I just discovered that a relative of mine once owned slaves! This according to the 1850 U.S. census. But the circumstances were curious. Five of her six "slaves" were children. One was only two years old. She could not have been making money from them. Why would she buy such unproductive people? It looks like her ownership of these people was protective rather than exploitative. She bought them to rescue them. Or did she inherit them from her late father? He was a prominent member of an abolitionist Baptist church, the same church that counseled Dred Scott to sue for his freedom.

The census taker assumed that these six black people were slaves. But were they?