The Legacy, Chapter 1: Three Oaks - Sex Stories

The Legacy, Chapter 1: Three Oaks

... that knew it was evil, Beth; he was fighting for his way of life, for his family. He was frightened, like so many that didn’t know how they could possibly go on if things changed so much. I don’t think Alfred was an evil man, not at heart; he was doing what any man would do, simply trying to survive and provide.” Alfred was actually her great-great-great grandfather, Alfred Pettigrew, five generations past, and the last of the Pettigrews to be a slaveholder. He had fought in the war, rising to the rank of major in the Confederate States Army, and had returned home after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox to find his home destroyed and his family and the few remaining slaves – free men, now – scattered and struggling. By force of will he had pulled them back together and, after a few years in primitive conditions, eventually built the old log and timber farmhouse that Beth and her husband, Robert, now called home. To those former slaves that had been willing to stay and help rebuild, and to get the plantation operating again, he had deeded to each family twenty acres and helped them to build homes, usually of timber and logs like his own, but smaller. Henry’s ancestors were some of the few that had chosen to stay on, and his family had since bought out one of the other former slave families; the forty acres on which Henry’s home was located was the resulting property, and was folded within the remainder of the Three Oaks estate, itself down to less than four hundred acres at this ...

... point from its original fifteen hundred. If you picture the entire property as a broad, shallow block “ U ” shape, opening to the north, his acreage made up a square in the top center of the “ U ”. His home, near the northern property line, and hers, in the western arm, were separated by less than a quarter of a mile. They stopped near one of the old stone chimneys, and sat down on the flat stones that made up the old hearth. “Your Grandfather Alfred giving property in trade to black men - making his freed slaves landowners - that was a very brave thing to do, Miss Elizabeth; he was widely despised for it.” “Oh, I know; you’ve told me. Still, the whole thing…” “What have I told you about living in the past? You just have to let it go, child; remember the good things, like him making sure all the children of his workers, black or white, slave or free, could read and write! He provided a teacher for them, and helped them learn. He thought it important, and valued education. Nobody else dared do that.” Henry shook his head, fully aware of the risks that such a practice would have brought in that era. “I wouldn’t know so much about my family if they hadn’t been able to read and write; many kept journals and diaries, you know, and we owe that to old Alfred.” “I suppose many had it much worse.” She sighed. “I just wish that wasn’t a part of my family history.” “Don’t be like that! The members of my family, those that wrote about it, all loved and respected him. All of the members of ...