MICHELLE OBAMA’S GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER WAS GEORGETOWN SLAVE

I have given President-elect Barack Obama a lot of grief over the last two years for basically being a tax-and-spend socialist (because he is), but I will admit that the symbolism of America electing a black commander-in-chief is pretty cool.

Especially the fact that his wife Michelle’s family has, in the span of five generations gone from a slave cabin to the White House. And that journey, unfortunately, began on the Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown.

Their documented passage begins with Jim Robinson, Obama’s great-great-grandfather, who was born around 1850 and lived as a slave, at least until the Civil War, on the sprawling rice plantation. Records show he remained on the estate after the war, working as a sharecropper and living in the old slave quarters with his wife, Louiser, and their children. He could neither read nor write, according to the 1880 census.

Robinson would be the last illiterate branch of Michelle Obama’s family tree.

Census records show each generation of Robinsons became more educated than the last, with Michelle Obama eventually earning degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Her older brother, Craig, also received an Ivy League education. [...]

Little is known about Robinson’s life at the plantation, beyond that he worked in the riverfront rice fields after the Civil War. Local historians don’t know how or when he came to Friendfield, but census records indicate that both his parents were born in South Carolina.

A map from the early 1870s, when Robinson was living on the plantation, shows three parallel rows of slave cabins, each with 10 to 13 buildings along Slave Street. But by 1911, only 14 were still standing.

Five single cabins remain today. With their massive fireplaces and wood plank walls, each tells a story about slave life on the plantation.

The small shacks, only 19 feet deep, housed several families at once, said Ed Carter, who now oversees the property. Large, stone fireplaces were used for cooking and heating. Attic space in the rafters beneath the gable roof offered a place for extra people to sleep. [Chicago Tribune]

I always wanted to get into genealogy but was afraid what I might find out. So I just pretend my family descended from bad ass pirates who sailed the seven seas swashbuckling and pillaging at will — righting the injustices of the world, etc., etc.

Those pirates, of course, came from a proud line of vikings who ruled over their minions with an iron fist. And if you even think about bursting my bubble, then I’ll send ye to Davy Jones’ Locker, ye salty sea dog.

(Photo: Chicago Tribune)