February 29, 2024

JABEZ AND THE UP THE BAYOU TANNERS

I am the 4th great grandson of Paul Jabez Tanner, an influential slave owner and brother of Peter Tanner and Mistress William Prince Ford, discussed by Solomon Northup in Twelve Years a Slave. A photo of their father, Robert Tanner, is next to mine above. According to Dr. Sue Eakin’s notes in her final edition […]

HENRY B. NORTHUP, THE MAN WHO RESCUED SOLOMON

“Henry B. Northup, Esq., of Sandy Hill, a distinguished counselor at law, and the man to whom… I am indebted for my present liberty… is a relative of the family in which my forefathers were thus held to service, and from which they took the name I bear. To this fact may be attributed the […]

SAMUEL BASS: THE BACK STORY BY HISTORIAN DAVID FISKE

By David Fiske, co-author of Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave (Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2013) In the summer of 1807, two babies were born–in towns only about 135 miles distant–whose lives would intermingle in a very unusual way: 45 years later, one (a Canadian) would help get the other released […]

WILLIAM PRINCE FORD, MY 3rd GREAT GRANDFATHER AND SOLOMON’S FIRST OWNER

The Ford family has a strong pride in their lineage and the character passed down through men like William Prince Ford. In his narrative Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup said, “there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford.” This William Ford was William Prince Ford, a planter, sawmill operator […]

ABSENT FROM THE TABLE: THE FAMILY STORY FROM SOLOMON TO THE PRESENT, BY HIS GREAT-GREAT GRANDDAUGHTER

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but What is woven into the lives of others” – Pericles (c. 495-429 BC) By Irene M. Northrup-Zahos 5:30 am. My house is silent with the quiet breathing of sleeping children. The friskiness of my daughter’s male Siamese stirs me awake. He is […]