William Tryon

Stephen Colegrave uncovers a family secret and realises how easy it is to whitewash our slavery roots.

My family is proud of its history. As a child, my two maiden great aunts mixed up the centuries as they told stories of generations of family history in the fading glory of their dilapidated farmhouse, with photographs and painted miniatures of self-important ancestors.

Bent nearly double with arthritis of indeterminate age, Aunt Rosalind, the indoor great aunt, looked after a motley crew of elderly gentleman boarders and Aunt Muriel, the outside great aunt, expertly kept a small herd of cows, sheep and hens.

My great aunts never had much money. They sold eggs from the door and the elderly boarders gave them their pensions, but their family history gave them a place in society and a special status – at least in their own eyes. My aunts were formidable. They were presented to court as debutantes and were tutored by a governess in the 1890s, never going to school. Early in the Second World War, they decided it was too dangerous for my father to go to school so they home-tutored him with old primers – so well that he became a straight-A student and later easily achieved a PhD.

The house was filled with family treasures such as the cannonball that an ancestor brought back from the Battle of Naseby in the Civil War. The most treasured items were from our most famous ancestor, General Tryon, who fought with General Wolfe at Quebec and was the Colonial General of North Carolina and then New York. We had his gold hunter watch, his uniform, a dress his wife had been presented to court in, portraits and a bust. I found a silver dollar that was crudely created over a Spanish Piece of Eight of pirate fame in his uniform pocket and my aunt let me keep it. Throughout my childhood, it was my most precious possession and it is still in my desk drawer at home.

Searching for the Truth

It wasn’t until recently that I decided to look into General Tryon’s history more. My aunts are long dead and, since then, I have married Hilary and have three grown-up kids – Lucy, Rupert and Oliver. I am very proud that my wife is black and my children have a mixed heritage. Part of that heritage probably includes slavery as Hilary’s family originally comes from Jamaica.

In researching General Tryon, I wanted to find out how much my family benefited from slavery as it never featured in the family stories from my childhood. This was also prompted by my son Oliver who sent me University College London’s online resource to find ‘Legacies of British Slave-ownership’.

Some quick desktop research showed that hundreds of such seemingly innocuous stately homes such as Alton Towers were built on the back of slaves and the Government provided compensation for slave owners when it was abolished. Some establishments, like Harewood House, is still owned by descendants of the original families that were involved in the slave trade.

Tryon Palace in North Carolina. Photo: Wikimedia

I vaguely remembered that the grandly-named Tryon Palace in North Carolina in the US – which was completed in 1770 for my ancestor William Tryon – was always trying to buy our Tryon treasures for its museum. My father always threatened to sell them bits and pieces of nondescript rubbish from attics that were from the right date, but I don’t know if he ever did. This was my starting point. If my ancestor owned slaves, it would have been when he was the Colonial General of North Carolina from 1765 -1771, before he became the Colonial General of New York until the rebels finally ousted him in 1780.

It would have been in the American South where slavery was embedded in all aspects of the economy and society where I would find any evidence.[…]

Continue reading: The Day I Discovered My Ancestor was a Slave Owner – Byline Times