Britt Johnson had quite a life.
"I suppose you could write a book on tbe social dynamics of master and slave in the United States, and all the variants thereof....
Slaves as family members. Slaves that their masters had known forever, grown up with, blurring the distinction between slave and master. And the inevitable dalliances, perhaps not always rape, and the mixed offspring thereof, some of these after a couple of generations of this even predominantly of White blood, but still owned.
Always with the possibility of being sold off, for money or in repayment of debt. Interesting to speculate; toxic family members and bad blood are still common phenomena today, if it were legal for some family members to actually sell others for remunerative gain, how often would that happen?"
I personally knew only one woman who had been born into slavery. Aunt Tex was a "house [bleep]" and took care of the Pruitt children. She didn't know how old she was but said she was a "growed girl" when the war came. I knew her when I was just a kid and not interested in the subject you ask about. I do know how misegenation was handled around here post slavery.
Generally it went like this but understand each case was different depending on the individuals involved. In some cases paternity was never acknoledged and the white family just went on like it had never happened. Everybody knew it had though but no one ever brought it up to the family if they had chosen not to admit it. Politeness I guess.
In other cases, and I personally knew several of the offspring of white father black mother, it went like this. If the daddy claimed the child and for whatever reason did not or could not deny paternity and the child was a boy he'd take the family name of his father as his first name and his mothers family name. For example Mr. Brown (white) had a boy child by Molly Marshall (black woman). The kid was named Brown Marshall. This is a true example. I knew Brown Marshall and both his parents. Others I knew in the same way were Gould Hopkins, Floyd Brown, Ward Brown, Lawson Mills, there were others I forget now.
If the child was a girl she would take what ever first name she was given but as a family name take that of her white father. Since, around here at least, when the slaves were freed many took the name of the family that had owned them there were a lot of common last names between different colors of familys. Didn't cause a problem. Most could tell by sight which group the family belonged to.
Sometimes you couldn't if you didn't know though. There was a woman named Pearly White and she actually was. She was classed as a negro and stayed in negro society but in truth she was an octoroon. Hard to tell if you didn't know.
Got kind of complicated at times.
