There I was, coming up on my sixty-second birthday. God had helped bring me to a good stage in my life. I’d retired from my career as an executive. I had raised four children and was helping raise two of my nine grandchildren. And I thought I’d made peace with the past.
Then I received an e-mail from a stranger:
My name is Phoebe Kilby, and I am white. My father grew up in Rappahannock County, Virginia, near where your father grew up. I have been doing some research on my family. I suspect that our families had some kind of relationship in the past.
What did that mean?
There was a follow-up e-mail too. Phoebe—whose last name was the same as my maiden name—said she had been doing genealogical research and discovered that her ancestors might have enslaved my ancestors.
White slave owners often fathered children with the African-American women they owned. It was possible that Phoebe and I were not just connected but related.
“I feel shame that my family once owned slaves and by that very fact traumatized and mistreated them,” she wrote. “Someone in the Kilby family needs to apologize for this injustice, and perhaps that person should be me.”
Those e-mails stirred the past up again, stirred up a storm of feelings inside me too.
Let me tell you my story. Maybe then you’ll understand why Phoebe’s words felt like a message from God.
This story is from the August/September 2021 edition of Guideposts.
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This story is from the August/September 2021 edition of Guideposts.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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