undergraduate students sat on a panel at a USS Conference in Greensboro, NC. They told the uncomfortable truth that their university’s repetition of the myth and white-washing of  “Old Joe” Anderson, as well as its participation in Jim Crow-era discrimination, maintained white supremacy in their school’s history.

I found my way back to North Carolina with the guiding hand of my mother, who, at her gravesite, through my sister, placed a packet of family history in my hands. It led me to accountability, reconciliation, and stepping on the path towards restitution for slavery. Our unfinished business. 

 

UPDATE:  HERE is an interview with Lee from May 2023, Slavery & Higher Ed: A Personal Story. “Lee Guion recounts her discovery of her family’s links to slavery and the establishment of MHU, and Professor David Gilbert describes the research he and students are conducting to uncover the University’s past and repair the present. A first person narrative about reckoning with a painful past and slavery’s links to higher education in America.”

 

Author: Lee Guion (nee Lida Rodman Guion) is a daughter of the South who now lives in San Francisco. Her ancestors are white colonists, immigrants from England and France. They settled and thrived in New Rochelle, N.Y., the port city of New Bern, and the Southern Appalachian Mountains of N.C. (Carter, Ray, Sams, Anderson, Whitehurst.) In 2018, she began exploring the possibility that her family owed much of their early comfort, financial success, and social status to enslaved Black men, women, and children. Since uncovering her family’s extensive ties to slavery, she has committed herself to publicly acknowledging, researching, sharing her findings, taking action, and making restitution through truth telling, education, collaboration, and financial support. Lee is grateful for the guidance and support of members of Coming to the Table, especially, the San Francisco-Oakland Chapter, Linked Descendants, and the women of her writing pod. She is also grateful to linked descendant cousins of the Anderson family of Mars Hill and Asheville, who are on this journey with her.

©2021, Lee Guion. All rights reserved.

 

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To read more about Joe Anderson and his great-great granddaughter Oralene Simmons, please see the links below:

• https://slavery.virginia.edu/north-carolinas-mars-hill-university-joins-universities-studying-slavery/
• https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2015/10/25/oralene-simmons-recognized-integrating-mars-hill/74283028/
• https://slavedwellingproject.org/primary-sources/
• https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/madison/2017/02/22/racial-religious-issues-shape-mhu-identity/98051890/
• http://andersonrosenwaldschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/mhrs_history-notated-v4.pdf