Dear Sumter List: I was delighted to be the private recipient of the following querry, and I offered the best response I knew of back privately. Then it occurred to me that we descendants of slaves and slave owners need to do some genealogy "talking". For instance, I am fascinated with the my mother and father's families mixed. If we could get over the differences that the structure of segregation maintained [and, "no", I don't want to "go back"], I believe that there are very interesting things to record. For example, I believe that my daddy had 3 emotional "mothers". His biological mother got sick...and, over a 2 year period, financially drained and "lost the farm"...and died in 1921 when Daddy was 9 years. "Aunt Sally" White helped raise the 2 boys during those two years and for many thereafter as their father was in the automobile business and on the road back and forth to Detroit. Then by 1923, the boys had a wonderful step-mother. "Aunt Sally" was a black lady who was also a resident of the Shaw's Crossroads area of Sumter County. I met in May '99 with Daddy's first cousins who also grew up out "at the crossroads". I found out an amazing admixture of white and black neighbors. Because of "political correctness", I'm afraid that THE TRUTH of the positive ways of how white and black neighbors coped together with emancipation, reconstruction, and segregation will all be drowned out by the namecalling & denounciations from both races and by the stories of all of the bad stuff. I had heard all of my life that the slaves emancipated often took the owner's last names; then I read the autobiography of George Washington Carver which indicated that the DID NOT take owner's names. May this post stimulate more stories of "togetherness stories" of white/black coping and inter-racial rules and customs. I'd love to collect stuff on the topic and organize it in my website one day! Anyhow: The Querry: hello ervin, i came across you information on the cooper line that lead to the mccutchen family from williamsburg dist. for the past 4 years i've been searching for wills ofthe mccuthen family that list slaves. on an tax returned that i found at the archives 1866, list about eight black males including my ggg grandfather Harrison Smith and a brother George. would you have any wills that included an inventory of slaves divded among the family members at the time of death? looking for any wills that may connect me with my gggg grandmother. even if the cooper family's wills can be located that required information is would help. I send a few names that come up in a possible will. My Response: I don't have any Cooper wills. But, over the 30+ years I've been doing this hobby, I've noticed that the Probate Court files on a deceased might contain other papers naming slaves. For example, if the estate had a will but was not closed out for several years, the annual return report might mention any slaves either sold or transferred to an heir since the owner's death. Another example: if owner dies without a will (intestate), the court-ordered estate inventory might list the slaves by name. Even in an owner's death with a will, where the will was written years before, the estate inventory might more correctly and currently (a boy of a slave may have become a man-slave in the interval and be actually named) list the slaves by name. It would pay to make a visit to the county courthouse where the suspected slave-owner died and personally go thru the Probate Court "bundles" (or microfilms of same). I suspect that almost none of that type material is "on line". You could probably do it in one or two good, solid days of work. GOOD LUCK!! Ervin Shaw poptop@usit.net Lexington, S. C. my web site http://www.public.usit.net/poptop photo at office http://www.lexmed.com/medical.htm