[Grave marker for Walter Kinnaird, Kinnaird family cemetery near Sawyerville, Alabama]
When I was a child, my father told me a story that still haunts. The brother of his mother Nicie Elizabeth Kinnaird May was deaf and dumb, in the parlance of the time. My father always referred to him that way and never gave him a name. At an early age he was placed in the care of a Black woman. He lived in a cabin with her on the Kinnaird plantation and over time had at least two children with her. After his death, his caretaker moved north, either to Cleveland or Cincinnati, taking the children with her. My father did not know whether the children survived or whether they took their mother’s last name or their father’s.
When I was a child, my father told me a story that still haunts. The brother of his mother Nicie Elizabeth Kinnaird May was deaf and dumb, in the parlance of the time. My father always referred to him that way and never gave him a name. At an early age he was placed in the care of a Black woman. He lived in a cabin with her on the Kinnaird plantation and over time had at least two children with her. After his death, his caretaker moved north, either to Cleveland or Cincinnati, taking the children with her. My father did not know whether the children survived or whether they took their mother’s last name or their father’s.
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