Two ardent researchers of their families' roles in American history

are bound together by slavery.

The Rev. Dr. Wallace Alcorn of Austin, and Edward H. Peeples, Ph.D, of Richmond, Va. are proclaiming their emancipation from nagging mysteries that frustrate family history research: loose ends that need tying up.

"My great, great-grandfather, William Henry Brisbane and Edward's great, great-grandfather, Edward Harden Peeples, the First, were related in several ways," Alcorn methodically began to explain the familial connection.

"They would have been called 'cousins'," interjected Peeples, "because they both married sisters and Brisbane married his own first cousin, so we have a common ancestor."

"The significant thing here is that Harden Peeples was Brisbane's overseer," said Alcorn. "In many ways a good friend and, yet,

in many other ways an enemy."

Alcorn's great, great-grandfather, Brisbane, was an abolitionist, who sought to free himself of owning slaves in South Carolina in the early 1800s prior to the American Civil War.

Harden Peeples remained convinced slave-ownership was the right thing.

So appalled that slavery was wrong did Brisbane become, that he began speaking out against slavery at a time when abolitionists so threatened the South's slave-owners that a proslavery movement was launched to defend slavery.

One of the strongest arguments for slavery was made by Southern churches, who said the Bible supported slavery.

Brisbane kept his "domestic salves" after selling his field hands to Harden Peeples, who was both his overseer and brother-in-law and/or cousin-in-law.

Alcorn and Peeples explained.

"When he sold his slaves to Peeples, Peeples wouldn't pay him any more than he had to," said Alcorn, "because he knew nobody was going to buy these slaves from a man who was trying to get rid of his slaves in opposition to slavery."

Then, he moved north to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1838.

Four years later, Brisbane returned to South Carolina after freeing his domestic slaves and went to Peeples to buy back his field hands.

Knowing that Brisbane wanted to repurchase the slaves to free them, Peeples inflated the price.

"My side (of the family) was shameful" said Peeples, "His side was idyllic."

Brisbane claimed he saw his overseer beating a slave; an act which helped convince him it was wrong. However, neither Peeples' nor Alcorn's family history research has verified the account.

"We don't know that person was Peeples, but we also don't know of Brisbane having any other overseer, than Peeples" said Alcorn.

"It's circumstantial evidence that it was my ancestor," said Peeples.

Two years ago, the fifth-generation Peeples made a discovery while research his family's history in South Carolina. It was the Brisbane connection to his family.

Peeples was surprised by the discovery of an abolitionist among his ancestors in the South.

"I'm sort of a modern person on race. I was in the Civil Rights movement in the South. "I'm quite a different person than my ancestors." Peeples said.

At the age of 67, Peeples lived through segregation in the South. "I never heard anybody speak unkindly of segregation until I was 18 years old," he said. "Never heard an adult or preacher or any other person, who would have been amoral force in my life, say that there was any thing wrong with segregation or slavery."

The pair began sharing information in

October 2001 about the common ancestry they shared. It was not the first Peeples whom Alcorn had met during his family history research effort for a book he is writing.

That Peeples was not as gracious or understanding as the current Peeples to visit Alcorn.

"He was very helpful, but he said this ' We will forgive you, but

we will never ever forgive your grandfather'."

"So he's really an unreconstructed segregationist," said Alcorn.

Peeples is pleased and, maybe, relieved that he has connected with Alcorn and the Austin man's own

extensive family history research efforts. "He has in his hands, much of the story, and just because it reflects poorly

of my great-great-grandfather is no reason it should not be told."

Alcorn telephoned Peeples, when he was chosen to read the Emancipation Proclamation at a special observance in South Carolina, honoring his great, great-grandfather Brisbane's role in the early abolition movement.

"Until that point, there had been no contact, between the Southern branch of the family and the Northern branch of the family for over 130 years," said Alcorn.

What Austin's Alcorn and his visitor from Virginia represent are the great, great-grandsons of a slave owner who

became an abolitionist and his overseer, who became a slave owner of over 260 slaves as well as the owner of over thousands of acres of plantation land and who produced

many Confederate soldiers in the American Civil War.

The slave owner's son, named for the abolitionist,

became a prominent and decorated Confederate soldier.

The slave owner's plantation and village called "Peeplesville" was destroyed in the Civil War by an offshoot of General Sherman's infamous "March to the Sea."

The current generation Peeples is a retired professor of communications and medical behavioral sciences.

He and his wife, Karen, have three grown children and two grandchildren, plus an adopted Vietnamese daughter.

The family feud that simmered until it tore two families apart for over a century can be discussed by Alcorn and his house guest with amused detachment. "That was then, this is now" they seem to understand.

But, it remains true: slavery is the link they share.

Alcorn, the Northerner, said of the Southern "closeness" he yearns to understand:

"Even when you hate everything that a family member has done, he's still family. You don't completely disown him, but you don't necessarily have to go out of your way to be with him."

His house guest, Peeples, the Southerner, said, "Some family members who do perceive to betray their family exile themselves."

"I, of course, admire this man, Brisbane, the abolitionist, and see that this man brought us more democracy," he said.

As both men grapple to accept the new facts emerging in their loo into their common ancestors' past, it is obvious: in the smallest corners of society, the healing from the American Civil War over 140 years ago continues.

In the case of Alcorn and Peeples, the Southerner — Peeples —

admitted, "We've stepped over the Mason Dixon Line to do some of that healing."

Lee Bonorden can be contacted at 434-2232 or by e-mail at

:mailto:lee.bonorden@austindailyherald.com