At Home in the Briar Patch
by Mariann Regan
At Home in the Briar Patch
Most of the author’s extended family members are South Carolinians. Yet she grew up and attended college in North Carolina (Duke University), and afterwards she moved to Connecticut for her graduate degree (Yale University) and her college teaching career at Fairfield University.
In mid-life, she began to hear the opinion that “slavery is America’s original sin.” That was when she learned belatedly, from a cousin, that her ancestors in South Carolina—both maternal and paternal—had indeed owned slaves. Both startled and concerned, she set about to research the history of her mother’s family. For several decades she explored her family’s ancestral records, relevant church histories, public documents, private letters, and the extensive scholarship about the phenomenon of slavery in America. More important, she began a series of visits to her South Carolina relatives, who had lived through a wide range of opinions about race relationships and slavery. The ensuing discussions about family history were crucial to her journey of discovery.
Escape the hustle of city life
Dr. Mariann Regan is a southerner who grew up in North and South Carolina. It was not until midlife that she learned—from a cousin—that several of her ancestors had been white slaveholders, including two families of great-grandparents on her mother’s side: Kirvens and Frasers. Startled and curious, she determined to study her family’s past.
