Words, words, words........

Dear friend Steven gently suggested the blog could benefit from fewer words and more people pix.

I'm working through in my own mind the ethical issues about including photographs, so in the meantime, here's Greatgreat-grandfather Nathan McClure Leslie...

...Rather a handsome man, I suppose, for a Baptist preacher slave-owner. Yes, godfearing Nathan owned slaves, and Virginia Baptists 1865 - 1902 indicates that the Reverend Nathan's ownership of another human being was in keeping with the will of God. Not quite sure whose God or which God, but Reverend Nathan owned slaves.

According to the Religious Herald, the weekly newspaper of Virginia Baptists, "the Negro is no more the white man's brother than the owl is the sister of the eagle or the ass is the brother of the horse." True, the ass isn't the brother of the horse; that would be rather incestuous. Nevermind. Preacher Nathan clearly had it on good authority that ownership of those created by God as inferior was acceptable. Apparently, the outcome of the Wah of Nawthn Agrushun didn't sit too well with Nathan and he and almost all of his offspring, not including my great-grandfather, along with his second wife, decamped to Texas around 1880, a place hospitable to the bereft losers of the Wah.

(I did add several photos to Two Judys, but am feeling guilty as I stole them from the site of the wedding photographer, and while I don't mind ripping off the man, stealing from a woman trying to make her way in the world is downright wrong....but they're still there, if you're interested.