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An honest look at a slave-trading family's past
Thomas DeWolf tells of his voyage into some ugly chapters of family history.
By Marjorie Keheposted February 19, 2008 at 2:50 p.m. EST
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Thomas DeWolf was 47 before he made a horrifying discovery: An ancestor of his, James DeWolf, was the head of the most successful slave-trading family in American history. The DeWolfs financed 88 voyages which carried about 10,000 enslaved Africans to the New World – and in the process became one of New England's most wealthy and powerful families.
Talk about having a skeleton in the closet. The only slightly mitigating factor was the fact that Thomas did not descend directly from James; James was instead the nephew of Thomas's direct ancestor, who was a carpenter from Connecticut.
But that bit of distance wasn't enough to cancel out the shame now associated with the name DeWolf. So when Thomas discovered a way to confront his family history head on, he jumped at the opportunity.
He learned that a distant cousin, Katrina Browne, one of the direct descendents of James DeWolf, was a filmmaker. She was hoping to gather as many DeWolf cousins as she could and to travel with them to Bristol, R.I. (where the DeWolfs had lived and traded), to Ghana (where their merchant ships used to pick up their human cargo), and to Cuba (where the DeWolfs had owned several plantations, all manned by slave labor).
Katrina planned to make a documentary of the 2001 journey, which she hoped would be a voyage of discovery for all involved.
The resulting film, "Tracing the Trade," has since been released and received a good bit of press (see "Family confronts the North's slave-trading past," Jan. 31, 2008). Thomas's book, Inheriting the Trade, shares his perspective on the journey; the making of the film; and the larger questions of guilt, shame, and recompense with which the family have struggled.
"How can the damage caused by slavery be repaired? How do we all heal? What are we, as white people, willing to give up? Can giving up something like money make a difference in the world? Are we responsible for everything our ancestors did and everything that will happen in the future? Who are we in respect to all this? Why should anyone care?"
There is much of this kind of musing laced throughout "Inheriting the Trade" – too much, in fact. It's hard at times for a reader not to get impatient and wonder if all this agonizing discussion this will ever add up to anything.
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